Koen’s blog

Most readers of the blog (and everyday there seem to be more of you tuning in here) know that I have a rather strong emotion against bad customers services. So I would like you to be part of my latest customer services encounter, as promised yesterday:

Preface

As we knew that we would have less than 22 hours between our arrival in Belgium coming from New York and our departure to Madeira and anticipating that fact that we would be exhausted by the jetlag and the flight, we decided to spend the night at the Sheraton in Zaventem. This way, we didn’t had to worry about dinner, could sleep as long as possible and be assured that someone would wake us up. We had done this before, much to our comfort.

The check-in

At check-in, we encountered the first issue: there was no reservation for us. The Starwood Preferred Guest program changed it website recently and checking on current reservations wasn’t possible. Fortunately, the lady at the reception was kind enough to understand the issue and to arrange us a room. Issue solved. During the process of checking in, we had the wake-up call (at 4 o’clock in the morning – brrr) confirmed. We knew that room service was available 24/7, so we headed to our room.

The key

I must have had some very bad vibes that day, because once we arrived at the room, the key would only show a red light when inserting it. After trying a few dozen times, I went back to the reception. The lady at the counter checked the key, re-initiated it and I was back on my way to the room. The key gave me the infamous red light again. So I managed to call the reception to get some assistance. Thanks god that our key worked after more than 100 retries, because the person that was on its way to “immediately” assist us, never made it to our room.

The red burger

As it was getting late now, we choose to eat light and to get some sleep. We ordered a burger and some toast. I’ve been cooking some burgers in my life, but I’ve never managed to get the same result as did the night cook at this hotel. The burger was black (looked and tasted like coal) on the outside and red (raw meat) on the inside. Can someone please inform the gentle staff at this hotel that taking a frozen burger on then overheated grill might return some unseen results? Anyway, I wasn’t overeating that night and it was getting too late to have another one ordered … so we went asleep.

The not so waking up call

At a certain point, I woke up and looked at the television set in the room, which carried a clock. When I realised the time mentioned was 05:06, my heart stopped beating. Our plane was supposed to leave a little after 6 o’clock. I pushed V till she was awake as well and in less than 15 minutes we packed, went down to the ground floor, collected our stored luggage and pointed at the check-in-desk in Zaventem. I’ve been irritated by some lack of service in the past, but missing this easy wakeup-call makes it in my top three.

The service after

After passing security in the airport, I called the reception from my cell phone to tell them we had checked out and that I was absolutely displeased by the lack of basic services. The experience was completed by the response I had on the phone after explaining why I was annoyed with Sheraton. The man on the phone just said: “Oh, you have checked out already. Did you have anything from the minibar, sir?”

This ultimate unexpected response left me baffled.