Our letter is below, *Dear Mr. Pipes:
Several other problems involving your hotel continue to plague us several days after our terrible experience.
My husband and I are familiar with what a 4-star hotel offers with respect to quality of service particularly in emergency situations pertaining to guests.
My husband David Ngaruri Kenney is the co-author of Asylum Denied. He is currently on a book tour. He and his co-author were invited to speak at a Fordham University Law Center symposium and later appear on several radio shows in NY on May 27, 2008.
My husband had decided to make this an extended family road trip to visit relatives in Newport, RI, stay in NYC until the morning of May 28, and then drive back to Washington DC in time for his noon-time speaking engagement at a President's Luncheon hosted by the National Alliance for Justice.
We decided to spend additional money in our already-tight budget for an extra day in NYC and had carefully planned our finances out for this occasion.
We arrived at Le Parker Meridien on May 26th and after one night of rest, my husband prepared for his speeches and radio show events. We were packed and ready to leave at 4:00 am on May 28th so as to make it back to DC in time for the luncheon. The hotel staff retrieved our minivan from the garage and parked it for outside the hotel.
We entered the minivan and immediately discovered that the driver side window was not working. Evidently, someone at the Le Parker Meridien garage had tampered and broken the window mechanism because the mechanism was working when we handed the vehicle over to the hotel staff for parking on the evening of May 26th. Furthermore, my husband noted that the driver side window was working and was in the upright position because he had requested the vehicle and retrieved our electronic camera from it on the morning of May 27th upon which it was returned to the garage soon thereafter.
The hotel manager Ms. Mona Saleh insisted that we did not have a right to complain about the minivan window being broken by the hotel staff or the parking garage staff because our minivan is 10 years old, and stated therefore the hotel is not responsible for anything. "There is nothing we can do to assist you", she firmly concluded.
I informed Ms. Saleh that because the window mechanism was broken while the vehicle was in possession of the hotel, and since the minivan was not in a drivable condition, we needed her assistance to get my husband on a train or plane as soon as possible so he would not miss the most important event of the tour.
Ms. Saleh was condescending and dismissive; she repeatedly told us the hotel does not have to extend any help, and that it did not have to pay for a train ticket even if it was to bill us later for the ticket. For each of our requests for help, she kept repeating the same phrase, "that's not how it works around here".
We could not believe that a 4-star hotel would refuse to assist its guests especially when it appeared the hotel is responsible for a broken van that was left in their care. Ms. Saleh stated that a Mr. Maurizio Bonivento instructed her to only assist in renting a car or making train reservations. Yet, Ms. Saleh did not assist in that manner. She would not authorize the hotel to pay for my husband's train ticket, which was only being purchased because the hotel staff broke the window of the van.
My husband had to insist to Ms. Saleh that my son and I be allowed back into our hotel room while he made arrangements on his own for a train ticket. He had to plead with the counter staff to look up the train schedules during which time Ms. Saleh instructed them to not help him. One of the staff defied her instructions and went to a back office where he called and booked the train for him after Ms. Saleh had retreated to her office.
Ms. Saleh would not even arrange to have the van brought to a glass repair shop by the hotel. Instead, she walked me and my very tired 2 and ½ year old son down the parking garage and instructed the manager, a Mr. Abdur Rauf, to tape a plastic bag on the van window limiting the driver's visibility. Mr. Rauf then told me to drive the van myself to a shop.
Mr. Rauf found only one shop located on the furthest tip of Manhattan and far away from the hotel. Thank goodness a bellhop overheard the story brought me info and a map for a glass repair shop 6 blocks from the hotel.
Our troubles did not end there. Upon reaching home, we learned the hotel had charged us double for the same day. We paid our hotel through Priceline.com. The hotel then charged us again.
My husband called Greg Bonetti in accounting. Greg insisted that the double charges were valid and refused to investigate. I called Priceline.com. Ms. She'a of Priceline.com Customer Service called Mr. Bonetti. She then called me back and emailed me documentation stating that Greg had not followed procedure and that she spent some time convincing Mr. Bonetti that Priceline.com had indeed sent the money to Le Parker Meridien NY. She then stated that Mr. Bonetti had insisted that if that were the case, it would take at least 60 days to reimburse the money back to our account.
We both just graduated from law school and are taking the Bar exam, so we are living on a very tight budget. The double charges put our account into the negative, and as a consequence, the remaining budgeted checks we had accounted for were already bouncing.
To state that Mr. Bonetti was unhelpful is an understatement. Mr. Bonetti refused to expedite the reimbursement and to discuss the overdraft charges we were incurring as a result of Le Parker Meridien's mistake. I tried to contact Mr. Bonetti. He refused to pick up my call and left me on the phone for over 10 minutes. On May 30th, I contacted Mr. Pat Fitzpatrick, who stated that he would look into the problem and get back to me. As of this time, I have not heard from him.
When we spend over $500.00 a night to stay at a 4-star hotel, we expect not only to leave feeling valuable and enriched from the experience but to brag to our friends and family about the 4-star treatment associated with our wonderful stay. We walked out of Le Parker Meridien feeling insulted by the staff. They created an emergency situation, refused to assist and fix their errors, treated us poorly and exposed my family and son to a very dangerous situation.
I am truly sorry and sad that this experience happened to us. I wish it were otherwise, because I was not hoping to be writing you a letter like this. I was hoping to brag to my colleagues about how wonderful your hotel was especially during an emergency. Unfortunately, I had to share a bad story.
All we wanted was a good experience and a quality service worthy of the amount we paid. I wish we had stayed at the Holiday Inn. At least we would have gotten what we paid for there.