Expedia.com Poor customer service. Failure to give partial credit for poor hotel accommodations. Bellevue WA

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Midtown Austin from 11/23/14 to 11/27/2014. We booked through Expedia and paid $475.08 for the four days. While staying there, there were numerous problems with the hotel room. They include:

1)      On 11/26/2014, there was a reception at the hotel. The music was so loud and the bass was so strong that we could hear it on the 8^th floor. We called the front desk around 9:30pm to complain, and they stated they would address the problem with the DJ and would ask them to turn the sound down to reasonable level. The sound not only was not turned down, it got louder. And this went on until after midnight.

2)      No one cleaned the room on 11/24 or 11/25. The “do not disturb” sign was taken off the door around noon each day. We let the first day go, but when no one cleaned the second day, we placed a call to the front desk around 3:30pm on 12/25. We were told housekeeping went home for the day.

3)      The toilet was slow to flush and the sink was slow to drain, although they fixed the problem on the day we reported it.

4)      The sliding metal lock on the sliding glass door was not installed properly. It took us almost three days to get it to lock, and we only got it to lock by using all our weight to pull on the door and then pushing the sliding lock in. I cannot imagine that this lock on the sliding glass door is acceptable to Holiday Inn audit standards.

5)      The TV programming and sound was completely messed up. For example, if we watched Anthony Bourdain “Parts Unknown,” the sound was for a completely different program on another channel. This occurred the entire time we were there. We did not report this to the front desk until the last day we were there because we assumed it was a problem throughout the hotel (e.g. cable related).

When we checked out on 11/27/2014, we gave a list of all the problems to Porshia, the front desk clerk. She advised us that she would have been happy to give us a discount if we had not booked through Expedia, but because we directly booked through them, she had no access to adjust our bill. Therefore, we took the problem up with Expedia when we arrived home.

On 12/01/2014, we spoke to Lauren at Expedia. She stated they would phone the hotel  on 12/02 at 10pm when Porshia arrived for her normal work day, and they would contact us about the discount. On 12/02, we received an e-mail from Expedia stating that the Holiday Inn was refusing to give us a discount despite the numerous problems we had and despite what we had been told upon checkout on 12/27. We called the Holiday Inn and spoke to Porshia. She stated she would have to get a manager involved and that we should have booked directly with them. She stated they never recommend Expedia due to problems like this.

To put it bluntly, we were more than dissatisfied with the problems we experienced at the hotel. Finally, Porshia should have never offered a discount, period, if she was not authorized to do so. As a result, we have filed a BBB report, an Attorney General report with the state of Washington where Expedia is based, another one with our own state, as well as complaints against Holiday Inn. If you have experienced similar problems, I would suggest you file your own reports.