Truly Awful
As a very frequent traveler, I stay in hotels ~150 nights a year, and I've done that for many years in a row. It has been years since I have stayed in a hotel that was truly this awful. No one should stay here.
I needed a hotel for business in northwest Philadelphia; it appeared, judging by brand name alone, that the Four Points would offer the best experience. I cannot comment on the experience offered by the many budget chains with nearby locations, of course, but I suspect that they would not provide a worse experience than this dump and would likely do so for far cheaper than the well over $100 I paid to stay here.
Problems began at check-in. The staff member was very nice, but when I got to my room, I immediately noticed a few major problems: first, there was no cover on the duvet. It was a coverless duvet sitting on top of the sheets -- quite different than the typical Four Points and the hotel's pictures online. Suspicious, I pulled back the uncovered duvet; this revealed a bed with a big hair in it. In the bathroom, there was hair on the towels. Disgusting.
Since this level of filth was unacceptable, I returned to the desk and explained that the room had cleanliness issues. To the staff member's credit, he apologized and assigned me to another room. Somewhat annoyingly, another staff member was also dispatched to my original room to check it out. I will give the hotel the benefit of the doubt here -- I'm hopeful they were looking to note the various housekeeping errors for training -- but it had the feel that my claims were being 'inspected' by the hotel. Interestingly, I ran into said 'inspector' in the hallway as I went to my new room, and I said, "some issues, yes?" He replied, "yes, I pulled back from the duvet and saw what you were talking about."
While my new room featured a covered duvet and no hair in the sheets or towels (what an achievement!), it was also dirty. The chrome fixtures in the bathroom were covered with spots, the carpet was full of dark stains and deeply worn, the couch had white stains on it, and there were dust bunnies all over the place. The bathroom tile also had lots of spots and very clearly had not been thoroughly mopped.
Beyond the cleanliness issues, the room was in poor condition: its cheap furniture (nightstands and closet/desk unit) was worn and splintered, upholstery on the couch and chair was worn, wallpaper was peeling off the wall, and the walls were scuffed with black streaks. Paint was peeling off of an electrical box. The lamp was unplugged. The hallways of the hotel were in similarly bad shape -- worn and spotted carpet that appeared to not have been vacuumed in several days and black scuff marks all over the walls. The elevators (ancient and slow) were in similarly bad shape; one of the elevators had spilled food on the floor that had not been cleaned up by hotel staff.
It was difficult to get a good night's sleep. One, the whole place felt dirty (hardly relaxing); two, the mattress was lumpy; three, the sheet was threadbare; four, the curtains did not cover the entire window and light from the parking lot spilled in the room as a result. Furthermore, the curtains were odd: while there was a privacy curtain (would have been nice if it actually covered the whole window), there was not a sheer curtain. Therefore, if you wanted to open the curtain to let in the daylight fully, you got to expose yourself to whoever in the parking lot wanted to watch.
The staff members I did interact with were nice. However, two major service flaws: the complimentary coffee in the lobby was non-existent at our 6:10 departure and, two, my wake-up call was not made. At check-in, the clerk inquired if I wanted a wake up call; I told him 5:15a. When I had to switch rooms, I even verified that the wake-up call would be switched to the new room; he promised it would be. Well, 5:15 came and went and I never received a call (thanks to my cell phone, I woke up).
This place is an absolute dump. It's shocking that Four Points/Sheraton would allow it to stay under the brand's banner, because it is a disgrace to that banner. The hotel is in sore need of renovation and, worse yet, suffers from major cleanliness issues. Stay elsewhere.