A black eye for the Marriott chain
We are loyal Marriott travelers (even though we are not happy with the Marriott Corp's political activities), and having recently reached gold status we decided to stay at the "flagship" Marriott on Michigan Ave, rather than one of the nice Courtyards a block or two off of Michigan (gold gets you into the concierge lounge, which Courtyards don't have, and free Wi-Fi). What an amazingly disappointing stay we had last month. We arrived to be told that they had already given out all their small refrigerators, even though we had called three times in the last 2 weeks to reserve one. Then we found that we couldn't really control the temperature in our room (it was always too hot or too cold). When we asked about this we were told that many people were saying the same thing, that it had been a known problem for quite some time, and that we should open the window when it got too hot in the room (it was 35 degrees outside at the time). We spent our entire 8 night stay waking up two or three times each night either freezing or sweating! One of the two revolving doors leading out onto Rush Street (the main entrance) broke mid-week, and four days later it was still broken, resulting in a constant traffic jam at the remaining door, as people waited up to 5 minutes just to enter or to leave the building. The pool was chlorinated to the point that everyone's swimsuit was likely bleaching white. And in spite of several specific requests not to use air freshener in our room (my wife is allergic), the housekeeper used so much of it one day that my wife couldn't re-enter the room one evening for several hours. And get this: when we had UPS deliver a small package to us at the hotel (medical supplies that we hadn't managed to get while still at home), we were charged $10 for this "service" (in addition to the routine UPS delivery charges). Incredibly disappointing!!