Extended Stay America Dirty, aging hotel chain once a refeshing option, now services drop, quality drops, prices rise along with filth and rude employees. Ripoff All, Nationwide

I travel across the country and stay in hotels about 80% of the year. Usually anywhere from 2 weeks to 4 months at a time in any one particular spot. When I started travelling like this Extended Stay was a godsend. For a reduced weekly rate of $249 per week, anywhere in the country you could have comfortable clean, easy to function in accomodations. The trade off for this reduced rate was reduced services, once a week cleaning, another day they change your towels only, and shortened lobby hours. This was wonderfull! When your road weary and travelling with almost your whole life with you, you almost don't want someone in your room every day anyway.

Over the last 3 years or so however, it seems that the prices have gone through the roof! At the same time the quality and services have done nothing but go down. I have stayed in quite a few across the country, and it has come down to me only staying at one if I have too. Each location is a little different, I suppose to the age of the furnishings. The worst one I stayed in recently was one in Kennesay, GA. I was there for two months and hated every minute of it, and ended up moving to a hotel next door with similar accomodations, but $100 less per week. I was paying $500 per week, which I thought was insane in the first place, but the this was probably the newest interior furnishings I had seen in one. They has just remodelled to the orange, and red interiors instead of the original green, so that was nice. But I never knew when the room was going to be cleaned. They rarey ever showed up for the light cleaning, and at one point I had went 12 days for my weekly cleaning. And even then it didn't really happen on time. A woman came and knocked on my door at 8:30 in the morning, I told her I usually leave at 9:15 and told her to come back. She looked at me and said with an attitude that she gets off in 20 minutes. I told her to send someone else then. I called the front desk and told them about this. I was angry that my room wasn't getting cleaned at all, and here I am standing there in a towel being told basically it's now or never!! They told me they would take care of it, but it still didn't get cleaned till the next day. In the meantime there was something that resembelled pot roast on the sidewalk out by the front door, and half of the washing machines were always empty. After e-mailing a complaint to the manager, someone finally cleaned up the meat loaf that had been there for a week, but no one bothered to contact me.

There were two differnt ones that I have stayed in the were just plain filthy everywhere. One was in Columbia, SC, the other was in Cincinatti, OH. Neither of these two even had an elevator! Now, who opens up an "extended stay" hotel, for "extended guests" with three floors and no elevator! This isn't a place intended for guests comming in with a light and easy overnight bag. I stayed in one of thier smaller hotels, "Crosslands" in Fresno, CA, and came out with a skin rash! That place had people that looked like crack heads hanging all over it most of the time.

It used to be a relatively inexpensive option. It was nice beacuse of the kitchenette, and convenient because you could book on line or over the phone, and you pretty much knew what you were going to get. Some times I will fall into the conveience trap now and again, because I don't always have alot of advanced knowledge before going to a new place. For instance where I am at now. I'm in Nashua, NH. I stayed at the Extended Stay here for the first week I was here, and then promptly moved to a much nicer hotel down the street. When I checked in, they tried to charge me $700 per week! Then I told her the published price, and she lowered it, but still charged me $40 more for the week, $475 simply because there was a power outage in town and the rooms were in high demand. The place was not clean. Then I found out that they had done away with the light cleaning day all together! I found another place down the street that had much nicer rooms, plush soft beds, a cleaner laudry room, more space in the rooms, a bar and grill attatched to the building, bigger tv's with a full channel line up, and a beutifull free breakfast complete with fresh waffles for only $350 per week. ...and they clean my room every day of I want them to.

More and more I see this, that the Extended Stays have lowered services, aging buildings and accomodations, rude staff, dirty environments, and the HARDEST beds in the industry. Ok, if your on a budget, certain things can be tolerable. But it just keeps getting worse and worse, and the value no longer exceeds the inconvenience. Especially since they seem to be more expensive than comparable, if not better accomodations in most of the towns I have been to.

BEWARE! CHECK AROUND BEFORE YOU STAY THERE!

Kirstie
Unionville, Virginia
U.S.A.