Theiving Staff, Terrible Management
- August 28, 2009
- Rated 1 of 5 by
202traveler from washington, D.C.
We booked a trip for 5 nights at the gran bahia ambar. This resort is part of the gran bahia complex. We arrived on a Saturday and experienced no problems. From the reviews we read prior to our vacation, the main problem people had with the resort was the lack of english speakers, which was not a problem because I speak Spanish conversationally. We went out to the beach and went parasailing on Sunday - my birthday - and then returned to the room to change and go out for lunch and drinks. We stayed gone for approximately 2 hours and when we returned, we noticed that our room safe was ajar. Missing from the safe were 3 cell phones, 2 ipods, a watch and approx $500. After looking through the rest of our bags, we realized that an ipod shuffle and approx $25 were also missing.
Unfortunately, the nightmare only started there. We called the front desk, and someone from guest services came to our room with 2 members of the "security staff." They told us that they would check their card reader to ascertain who had entered the room when we were gone. We demanded that we be given another room immediately, and they complied even though they first wanted to post a member of the security staff outside our door.
The next morning, we contacted guest services again and they told us that no one had entered our room all day. We told her that she must have been mistaken because the items were missing and someone had to have taken them. My boyfriend told her that he recalled that there was a maid in the room when he came back from the beach to get money for parasailing, so we knew at least one other person had entered the room and their card reader was inaccurate. We asked that the maid be questioned and the supervisor of the maids came and told Julie (in Spanish) that the maids did not know how to open the in-room safes and could barely read or write. I reminded them that items were also taken from our bags so the maid should have still have been questioned.
We then asked that staff take us to the local police. After waiting for hours, we were taken to the police to make a report. We asked the manager if he could comp a night in the hotel for us or offer any accommodations. He told us he would like to give us a refund IF we change hotels, but Hotwire had not paid them for the room yet. We called Hotwire and they informed us that the Ambar had been paid in full on the day we checked in. Even after confirming that the hotel had been paid, it took hours to get the refund.
While we were waiting for the refund to be processed, we were online looking for another hotel. Thank goodness our laptop was not stolen. Another lady from guest services, came to tell us that they could not assist us in finding other accommodations. Really? She acted as if they had assisted us with anything else. Fortunately, we found accommodations next door at the RIU Palace Punta Cana (finally, real customer service!). When we were checking out, the staff debated over whether we should have to pay for the calls we made to our phone company and our travel agency. After it was decided that we would not have to pay for these calls, she stopped by to inquire why we were not paying for our long distance. Silly me, I approached a manager who was standing at the front desk to express my dissatisfaction with the way our situation had been handled. I informed her that nobody had offered us any upgrades or concessions. She told me it was because "the situation was still being investigated." The whole time, everyone involved acted as if we were making the entire story up.
As a parting shot, she informed us that they could not provide transportation for us - even though we were going next door - and that we had to pay cash for a taxi. But not to worry, they called a taxi for us.
I HIGHLY recommend NOT going to this hotel or any of its sister hotels! But, if you do, prepare to be robbed.