On February 15, 2010, I made a reservation with Margaret at the Sunset Motel for 2 adults and 1 dog for 1 night with a check in date of July 10. The reservation was very easy to make as she still had all of our information on file from our last stay in 2009.
On June 14, I spoke to Margaret to confirm the July 10 reservation. She said she had us down for a pet room for that night.
July 10, I went to check in. Margaret looked at me, looked at our vehicle and said we had a dog. I said yes. She then told me she didn’t have any pet rooms available and we couldn’t stay. Every place we saw in Hood River was booked full. This was night 16 of a 17-day, 16-night road trip. We were hot and tired. I had a splitting headache. I was not happy and in no mood to get told we couldn’t stay in the room we had reserved almost 5 months ago and guaranteed on a credit card!
I told her that when I made the reservation months ago she knew we were staying with a dog. She just kept telling me there were no pet rooms available and she couldn’t move anyone so late in the day. Each time she’d say that I’d get a little madder until I finally just told her I didn’t care, the reservation was made months ago for a pet room and she was going to honor the reservation.
She asked me if I knew when the reservation had been made. Luckily I am super organized and have a little thing I print out before we go on a trip that includes all the lodging information, including when the reservation was made, which employee made the reservation, when I confirm the reservation and which employee confirms it. I came back in with it and showed it to her. When she saw the information she decided to “do us a favor” and let us stay there. She also blamed the screw up on some person who filled in for her while she was gone for a while sometime in the past. She said the only reason she could do us this “favor” was because we only booked for 1 night. If we had reserved a pet room for 2 or more nights, she wouldn’t have let us stay. As I was turning to go she told me “that dog has to be on a leash when it’s not in the room.” I told her we knew that because we’d stayed there with her last year.
She put us in Room 2 on the 1st floor. It was just like the pet room we had the year before. It was clean but by no means quiet this year. The motel was full when we stayed on the 1st floor last year and we heard no other guests. This year we heard doors slamming, the people above us stomped around a lot and there was lots of noise from the parking lot.
Around 9:15 that night, the air conditioner started having problems and the office was dark and locked up. Around 10:00 p.m. it started shutting itself off and turning back on and we still couldn’t get hold of anyone in the office.
We turned the unit to fan. Even the fan would only run for a few seconds before shutting off. We ended up having to shut the unit off completely.
I got our tiny fan out of the vehicle but the wind was blowing from the wrong direction to get any air unless we opened the room door so the room got pretty toasty.
At 11:45 p.m., we turned the unit back on and it put out cold air again but it took 2 hours for the room to cool back off even with our fan to help circulate air.
At 5:45 a.m. it started shutting itself off again.
5:45 a.m. was also when the people upstairs started stomping around and when room doors started slamming. The doors slammed so hard our headboard shook.
The bed was comfortable enough for the 4 hours we managed to sleep but the mattress pad wouldn’t stay so we ended up sleeping on the bare mattress.
We left well before the office opened up so I left a long note about the AC unit and our displeasure with this stay in the key card envelope along with both key cards and left everything in the room. The keys are supposed to be returned to the office but neither one of us saw a key drop.
We ended up paying $119.00 for a room and $15.00 for a pet fee ($144.71 total with tax) for a queen bed, microwave, small fridge, tiny coffee maker and a bathroom at the Sunset Motel. For that price we got treated rudely when the motel made a mistake with our pet room reservation, had an AC unit that stopped working for a while and had a miserable night with only 4 hours of sleep. Not once did Margaret apologize for the motel’s mistake and instead kept telling me she was doing us a favor by letting us stay.
The night before we paid $119.00 for a room and $15.00 for a pet fee ($150.08 total with tax) for a 2 bedroom suite with granite countertops, a kitchen, dining area, living area with leather furniture and a large bathroom in the Spokane area. For that price we got a very warm welcome, free long distance, free guest laundry, guest-use grills and free pastries the next morning.
Needless to say, we will never go back to the Sunset Motel.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
