Shaftesbury Suites

The Shaftsbury Suites does not honor its reservations or tell you the facts about their breakfast service. On August 12, 2013, I reserved a room for 4 nights starting November 5^th. When I arrived at 11:00 a.m. on November 5, after registering I was told that they had no rooms and would move us to an affiliated hotel. Since that hotel was over 15 minutes away, I asked whether there was any alternative. I was told there was not and that I could not cancel the reservation or get a refund because they dealt only with Orbitz. The hotel the moved us to a hotel in an undesirable area that was dirty, had threadbare carpeting and was undergoing renovation, with a sign in the elevator that said «Due to some essential maintenance on our air conditioning system we will not have cooling or heating available in the rooms». Since they showed us 6 different rooms we could choose, I know the hotel was half-​empty, for good reason. The next three days we saw many people sitting in the lobby of the Shaftsbury Suites, complaining that their reservations weren’t being honored. We saw numerous people on subsequent days having similar experiences. Was this overbooking approach bait-​and-​switch to fill rooms in an affiliated and clearly less desirable facility?
The hotel price included breakfast, and the description of the hotel on Orbitz says that it has a fitness center as well as a bar/​lounge. It has none of these. For breakfast we had to walk to a sister hotel over a block away, an unpleasant way to start a cold and rainy day.
Orbitz contacted the hotel following my email on November 10^th complaining and did not receive any reply from the hotel until after November 20^th, finally calling me to respond — the hotel’s call to my home woke me at 6:00 a.m. on November 28^th, Thanksgiving Day. The hotel has not called or emailed me since to apologize.