Hotel Bourbonnais — Hotel in Bradley

This is my first time ever writing a review. Not because I've never been compelled to or because I never cared enough, but because I was completely illiterate my entire adult life. Not only that, I didn't know a word of English. Born and raised in a small village in northern Afghanistan, I always had dreams of becoming a front desk employee at one of the finest hotels. I had heard stories of the beautifully crafted carpets made with the finest fabric dyes to create a rainbow of riches for all guest who dare walk down the hall. The bountiful breakfast served with seemingly endless syrup. Nothing but the finest entertainment this world has to offer on DirectTv. But I had thought this never possible. I couldn't even read or write in my native Dari, let alone English, which I knew would surely be a requirement for entry into any of the fine nickelodeons that filled this magnificent nation. An impossible dream, surely. That is, until I met Billy. On a humanitarian trip that Billy personally funded to bring foodstuffs and education to those affected by the atrocities committed in my country, he came to my bread cart to buy a loaf of bread I had baked that morning. Baking was the only skill I possessed, but it sufficed to provide for my family. He looked at me with a meaningful gaze. Through his deep blue eyes, I understood that he saw me not as a poor citizen of an impoverished country, but as a whole human being with a story and a family. For the next year, he took it upon himself to personally tutor me in English language. We would study for hours into the night drilling grammar, vocabulary, regional dialects, syntax, all to prepare for my long-awaited interview. I became confident in my command of this speech but I still had an even larger barrier - how was I to enter the United States? The Afghan passport is one of the least powerful in the world. Little did I know, Billy had been in working with lawyers and diplomats from the day we met. One day I passed my C2 exam, he presented me with a handful of plane tickets. Enough for me and everyone in my family. "What's this?" I puzzled. I had never seen a plane ticket before. "This is what you've earned" he responded. Billy pulled strings with some connections that he had in the state department and personally sponsored my visa to bring me and my family over to live in gorgeous Bourbonnais, Illinois. I collapsed into tears when he told me. I had only heard stories of this type of generosity. Together, we boarded the aircraft and took off. I was terrified, but he assured me that I was capable of anything I set my mind to. When we landed, he had his driver pull up in a Sprinter Van. We were escorted to a professional tailor where I had a bespoke suit completely paid for. I was ready. On the day of my interview, I walked into the gorgeous Magnuson Hotel with my head held high. I had never felt so powerful. I looked the manager in the eye and shook their hand, as Billy had taught me. Taking one look at the way I had learned to present myself, I heard those legendary words: "You're hired".

Thank you, Billy from the front desk. You have changed my life more than you could ever understand.

With endless...

DO NOT STAY HERE. You will seriously have a better experience sleeping in your car in a Walmart parking lot. Our experience started oddly and ended terribly. The first thing that seemed off was the behavior of the desk agent. Here personality/kindness was great, but her sense of professionalism was oddly low. Almost as if she just woke up from a nap or something. When I asked what time breakfast was, her first response was literally "It's not very great but you can make waffles or something if you want". The elevator was broken s we took the stairs. Moving on to the room, we were tired from the road and just kind of hanging out not dong much, until I had to go to the bathroom for the first time. I lifted the lid and the seat was covered in urine. Like not even a small dot, but a large amount of yellow liquid. This having tripped our radar for cleanliness, we gave everything a deeper inspection. Trash cans still had trash in them, there was trash on the floor hidden in that small part between the bedding overhang and the base of the bed, areas of the carpet clearly not vaccuumed, etc. And this is where the real fun began. We reported this to the front desk (now two workers). While taking it mildly seriously, they did not seem overly concerned. We asked to switch to a different room, and they gave us a key. Attempt number two was just as dirty. Trash in the trash cans, small curly hairs all over the sheets, etc. We reported this again, and the workers laughed it off as "surprised" yet I have a strong feeling they knew exactly what I was talking about. They then handed us the master keys for the whole hotel and gave us a list of EIGHT other rooms to try. That's right, they gave us the master keys and didn't even bother to go to any of these rooms with us. And you guessed it, the entire list was just as dirty as the first. All rooms had an unacceptable level of one or more of the following: trash in cans, uncleaned toilet, open soap wrappers/hair in the showers, white/red stains on bed, hair on bed, unvacuumed carpet, dead bugs on bed. After returning with the list and their master keys, the workers continued to laugh off this situation and did not once apologize. I want to emphasize that both of these workers were extremely nice, but the way they handled the situation was about a 1 out of 10 on the customer service scale. So after all of this, I asked for a refund. That began another nightmare. The hotel said we had to get our third party booking company to initiate the refund, and the booking company insisted that the hotel needed to initiate the refund with them. Very convenient that both sides said they couldn't start the process, so everyone gets paid and we get screwed. This is clearly a lesson learned for me, because it was my fault for not reading the MANY other Google reviews that mirror mine. Please read all of them and DO NOT...

What I am about to share is going to sound crazy, but you can't make this stuff up.

We booked this hotel last minute through Priceline and checked in around 11:30p. The desk clerk asked a verifying question and had our address completely wrong, that should have been our first sign something was off, but we had traveled 15 hours that day and were exhausted.

We went to the room given to us, swiped our key, attempted to open the door, but the latch that opens the door a smidge was in use from the inside. Second sign something was wrong, but again, we were too tired to think clearly. So, I made an atttempt to unlatch it from the outside and all of the sudden I heard a voice on the other side of the door, and a very angry and startled fellow hotel guest opened the door and asked what we were doing.

Somehow, that room was double booked. We apologized profusely and went to tell the clerk the mishap. He spent a good amount of time telling us there shouldn't be anyone in that room because no one was registered for the room. He said he would need to go talk to that person because he wondered if he was trying to stay in a room for free. I immediately felt uneasy.

The clerk put us in another room on a different floor (thank God). When we arrived to our new room, I was so scared someone else might be staying in that one too. Fortunately that wasn't the case.

I was still shaken up, so i though taking a shower might help me relax a little bit. Unfortunately, the shower head was not working right. The water came out like those yard sprinklers that shoot out smaller/pressurized increments of water. I made do, that's a first world problem for sure. It just didn't relax me as much as I hoped. I didn't sleep the best because I was still shaken up.

However, in spite of all that, the hotel was clean, the bed was comfortable and the staff were friendly. I let the clerk know in the morning about the issue with the shower and she said they were getting maintenance on it right away. I wish I could give this place a better rating, I think we honestly had one of those extremely rare experiences caused by human error. But I thought I would put it out there to any of you staying here that it might now hurt to ask the clerk to verify that the room they are putting you in ia...