I stayed in O'Keefe Plaza Hotel from 03/16/11 to 03/19/11. This hotel is not overly expensive (though it's not cheap either), so one shouldn't expect outstanding service there. I certainly did not. However, below are the four main unexpected problems that I encountered while staying there.
(1) For the price I paid, my room was rather untidy, with dirty sheets, hardly working shower, and missing TV remote control. I let the front desk personnel know about this issue and was told that the problems would be solved, but nothing changed till the day I checked out.
(2) The room door key never worked, and the hotel staff expects guests to go to their rooms and confirm that they key is not working (yet again), and then go all the way back to the front desk for a new key ... every time. They don't even apologize; just issue a new key without saying a word.
(3) The hotel advertises that free Internet is provided in hotel's room. However, according to hotel's own staff, Internet simply did not work on the upper floors, as it never did on my lower first floor. So I had no Internet for three days, which was rather inconvenient.
Here is O'Keefe's Plaza Hotel's ad on Expedia from today (03/20/11), in which they claim their rooms include complimentary Internet: ""Rooms: O Keefe Plaza Hotel's 129 air-conditioned guestrooms provide complimentary wireless Internet access and local calls."" This ad, however, provides a rather untrue representation of hotel's services.
(4) Most of all, however, I was shocked when after staying in the hotel for just one day, I discovered that the cleaning crew literally cleaned my room by stealing my external computer hard drive with lots of personal and work-related data and a kit of expensive cosmetics. For the two days that I was still staying in the hotel, I tried to get a hold of the hotel's manager Mr. Vadhar and resolve this problem amicably, but he never made himself available for speaking with me. The front desk personnel also did not seem to be surprised or care about theft in the hotel, and I did not get an answer or an apology from anyone. Finally, on my departure day, I realized that no one was going to even talk to me my stolen property, and I had to file a police report.
If staying in a rather expensive for a dirty place like this, with no internet, hardly any hot water, and rude staff does not make you NOT want to stay there, at least do yourself a favor and do the following:
(1) leave anything even remotely valuable to you at home,
(2) pack the most unattractive old clothes,
(3) don't bring your computer (you won't be using internet anyways),
(4) don't forget to bring your own pillowcases, as the ones the hotel provides are dirty and stink, and
(5) try to not unpack while staying at the hotel so it's harder to steal from you.
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