Extended Stay America Suites- San Diego - Carlsbad Village by the Sea — Hotel in Carlsbad

On the way down to spend the night the night before the Carlsbad Street Fair, the Extended Stay America Carlsbad hotel calls at 7:45pm when we are 15 minutes away.

They called to tell me they DIDN'T HAVE A ROOM FOR ME!

A room I reserved back in February, by the way and this was MAY!

Who does that?

I arrived anyway to find out what was going on and the front desk worker lied her way into a complete scam.

She "found me a room" that was supposedly saved for an employee that was coming to town, but wasn't coming now afterall. The room had a full bed (I had reserved a king when I though the hubby was coming with, but was now with my bestie).

She said she could let me have the room for $50 off my original room rate. Acting like it was some kind of deal...

Ya...no!

It was the normal rate for a full size bed room!

However, they had me over a barrel as at this point it was about 8:30pm. We had to be up by 5am to get over to our event. Other hotels in the area were all booked or a WAY higher rate than I had budgetted for. I felt I had no choice and even though they should have comped the room at this point as this was their agregious error, I had no fight left in me.

I asked for the phone numbers to the manager, the general manager, and corporate and the front desk person said she didn't have them...even though she had been calling someone to see what she could do for me.

The room had NONE of the comforts their rooms are supposed to have according to the website. Nothing in the cabinets to even get a drink of water, let alone cook, eat, make a cup of copy or anything. It was filthy with stained curtains, hairs in the bathroom, a broken table and more.

My bestie and I fought over the recliner, but she won out. I inspected the bed for bed bugs as at this point, I expected it. Luckily, I found none.

If we had the energy or another choice, we would have taken it.

Yes, I will be fighting with management and corporate to get my money back from this stay. It was literally the WORST hotel stay I have had in my entire life (and that includes one that gave me bed bug bites elsewhere!).

In the morning, we were supposed to have grab and go breakfast. I went out and was happy to at least find hot water with oatmeal packets. The hot water that came out of the container was brown and had bits of what I want to assume were coffee grounds in it (because anything else it could be makes me ill). I dumped it out and had to use hot water from the sink to make th oatmeal, but couldn't heat it up because I had to put it in a styrofoam coffee cup as there were no bowls anywhere to be able to make it otherwise.

This place was THE WORST. The woman working in the morning, though she was "just housekeeping" had better customer service than the front desk the night before and happily retrieved the contact numbers for me that I requested (the lady at check-in tried to claim she didn't have those numbers though this one found them posted on the wall there at the front desk).

I seriously believe the woman working the front desk may have been a scammer as I never even received a receipt. Let's see what corporate has to say about the whole thing, but I will NEVER consider booking anywhere with this...

House keeping is once a week and they only change trash, you have to request toilet paper and towels every couple days and they give you 1 roll lol. The building is in good enough shape, but seems like the clients that stay here are interesting characters to say the least. Smoking in and around the building is an obvious problem and no one cleans up after their pets. Staff was friendly enough, other then the fact that they will never answer the phone, ever. I tried multiple times over multiple days and I always end up going down there and hearing a reason why they couldn't answer the phone. Fire alarm went off while we were there, water was shut down for 3 hours on another day, and fire inspections on yet another day. Lastly their key system is outdated and problematic, I went to the front desk no less then 12 times during my stay due to my key quit working. I tried carrying it on many different separated ways, but no matter what my wife and my keys kept quitting on us. Very frustrating to come home every day to 3rd floor and then have to go back downstairs with hands full due to horrible magnetic key system. RFID technology is much more reliable. So maybe I just picked a bad day to come, also no workout room and no hot tub. Also saw someone hit another vehicle in the lot and take off. I luckily was able to write all his information down before he got away and informed the owner of the hit car. Not very exciting place to stay and definitely doesn't feel like a home away from home, it feels like a 2 star hotel with a kitchenette. So overall, I feel safe enough there and stayed for 2 weeks as it wasn't bad enough that I wanted to switch all my stuff to another hotel, but I wouldn't stay here again. Recommendation to manager, have more then one staff member on hand, enforce dog poop cleanup, upgrade to touch keys instead of swipe keys, provide a workout area, do your water shut off maintenance when people are asleep, not during the day, and add security cameras around outside parking lot. Also stop hiring retired family members to do your cleaning as they do not take pride in their work, and lastly, toilet paper and towels are not that expensive, be more flexible with handing them out to make trips to the front desk less frequent. Do all this and I think it could be a better place to stay. Location is great though, can't complain about being close to...

The room is clean and comfortable and the staff is great. Then one day I tried to cook a hamburger in a pan on the range. I turned on the exhaust fan before I started cooking knowing that there would be smoke. When the smoke from the meat rose into the exhaust fan, the fan blew the smoke directly out the front of the range hood into my face. The smoke quickly filled the room and triggered the smoke alarm. The shift manager came running to my room and pounded on the door. I opened the door and yelled over the blaring smoke detector “The exhaust fan doesn’t work!” I ended up propping my room’s door open and opening the room’s window. After a couple of minutes, the alarm finally went silent. I asked the manager why the fan didn’t work and how soon it could be fixed. She explained that none of the exhaust fans in the rooms blow to the outside, that they all just blow the smoke back out into the room.

I couldn’t believe my ears! Why do your exhaust fans blow the smoke back into your guest’s face? The word “exhaust” literally means to remove a waste gas from its current location. Your exhaust fan not only does not “exhaust” the smoke from the range top as it’s supposed to, but it blows it back into the room to set off the very loud and obnoxious smoke alarm that greatly disturbs management and other guests for several minutes. And the worst part is your exhaust fans were purposely built that way!

This is beyond stupid! This is a special kind of stupidity that exceeds description! Whoever designed your exhaust fans and signed off on them on this hotel’s blueprints needs to be fired! Of course, I’m NEVER staying here ever again and I’ll tell everyone I know not to stay here. When they ask me why I’ll say “Because they PURPOSELY DESIGNED the range’s exhaust fan to blow the smoke back into your face and it sets off the very loud and obnoxious smoke alarm!” They’ll reply “But isn’t the name of the hotel ‘Extended Stay’ because they have a kitchen that they fully expect their guests to use during their extended stay? So why would they purposely design their range hoods to do that?” All I’ll be able to say is “Beats the hell out of me!...