Date: June 19, 2010
On June 18th while on my way to the Houston Airport my wife and I were robbed, the single bag that was stolen contained my passports and about $8, 500.00 of other items. After finding out that I was not able to travel to Mexico without a passport I determined that I could obtain new passports in one day but it could not be done until the following Monday which meant I could not travel to Mexico until Tuesday June 22nd.
I contacted my travel representative and explained my situation, he spoke to each of his contacts within RIU but was not able to get the reservation changed to start on the following Tuesday.
I contacted RIU Palace directly and spoke to Azucena Ledon and explained my situation, she spoke to the Sub director (Victor). After she explained my situation to Victor he said that the there was no changing the reservations. (No considerations at all). Azucena suggested I speak to Houvier Menga the Sales Manager; I attempted to contact him for several hours on the morning of June 19th with no success until later in the day. After finally speaking to Houvier he confirmed that there would be no problem adjusting the reservation however I could only stay in the room I reserved (a two Room Suite / Rm#2025) for two nights and would be required to check out on Thursday as it was reserved by someone else and there were no additional suites available for the remaining three nights. Understood!
After sitting in a Federal Office in Houston Texas for an entire day getting a new passport for my wife and I it was finally complete and we could continue our vacation.
DAY ONE: Arrived to the RIU Palace on time with an uneventful check in except that the room was not prepared until later in the day; after finally being allowed to check into our room we found that the Air Conditioning system was not operating. I spoke to Oscar at the front desk later that evening explaining this and he said he would have someone check it, Never Happened. It was so hot that evening in the room I considered moving the bed mattress outdoors on the balcony as it was cooler outside than inside.
DAY TWO: Called front desk and reported the A/C continues not to operate, they said that it would be repaired by lunch time. Lunch time still no A/C and are told again that it was being repaired and should be operational by early evening, still no A/C. Again, my wife and I sleep in a room with no A/C. Just for the recorded, my wife and I sleep closely, body to body, these two nights we could not stand to touch each other due to the HEAT.
DAY THREE: (Thursday) I leave for an all day scuba diving trip, my wife spends the entire day at the pool except for a couple of hours (around 2:30 – 4:00) due to the extreme heat in the room, still no A/C. Before leaving for my scuba diving trip I remind
the front desk that there is still no A/C in our room and was told that they were still working on getting it repaired.
I arrive back to the hotel at 6:00 PM (late for getting dressed for a dinner reservation at 6:45 PM), I am getting in the shower and the phone rings, I answer the phone and told by Earnesto Santana that I must leave the room immediately. I asked why and he said that I was told that I must check out of the room that day by the sales department, and at that point he and I had a HEATED conversation over this issue. I asked to speak to his supervisor and he said that he was the only person I could speak to. Interesting that there are no other managers in the building! He continued to tell me there was nothing he could do that he was doing as he was told by the sales office. I went down to the front desk and confronted him where he knew I was agitated and angry, he continued to stand by his position stated earlier, he said he attempted to call the room all day with no answer, (Well, we were probably not in the room as it was so HOT without A/C) he said it was not his responsibility to track me down and I knew I was supposed to move out of the room. I asked why he did not leave me a message of some sort maybe under the door or have a bellman track us down. It was pretty inconsiderate of him to demand that I pack my stuff at 6:00 PM and move to another room. He did let it slip that he had already move the other family to another room, so ask why was he shaking me down like this.
Both my wife and I thought with all the stuff that had happened to my wife and I that they were going to let us stay in the room. He speaks to someone on the phone (in Spanish so I don’t understand what is being said, pretty rude if you ask me), I don’t recall who it was and then his attitude changes, all of a sudden it is not an issue that we could stay in the room but we must move the next day, Understood.
Oh, all of this when we finally have A/C in our room!
DAY FOUR: I speak to Earnesto Santana and told him I would have my bags packed and ready for the bellman to exchange rooms, I am now told that they will pick up the bags by noon but I could not check back into our new room until after 3 PM. My wife and I stay at the pool all day long enjoying the day. We go to the front desk at 5:00 PM and get our new keys. Now we are moved to the complete opposite side of the hotel to a room that has two double beds and no operating electricity.
I go back to the front desk and meet Earnesto and he tells me that they put me in the wrong room, he gets the new keys and we go to our new room to spend the next two nights in an Air conditioned room……finally. My wife was extremely upset at this point and asked me to attempt to have our flight changed so we could go home early, I was able to talk her out of it.
DAY FIVE: The only single day that we did not have a major issue with the hotel. My wife and I both have stressful jobs and we booked this hotel with the hopes of having a relaxing week as well as celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary. Well, the relaxing week did not happen and our anniversary was spoiled. I spoke to Victor on this day and
explained the entire sequence of events as I saw it in which case he did not disagree as he had already been updated.
I paid for a five night stay in a two room suite where it worked out that we stay two nights and a day without A/C and one night with A/C after I had to do battle with Earnesto Santana just to stay an extra night.
My wife and I are frequent travelers and have traveled all over the world, normally we stay in Hilton hotel properties and to be quite honest with you we could have just as easily stayed at the Hilton property in Cabo for free however we had friends we knew that convinced us to stay at your property. At this point we both feel like it was a mistake and lost valuable vacation time at our respective companies. At this stage I don’t know if I could ever be convinced to stay at a RIU property ever again because of this experience.
The last thing I would like to point out that not only were we staying at this hotel for relaxation and a anniversary celebration we were also there to insure that the hotel lived up to its 5 star rating as our daughter is getting married in June of next year. She wanted to have a post wedding celebration at the RIU Palace where we were going to have 10 – 12 couples attend. What would you do if you were me, after the Resort experience we had at the RIU Palace?
Thank you for allowing me to share my anger and frustrations. I will probably never get a response to this complaint but at least I was able to get it off my chest.