My family booked a stay at the Bright Leaf Junction. When we arrived, the door was locked. We knocked on the door. No answer. We called. Again, no answer. No lights. No sound. Nothing. Nobody was there. We left a message informing them that we had come, and asked them to call us and let us know if they were open.
After spending the afternoon in Asheville (45 minutes away), we tried calling back. No answer. We left another message. We drove back to Hot Springs to try again. When we arrived, the door was still locked. We knocked again. No answer. No lights. No sound. Nobody home. We called again. No answer. We tried all the other doors to the building. All locked.
We decided to go to the local pub to see if they had any information. One of the people in the pub informed us that the townsfolk referred to Bright Leaf Junction as "Malfunction Junction" since so many people have problems with them. We decided to quit trying and to drive home.
Late that night, we received a call from Mary at the Bright Leaf Junction. She told us that she thought we had cancelled. We had not cancelled. She apologized for the inconvenience and informed us that she would refund our money to our credit card immediately. We waited for the credit to process. It never did.
Since then we tried calling them back several times and when the phone is picked up it is always by Robert who insists that Mary is the only one who can refund money and she is not available. We have left several messages for Mary and she has never called us back.
We have since filed a complaint (one of several about them) with the Better Business Bureau and received no response. We then called the police to report the fraud and they told us we would have to go back to Hot Springs to file an official report. They also informed us that the they have received many calls about the Bright Leaf junction not just from people like us, but employees they hired but never paid, creditors from which they bought kitchen and building supplies and never paid. They also said don't pay their mortgage or property taxes. I don't know how they keep getting away with this, but apparently they do. I hope people read this before thinking about making a reservation with them.
One final note, Hot Springs is a dump although it is portrayed as a beautiful resort town on the Internet.
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