I was terribly disappointed by my recent stay at Howard Johnson Inn, 17301 Oak Avenue, Lansing, Illinois 60438.
My wife and I travel four times per year to visit our children and our siblings. We stay in hotels while at our locations and while en-route to our locations or to our home. We're generally easily pleased.
My wife's mother died March 9. We used several online travel sites ' Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, etc.' to search for a room in Hammond, Highland, or Munster in Indiana. Nothing was available within those cities, so we expanded our search to Lansing, Illinois, and went directly to motel chain websites. We used the Howard Johnson website to find and reserve a room at the Lansing Howard Johnson Inn. We booked one room, two people, March 11 through March 18. We received a confirmation email from do-not-reply AT wyndhamworldwide.com. The email was blank except for a link to an html attachment that would not open.
We arrived at the Lansing Howard Johnson Inn about 8:00 PM on March 11. The desk clerk asked for our confirmation number. I explained that we didn't know our confirmation number. She said there was no reservation for us, but she had a room available.
Once in room 319, we read the telephone directions that we could call long distance by dialing 8-1-Area Code-Number or make local calls by dialing 8-Number. Our efforts to call my parents in Minnesota and my wife's siblings in nearby Indiana resulted in busy signals after only a few digits. We called the desk clerk, who stressed the importance of dialing 8. She eventually sent us a young maintenance man who would show us how to use the phone. He was unable to do so, but he told us the phones could not reach any number more than 5 miles from the motel.
We went down to the lobby. The desk clerk again told us to be sure to dial 8. I asked her, "If I dial 8, can I reach my relatives in Minnesota or my relatives in Hammond, Indiana?" She admitted I could not. The phones had a 5-mile service radius. I asked her to refund our money. She said she'd have to call the Manager. I explained that we could not stay at a motel with no outgoing phone service. We had to notify relatives that we'd arrived, and we had to coordinate with relatives about the wake, the funeral, dinner plans, etc. She offered us the use of the motel's cell phone for outgoing calls. I said, "I can live with that, " only because I knew that leaving the motel would cause us to drive a long distance for another motel. When my wife protested our not leaving, I said, "We wouldn't be staying here if this weren't the only motel we could find two days ago."
During our week's stay, we were able to use the cell phone, but often we had to explain to another desk clerk that we'd been offered the use of the cell phone. Often the cell phone was in use.
Our room had four light fixtures. Two had no bulb. There was no waste basket and no tissues. A maid visited our room on Wednesday, Friday, and Monday of our stay. She left one towel and one bathmat or two towels and no bathmat. Our room was not dusted.
On Wednesday night, when we returned to our room, the key would not work and had to be reprogrammed.
On March 17, I sat in the lobby and read a book so the maid would have free access to my room. While I sat in the lobby, a woman approached the Manager and told him her baby had found a "crack pipe" on the floor of their room. The Manager said, "I wonder why it took you four days to find it." The woman shouted her opinion that the maid should have found it within four days. A heated exchange took place for several minutes.
The next person to approach the Manager was a man who said his group had four reservations. Asked for his confirmation number, he said he didn't know it. The Manager said he found the reservation in the computer. He could not comply with the request that all four rooms be non-smoking. I found myself wondering why a person with an online reservation would have to again negotiate the type of rooms after his arrival.
While I sat in the lobby longer, a man approached the desk clerk to say that his ride to a Chicago airport had not arrived. He asked about shuttle bus service or taxi service. The desk clerk gave him the cell phone and a phone book. After watching the man fumble through the phone book, my wife told him that we knew of a shuttle bus service just across the Indiana border. She helped him find the phone number, and we drove him into Indiana to his airport bus. During our ride, he mentioned that the phone in his room was inoperable and he couldn't even call the front desk ' let alone somebody five miles away.
My complaints about this Howard Johnson Inn are tempered by the realization that the room cost us less that we're used to paying; however, I want a motel that doesn't lose my reservation; I want a motel that has working phones in the rooms; I want a motel that doesn't take four days to find a crack pipe left behind; I want a motel that can offer help finding a taxi or other local services; and I want a hotel with enough towels, light bulbs, and waste baskets.
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