(no subject)
So I get sent down to MD for more company training. Of course, three weeks ago I had reminded my boss about booking the hotel and them paying for it (this being due to the 4-6 week typical time before I am reimbursed for anything). He decides to do his typical and say "Oh we have plenty of time" and to remind him about it later. The next week, again I try and remind him... but he's too busy. The week after I (last week), I check expedia and of course my normal hotel down here is booked. So I search around and find another local hotel with decent reviews and try and keep the price reasonable. I give all the information to my going to be new boss and he says sure, he'll get it booked. Well guess what, this isn't the hotel I chose.
Anyway, before coming here I read all these reviews and I get worried, but what am I going to do? My job will give me hell about going to a different hotel (and most likely even try to not reimburse me for any new costs, or price difference).
After loads of traffic on the drive down (normally 4 hour drive took about 6), here I am at the Extended Stay Hotel in Columbia, MD. I check in, and the guy at the front desk is pleasant and friendly, so I think to myself.. maybe things have changed at the hotel (as a previous complaint was about the lack of friendly staff). I get the keys and it's a pain free check-in process. I get to the room.... and well guess what. It hadn't even been cleaned from the previous tenants. Given that these are guest studios, and the policy for cleaning during your stay is once per week if the stay is longer than a week (or no cleaning at all if the stay is 6 days or less)... you may be able to imagine the sight, or more importantly the smell of this room.
Luckilly the front desk staff is really friendly and gives me another room without any hassle. This one smells of bleach and must have just been cleaned (hell it still smells like bleach 1 day later).
So I finally unpack and go to setting up my laptop for wireless internet access (as it's my way of avoiding spending too much money while I down here on stuff that I wouldn't get reimbursed for, just to keep myself entertained). Well I can access the web pages fine, but I can't connect to the WoW servers to pass the time. I call up the hotels on-line provider StayOnline. I'm given this Windows Vista "hotfix" that I'm told Microsoft released, which is run from the command prompt and most likely disables some of the security features of Vista.
Ok after the fix I can actually connect to the WoW servers and log in to play and pass the time, but the latency is anywhere between 1500-4300 ms making is basically unplayable anyways. Given the time, I decide to try get some sleep and deal with it tomorrow.
So now today I call back to see what might be going on with the internet access and why all of the delays are occurring. The first guy I speak with at StayOnline tries to run me through the "hotfix" which I'm now assuming is there automatic first response for everything and didn't actually listen to what I was saying. I explain everything to him, and I get put on hold. After a few minutes I then get another tech on the line, who is saying his the tech lead (or something similar). I explain to him my problem, and he basically says that my high latency is "acceptable" and that there is nothing he will do in order to correct it (in a much less friendly manner).
And now here I am, basically saying... if you have to stay at a hotel, try and avoid ExtendedStay and the rest of their chain (or at least the Columbia, MD location). Even though their staff is polite and friendly, the rest of my experience here makes it an "Avoid" in my book. Normally I don't leave any of my posts public, but given this experience I figure that for this I will leave this viewable by those I don't know in order to warn them of potential problems they may experience here.