Let me start by saying that we love staying in Montauk and have stayed @ the Beachcomber numerous times before without ever having a problem like this. I am usually NOT the type of person to complain and always will give praise when deserving. That being said, this was the single worst experience of lack of customer service that my family and I have ever experienced! I read some of the other reviews and did experience the same problems that others have experienced, and then some. For instance the resort says that the have "WI-FI" on premises, maybe they do BUT, it does NOT work and there was no one even remotely capable of trying to help! The answer I got was "Try to walk to the back of your room and see if that works, or else walk by the pool and see if I could get a signal there." As far as other reviews saying that you get what you pay for, I did NOT find this to be the case! We paid a lot of money ($350/night) to stay there for 5 days and did NOT get what we paid for, agreed that the room we stayed in was somewhat spacious, it was VERY dated back to the 1980's, as well as not very clean and it did smell like "wet-dog". All the appliances we at least 30 years old, the rugs did NOT look like they had been vacuumed in weeks, the bathrooms were very small and everyday the cleaning crew came they did NOT leave my family enough clean towels. We had 4 people in the room and they only left us 2 clean towels everyday I would have to call the front desk and they would tell me" Can you come to the front desk and we will give you more towels?' As well we asked for an extra blanket , the cleaning crew took that and did not replace and the front desk gave me the same answer, "please come down to the front desk and we will see if we can find you another blanket", O.K. , Now here comes the good part...... There was an unexpected "heat wave" that just hit our area last week and we were watching our local area news network hearing that there were "rolling blackouts" in numerous parts of Long Island. That being said as we were getting ready to go out for dinner the lights go out...Now keep in mind that we are in the middle of some of the hottest temperatures on record and we are traveling w/ small children and the conditions can have the potential to be very dangerous to say the least VERY uncomfortable. Now listen to the chain of events that take place next, I hope you find this as disappointing and unacceptable display of customer service as I do because I would not wish this to happen to another family that was trying to enjoy themselves on vacation! We finished getting ready in the dark and try to call the front desk BUT the phones do NOT work, so I have to make yet another trip down there to try to find out what happened and when we could expect the lights / electricity to be back on. Now mind you, I am NOT expecting much help from them due to their poor track record with previous meetings this week as I mentioned earlier. I was told that the lights/power would be back on soon, probably when I returned from dinner. I was pleased with this answer but I stayed out later than we should have for dessert and to visit some of our friends in town just in case it took longer than expected...... The next set of events that took place was "the icing on the cake". We were trying to get in touch with someone at the hotel at various times during the evening for a possible update during our evening to no avail. We figured that the longer we waited to go back to our room the better our chances for some air-conditioning and lights in our room, boy were we wrong! We waited as long as possible and got back to the hotel around midnight to find it pitch black with others in the hotel standing around looking for answers and just as annoyed w/ the lack of customer service as we were. We walked over in the dark to hopefully try to find some answers at the front desk to find the place deserted and they thought they were being helpful by scotch taping little glow sticks to the front door before they left on time @ 11pm. This was just adding insult to injury.....Not even a handwritten note or a voicemail in our rooms or perhaps being that we are part of the biggest technology age ever perhaps an email???? I bet they will send one in a few months when they want my money to come and stay there again! I had to try to get in touch with the power company myself (LIPA) and those of you from L.I. know how useless they can be as well.....BUT , I did make some progress and they finally showed up @ 2am as my family and I slept in the car trying to find some comfort with the a.c. The bottom line is when I finally confronted the "gentleman" at the front desk who was a very poor excuse for a general manager he said he did all hew could do by making a phone call to LIPA before he left to go home @ 11pm to his well air conditioned comfortable home while the rest of us sweat it at the rooms at the Beachcomber.... I don't know about you but if I have a problem at work I will stick around late or come in early the next day to make sure the job is done correctly. This guy's job is to make sure his guests are comfortable and safe while he is at work and tries to do his job and to say the least he failed miserably! Needless to say my family and I will go out of our way to find a new place to stay for our vacation out to Montauk next year...We will not let the neglect and incompetence of one general manager (Harold Jones) at The Beachcomber in Montauk ruin the great memories that we have enjoyed for so long vacationing out on the East end of our beautiful island! Hopefully this helps future patrons thinking about staying here make a wise decision for themselves and their families in the future.
Room Tip: the room smelled moldy, all the appliances were dated back to the 1980's and the carpets were d...
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
27 July 2011
As many of our loyal and beautiful guests have acknowledged on Tripadvisor, Beachcomber is a wonderful property with spectacular oceanviews of the Atlantic ocean from all of our rooms. Our spacious rooms are all very clean and in good condition. Our housekeeping staff takes great pride in their work and always do their very best to ensure our guests feel at home.
The record breaking heat wave that we all experienced this past Friday was not only the cause of our external 7 hour power outage but also the reason why our phones and all our computers at the front desk were down. Therefore it was not possible to send emails to guests as suggested. We placed multiple calls into LIPA's automated power outage system throughout the evening. The system acknowledged that there would be delays in restoring the power due to the extreme weather and regional power outages experienced that day. At no point did the LIPA system indicate a time frame for when power could be expected to be restored because of this. We spoke with and apologized to all our guests affected by the outage. They were all informed of the situation before our phones systems battery backup power was completely drained and our phones went down. The reason why one would try to call the front desk after having knowledge of the phones being dead due to the outage especially after having personally spoken to our staff and having access to the same information we were getting from LIPA is beyond me.
Our posted office hours are 9AM-11PM in season. Additionally, I personally returned to the property multiple times after 5PM (the time at which I normally finish my day at work) until midnight. The front desk was fully staffed until 11PM despite not having any electricity either. Therefore there was only a 2 hour period between my last visit and 2AM when power was restored. No one had to sleep in their car or could even claim to have done so because power was restored that night. Many guests actually experienced only a couple of hours of the black out because they came back late from dinner or visited friends in town that had power. Therefore, my staff as well as I did all we could and went above and beyond in our effort to ensure all our guests got the service they have come to expect from our team. We did all this and more in a difficult situation that any reasonable person that has lived through a power outage would understand was completely out of our control.
Regards,
Harold Jones
General Manager
Beachcomber Resort At Montauk a Dune Management Property
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of TripAdvisor LLC