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Read Carefully

This is a cautionary tale for folks who check in late to a hotel, and also for those of us who trust hotel chains without knowing they have a less than honest franchisee. I share this not just for some public naming and shaming, but because the ordeal’s still ongoing and because this could happen to you.

While I’d love for this to be a journal entry about a fun time, traveling from NY to see elderly parents on the other side of the country to show them how big the grandkids have grown, there was a much less pleasant shadow cast. That shadow was cast solely by Holiday Inn Express franchisee and manager Yong Kang.

Here’s the timeline of events:

  • Feb 17th 2024 @1am – check in to the Holiday Inn Express in Everett, Washington
  • @1:05am we enter the room and it stinks and appears unclean. A request to change the room at the front desk is denied (they said there are no clean rooms available) and the person working that desk doesn’t seem interested in visiting the hotel room to assess the smell we complain of. We’re in quite a predicament, with two adults and two children (ages 12 and 5), it being 1:10am and exhausted from flights. So with no other option we request Lysol spray from the from desk and they hand it over and tell us to bring it back.
  • Feb @1:20am we spray, crash and sleep and then plan to revisit the front desk 8 hours later.
  • Feb 17th @9am we woke up to find my 5 year old daughter covered in hives. We called IHG customer service (through which the original 7 night booking was made) and they said not to worry, check with the manager if there is another room available, they also said there’s a possibility of a “Walk over” to another IHG property if the manager approved it, or they said the other option is to simply check out and only pay for one night if they cannot provide a clean room.
  • Feb 17th @9:15am returning to the front desk we were told that we must wait until the manager is contacted to see if any of these options is possible!
  • So we waited and waited, in a stinky room, daughter covered in hives, calling IHG customer services and re-visiting the front desk multiple times to see if the manager had been found, he never was. In fact, the manager Yong Kang’s mother was on site and let us know that her son had lost is phone (or it was broken) the story kept changing. Later we were told he wasn’t feeling very well, but another member of staff said he was on vacation. It was clear that no one at the front desk was authorized to assist with a room change so we attempted to check out – but they wouldn’t let us!

When all was said and done we’d been in the hotel for about 12 hours and the front desk were saying that we are not allowed to check out without the manager’s permission, yet the manager could not be found nor contacted by phone. What a strange situation?!

At that point in time I was feeling a little spicy and yet not wanting to be a Karen screaming and shouting and filming – I calmly demanded that the person at the front desk write on a sheet of paper the time that we were walking out and turning in the room keys. At first they said they wouldn’t do it, we felt that was also very strange, so I said I’d have to record his refusal on my phone if he didn’t write and initial the paper, at which point he did just that.

We drove straight from the Holiday Inn Express in Everett to the Country Inn and Suites Seattle-Bothell, WA and the remainder of our hotel stay was wonderful, except for my sneaking suspicion that Yong Kang, the franchisee and manager of the Holiday Inn Express we just left, was going to charge us for 7 nights, when we only stayed in the hotel for 12 hours!

After calling the hotel directly to confirm this wasn’t going to happen, we were told that the manager has to confirm it, which further made us suspicious of his intention — he didn’t call us back despite us leaving messages daily. We continued to call IHG customer services but they said because Yong Kang is a franchisee, they cannot work with our dispute, but they could only document everything that we have said.

On the IHG website it showed that we were only at the Holiday Inn Express, Everett for one night, checking out the morning of the 17th – so that was reassuring.

What wasn’t reassuring was when I called the hotel to confirm they had us as checked out, they said that we hadn’t, and that they still had us as checked in, to room 9006 – which they said was strange because that room doesn’t exist – again referring us to the manager, who wasn’t available.

As the 7 day trip was coming to an end, we did have a pleasant time with family and at the new hotel, but I also continued to have one eye on the $900+ pending credit card transaction. It was a relief when on the day we were set to depart Seattle, the pending charge disappeared, but I was confused because the $127.04 for that first night also wasn’t posted. Did we just get a free room? Maybe the manager realized they gave us a room that wasn’t clean and they wanted to do the right thing?

Nope – one day later a new pending charge appeared for $864.72. This ultimately, went through pending and cleared as a transaction. The bank said they couldn’t initiate a chargeback until it posted.

Chargeback is still pending – I will update this if/when a full refund for 6 of the 7 days is made.

I often plan for chaos but in this case I couldn’t expect nor shake the chaos once it came. If anything is safe to say, it’s to stay clear of the Holiday Inn Express in Everett – who needs a MIA manager who is the only person to approve a check out or room change, yet they have “lost their phone”, they are “on vacation”, they are “sick”.

There are better options and I’d definitely recommend the Country Inn and Suites Seattle-Bothell, WA as a much better and normal experience that you need when traveling.

But to close this cautionary tale for now, what would you have done? If you entered a hotel room so late and it was unclean or smelled or gave your kids hives? Have you ever encountered a hotel that wouldn’t change your room nor let you check-out? Have you ever had a hotel charge you for a week when you checked out after a day (in fact 12 hours)?