Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  10/10/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Unresolved

  More info

  On August 10, 2023 we spent one night at the Royal Hotel and checked out on August 11, 2023. On the morning of August 11 we found a bed bug crawling in plain sight on the bed in our room bed. We captured the bed bug on tape, photographed it, and brought it down to the front desk where we identified our concerns to the man staffing the front desk who said he would communicate with the hotel owner and follow up with us. No one from the Royal Hotel followed up with us. Later that day we found clustered lines of bed bug bites on our bodies, numbering approximately 20 bites. The night at the Royal Hotel caused significant disruption to our trip. We incurred considerable expenses to treat our belongings for bed bugs, including purchasing a bed bug insecticide, after-bite treatments, and laundering and drying our clothing and other personal items. Several items of clothing that we had to wash and dry on hot as required following exposure to bed bugs have shrunk and required new clothes to replace. Upon our return to our home we have had to do further treatments to ensure we don't transfer an infestation of bed bugs to our home, including further laundering expenses and purchasing diatomaceous earth. This also caused significant stress and taken considerable time. On August 27, 2023 we contacted the owner of the Royal Hotel to ask that at minimum, we be compensated for the expenses and hardship with a refund of the room fee of $159.85. We pointed out that other recent reviews online demonstrated that many others have also encountered bed bugs in the Royal Hotel and had received refunds. Despite extensive attempts to communicate with the business owner and resolve this issue, they have been rude, made accusations, failed to respond to our last email, and not provided the refund. We have uploaded our email correspondence. The business owner has recently responding to any negative ****** review with claims that customers are discriminating in identifying our concerns.

  Business response

  10/10/2023

  Dear Better Business Bureau

   

  On October 5th 2023, we replied to numerous degrating reviews that were previously made towards our establishment.

  ****** ** ***** had received our reply to her review on that date as well. 

  Also on October 5th, we sent to your office an official letter explaining the dilema as we are faced with individuals commiting acts of disrespect towards our establishment. They have been causing damages to our managment, facility, grounds and reputation. 

  We are requesting for any discriminating reviews towards us to be removed. We believe ********* to be part of that bundle. 

  Again this morning the tires of the hotel's car have been vandalised, we attached this morning's pictures in attachment. 

  We had caught people like ******* literally arranging the bugs in their rooms to then claim a bedbug problem against us.

  This is why we need your help to help regain our reputation, we need all the bad reviews on all the various platforms to be removed. This is why we requested your help in the first place.

  Thank you for your regards and we hope that you will be the ressource recreating order in our corporate dilemma.

  Yours truly,

  Royal Hotel Limited, owners, managers

   

  Customer response

  16/10/2023

   I am rejecting this response because:
  
  It is accurate that on October 5, 2023 the owner of the Royal Hotel responded to a ****** review that I left on September 3, 2023. Beyond that we see no relevant or accurate information in the business owner’s response to our complaint.
  
  We have been waiting for a response from the Royal Hotel since our last email to them on September 3, 2023. We informed the business in that email that if we did not receive a full refund, we would be making a complaint to the Better Business Bureau Serving the Atlantic Provinces. Although we have still not received a response to that email communication, when the business owner left a response on our ****** review on October 5, 2023 it became clear that the business owner was not going to make any attempt to address our complaint and that we would need to seek the support of the BBB. The response to the ****** review was essentially a copy and paste response that the business owner left on all the recent negative customer reviews. We have attached a screenshot of the response to our review, but we urge the BBB to look at the ****** reviews and responses to them for this establishment. Essentially the business owner has accused every customer who described a negative experience of discrimination and causing damage.
  
  Leaving a review as a customer of a negative experience with a business is not discrimination. We hope that the business owner can be supported to learn who has human rights obligations, what are protected characteristics, and what the elements of discrimination are under the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act.
  
  We do not see any relevance to our complaint regarding bed bugs in our hotel room on August 10, 2023 that the hotel owner’s vehicle’s tires are currently damaged. While the business owner’s response to our complaint is challenging to understand, to the extent that they are attempting to allege that multiple customers who stayed at the hotel at separate times from separate regions of the world are engaging in a coordinated conspiracy to orchestrate damage to the hotel, these are inappropriate accusations without any evidence or truth. We arrived in Sydney, Nova Scotia on August 10, 2023, and left on August 11, 2023. We have had no contact with other customers of the hotel.
  
  We similarly do not understand the allegation that the hotel owner “caught” us and other customers “literally arranging the bugs in their rooms”. As we set out in the complaint, on the morning of August 11 we found a bed bug crawling on the bed in our room, which we brought down to the front desk, where we identified our concerns to the man staffing the front desk. The man said he would communicate with the hotel owner and someone would follow up with us, however, no one did. There was no interaction from anyone who worked for the hotel coming to our room or viewing anything happening in our room. There are over half a dozen different accounts just on ****** reviews over the last couple months from different customers who found bed bugs in the Royal Hotel. It is simply not credible to believe the business owner’s claims made without any evidence that multiple customers are bringing in bed bugs to arrange in the hotel in order to make a claim about bed bugs. It is clear that the Royal Hotel has a bed bug infestation and the owner is creating a public health hazard and endangering customers by failing to address the infestation and continuing to book customers in to stay at the hotel.
  
  Our request for a refund is our attempt to find a reasonable solution to this situation with the business owner. If we were to claim all our expenses related to addressing this situation, the amount would be substantially higher, including the cost of pesticides, diatomaceous earth, and laundry, as well as the expense of purchasing replacement clothes, suitcases, and other items. Even recouping those expenses wouldn’t provide compensation for the stress and time we have had to expend in treating our belongings for bed bugs and preventing a bed bug infestation in our homes. We are simply requesting a refund so we aren’t out the additional expense of paying for the experience of spending 12 hours being bitten in a bed bug infested room. We note that according to a ****** review left by ***** ****** (see attached) the business owner did provide a refund after those customers experienced bed bugs during their stay. The hotel owner has provided no justification for this unfair business practice of providing refunds to some customers who experienced bed bugs, but not others.
  
  We look forward to any assistance the BBB can provide in moving towards a resolution of our complaint.
  
  Kind regards,
  ******
  

  Business response

  17/10/2023

  We had people here deliberately and intentionnally building a big case against us to destroy our reputation by making it as there has been a big bed bug infestation. And more, people came breaking our things and talking against management. This is all very stressfull. Again, we are asking for the help of the BBB to help us in removing all the bad reviews that were posting against us on all the platforms. As a small business, we are now suffering financially from all those bad reviews and we are again asking for justice to be made.   

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩