As a Limitless level (invitation only level) with Accor I’ve stayed in a lot of Accor properties and spent a load of money with them. SO Auckland is SO Awful I had originally booked a Deluxe Suite and a second room for my daughter at Sofitel Auckland but received a call one week before we arrived that the Hotel is closed due to the recent floods and that my booking was being transferred to SO Auckland into a comparable room category. I was fine with that….. until I arrived. 1. At check in no mention of being put in comparable rooms to what I booked or even mention of an upgrade which is a benefit of my loyalty level but not really a big deal to me but at least acknowledge it or that no upgrades were available instead of pretending they don’t exist. 2. We walk into the room, which I believe was called a SO Suite and found a very dark, underwhelming, badly designed, cramped room. Door ways are only 3/4 width. Toilet door won’t open completely because of the towel rail hitting the wall and if there’s two people in the bathroom it’s a tight fit. 3. My amenity on arrival was a cheese board. I’m Vegan and thats in my profile. I’ve been to other Accor hotels for my first stay and they have taken the time and effort to look at my profile and provide me with an amenity that I can actually enjoy. But not from SO Awful. 4. The cheese board was left there for nearly 2 days and I ended up putting it outside the room as it was starting to smell. Surely house keeping can work out that after a day it’s probably no good. 5. We decided to go to the rooftop bar for a drink and some food before leaving for a birthday party. I straight away ordered some fries as I hadn’t had lunch. When they arrived they were stone cold, and I mean stone cold! They took them away and said they would be replaced. I ordered some other food off the menu which was labeled Vegan and two glasses of wine. A few minutes later, a young lady who I assume was a bar manager came back and said I need to tell you that the fries and parts of the food you have ordered are deep fried in the same cooker as the other meat items. So why label it as Vegan when it’s obviously not. Our drinks took ages to arrive and once we had finished them i waved down a staff member to get the same again. After about 20 minutes our drinks hadn’t arrived nor had the replacement fries. We watched as a number of the bar staff were just standing around talking to each so we left and went to the SO Club instead. I let the bar manager know we were leaving. She had possibly seen us getting up to leave and all of a sudden 2 wine glasses appeared in front of her but I indicated to her we were leaving. No idea what we ended up getting charged for. Even after I’d received the account 2 days after Checkout. 6. The Club!!!!! Now that’s just an embarrassment. The food, pretty much all deep fried, is sitting out on a counter going cold and looking very unappealing. They had fries there and they’d obviously been sitting there for a while. I tried one and they were again stone cold. We asked for a couple of glasses of wine and headed up the stairs to their “outdoor” area. Had to choose the seats that didn’t have bird poo on them. The wine selection was not what I experience at other Sofitel clubs and what we were served was awful so we left. Oh I did ask for some hot fries which did arrive and were ok. 7. The bathroom is very badly designed. It has a big bath in the middle making getting into the shower and toilet tight (you can’t fully open the door as I’d mentioned ). Lighting is dismal. My wife couldn’t do her make up in the mirror because of the lack of light. The magnified mirror was distorted and you couldn’t use the hair dryer in front of the mirror because of the power point location and stupid coiled dryer cord. I believe some rooms have an additional light around the mirror now but I’m starting to think room 601 is the worst of the SO Awful Suite rooms 8. The room service menu has 3 items on it for a large plate. Similarly for the small plates. It’s ok if you like deep fried crap which I’m beginning to think the hotel specializes in. The 4 star Pullman Hotel’s I have stayed in have room service menus 10 times better. It’s the worst room service menu I have ever seen and certainly not what I’d expect in a 5 star hotel 9. Housekeeping and the turn down service were almost comical. They left empty water bottles in the room along with some obvious rubbish, towels were not cleaned up and left in the bath and their attempt at making the bed was a joke. I’ve posted a picture of their bed making effort. My daughters room didn’t even get serviced one of the days even though she put on the “service my room” light. The Final Straw Cyclone Gabrielle was approaching Auckland and we had received messages from our airline about potential flight cancellations. The night before we checked out I went to reception and talked to one of the staff at the front desk about potentially extending our stay. She checked the system and said yes I’d be able to extend the two rooms I had booked and I said I would make a decision the next morning based on how close the cyclone was. The next morning I went to reception and spoke to a young lady about possibly extending. She said there was the availability and we could keep the same rooms. She then warned me that it will probably be very expensive as it was a last minute booking on the same day of arrival but I was welcome to look online to see if I could find a better rate. I’ve never had that happen and as a Limitless level loyalty member I assumed she might want to help work something out. She is in the service industry right??? This response made me want to look at other hotel options so I asked if I could have a slightly later checkout. Her response was a flat No! Check out is 12! So I walked away. A few minutes later I went back to the front desk and spoke to another male staff member as she had left and asked if there was any flexibility on our check out time. His response was “no I’m sorry as we are completely fully booked tonight”. Hearing this blatant lie was unbelievable. I was not happy and let him know that I had just been told that there was availability and we were even able to stay in the same rooms. He couldn’t back pedal fast enough but I’d had enough of this hotel. He was just trying to brush me off. Why lie blatantly to my face??? All of a sudden I was told yes a late checkout of 1pm was fine. The young lady who was apparently his manager had now come back to the desk and heard all this but she didn’t want to get involved for some reason and didn’t even look at me. Just kept her head down. On checkout they weren’t able to finalise my account because of the transfer from the Sofitel and as I expected it was wrong. I’ve been charged for 3 days of Valet parking even though I didn’t don’t have a car and I have no idea whether the room rates I was charged we’re actually for this hotel and not Sofitel Viaduct. I emailed them on Monday to say the bill is wrong. By Friday I still had no reply. Surprised???? Nope! So I contacted my Limitless concierge and explained the account situation and they had it fixed within 48 hours. The head chef who I assume is responsible for the hotels tragic menu’s should be fired. The General Manager who obviously instills this culture of indifference and bad service should also be fired because he didn’t even bother to respond to the survey response I sent which says it’s going directly to the Hotel General Manager. I will never stay here again and suggest other Accor loyalty members also avoid it. One good thing….. my wife had a Spa treatment and said it was the best facial she’s ever had. Probably not run by the GM.
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