The communication and likeness between the booking site and the reserved property is absolutely terrible. First, they couldn't find my reservation. Second, once they finally found it, the hotel tried charging me an additional $100 due to paying with a debit card then an extra $25 for an early checkin, which wasn't mentioned at all by the booking agency so I was blind sighted upon checkin. Third, the front desk representative called her manager to see what she could do about the additional charges and then informed me I had to either call and get my dates changed since it was after midnight when the booking was made or make a reservation through her in which I would have to pay AGAIN and also leave and come back to check in at 2pm. Seeing as I was there at 1am it's obvious I needed the room for that night. So I called Agoda and went through the process to change the dates, that was done and the new information emailed to me. After the correct dates were input I could finally check in...except I couldn't. I couldn't check in because the hotel and the representative couldn't find my reservation. She tried by name, confirmation number and card number, all to no avail. For 25 more minutes I had to wait and make yet another call to Agoda because the reservation wasn't pulling up and the agent again had no idea why. The hotel was faxed the confirmation yet that still didn't solve the problem. This was an hour and a half that i had been trying to check in. Both parties acted as if it was nothing out of the normal and did absolutely nothing to rectify the situation, instead it was the complete opposite! Every person from the front desk agent, to the hotel manager she called and the two agents from Agoda were completely indifferent and disinterested in the huge inconvenience this was placing on me. When the reservation was finally found and the representative was able to proceed with my checkin she informed me I had to give her $100 seeing as I paid with a debit card. I told her I didn't have it, that when I made the reservation there was nothing stating that would be requested much less demanded and I didn't come prepared with the cash for that and couldn't put it on my card. She then told me she couldn't give me the room I had already paid for. Finally I had had enough and asked for the corporate office telephone number. The lady I spoke with was very callous and unhelpful, going as far as to ask me what I wanted her to do about it. This was by far the worst experience I have ever had with any hotel or booking agency and not a single person on either end seemed to care, much less was concerned with rectifying the situation. I have worked in the hospitality and customer service industry for 12 years and there is no excuse or reason a guest should ever have an experience as bad as I received from Agoda and Quality Inn & Suites Birmingham. A two hour checkin at one in the morning, along with all the other issues is absolutely absurd and should never happen! But what's worse is the fact that FIVE different people who get paid to help guests, ensure guest satisfaction and resolve issues all made it perfectly clear that they could really careless, as if it was just an annoyance to them, and one of them being in the hotel's corporate office! Wow! While I and a coworker, who finally gave the $100 just so we could lay down after being in the lobby for two hours, were stuck and unable to get in bed until 3:30 in the morning which resulted in both of us having to be late for work just so we could at least get 4 hours of sleep. And it wasn't even the correct room that was reserved and paid for. I will be calling both corporate offices again and I will make sure this review is posted in hopes this experience doesn't happen to yet another paying guest! People work hard for the money they have and if they choose to spend it with you out of a hundred other places then they deserve to be taken care of, respected and at least get what they paid for.
