The Ashley — Hotel in Charleston

Be sure to look at the pictures attached to my review. They're worth all of the following words, and then some:

I am an 80 year old widow on an extremely fixed income. I saved my pennies for a trip to Charleston with my cousin and her husband. We booked the carriage house portion of the hotel which is connected to the main house via an outdoor walkway. The Carriage House has an upstairs with two bedrooms and a full bath, and the downstairs is a living room with door to outside and a kitchen and half bath. (the vent pic is in Kitchen, but all pics are upstairs bath)

CLEANLINESS: Filthy. Absolutely FILTHY. Every part of the bathroom caulk and grout was black (see pics!). There was torn wallpaper and smudges galore, and dust on every surface causing this woman with no prior allergies to sneeze continuously while inside. The couch, sweet Jesus, the COUCH. It was filthy and grey. I laid a towel on it so I could sit down. I slept not a wink thinking of the filth that must be seeping up from the mattress onto my skin.

As an aside, another employee who was quite kind, (unlike owner Barry, read below) came on duty some days into our visit, and we got a peek inside one of the main house rooms and its bathroom, and it was lovely. Absolutely lovely. The carriage house is hell on Earth.

HEAT: Temps during my visit mid Mar 2017 were Hi 40s/low 50s during the day and at night, below freezing. The only thermostat is located upstairs, and the two small vents downstairs (kitchen and stairwell) were not sufficient to heat that floor, especially with the insufficient sealing on the door to the exterior. Even with the upstairs thermostat at 79, it still didn't heat the downstairs. To sit and visit with my family was impossible without a coat and gloves, and we certainly were not going too all three hang out upstairs in a bedroom together, so we parted ways each night and retired to our respective rooms. We selected the carriage house so there would be shared living space for wine and TV (see next section as the TV thing would become an impossibility) and togetherness, we should have instead selected separate rooms in the main house, at least we would have been in a cleanly environment!

TV: TV Downstairs didn't work at all, and the TVs in both bedrooms upstairs failed after the first day. I turns out they were missing a cable. It took until the end of our trip when a KIND employee ascertained the problem and corrected it by purchasing the necessary cable. This was not before we were abused by the owner, Barry. (former owner?? current owner? This is unclear, we heard thru the grapevine perhaps Barry has sold the place?) We called him upon arrival to report that the TV was not working, and his response was that a TV guy had already come in the past and was unable to fix it, so there was nothing he could do about it and "go up in the bedrooms to watch TV." I called the cable company and spent 15 min on the phone doing all kinds of testing and they concluded it was an issue on site, and not an issue with the cable service. When I called him the next day and asked if he could swap it out with another TV (it was tabletop and 32", so not enormous) in the facility, he reported that he wouldn't do that because they were too big to move.

BARRY: This man is an angry, unprincipled individual. As we spoke about the TV, he asked me "what do you want me to do?!!" and I said "adjust our bill" (we were paying about $250 per night) He responded he was willing to take $100 off. I responded "no, $300. We think $100 PER night is fair for all we're dealing with" to which he responded "Now you get nothing." and the call quickly ended.

Never go there, never stay in the Carriage House, and frankly, I would avoid the Ashley Inn all together as the owner is a horrible horrible business person and hospitality should not be his...

This is going to be a very different review. A ghost story. The only reason I'm doing it is because I was telling my wife about an experience I had here in 2003, memories I had forgot about. It was August 2003 and my ex wife and I checked in and we were the only ones there. I love history and Charleston so this was awesome! That night in the yellow room around midnight...I'm watching tv and she's asleep. I hear a loud footstep. I lower the volume. Another one. And another. It was coming from the staircase to the second floor. But no one walks like that not that slowly and loud. At the top it stopped and that was it. My ex wife was upset she didn't hear it. The next night I get up to use the bathroom. Again no one else was checked in. I'm on edge and wanting to hurry up. All of a sudden a scraping on the wall opposite of me. It sounded like a metal rod on the wall moving quickly. I ran offt and again she was upset. I'm not I've had many supernatural experiences and I don't look for them. That next day we laid on the bed it was late afternoon talking about my experiences. She said she had never had anything before. She's calling out the "ghosts". I said not so fast. Listen man....this #### ain't no joke. We're in Charleston afterall. Women...She says she's calling out the spirits for a sign. Listen now real close...immediately there was a loud bang coming from at the outside wall next to the bed that rattled the wall and the bed. Talk about shocked! That wall has nothing but air. We are on the 2nd floor. I tried to reproduce it. No way. I went down stairs and encountered a man that just checked in he was cutting up limes in the kitchen. He said he didn't hear anything. We loved our stay. I don't know what hauntings and ghosts are and frankly I'm not sure I believe in the traditional sense of it. I believe there's a afterlife and you choose where you go now and afterwards it's too late. The Bible says its appointed for man to die once and then the judgement. If you believe in that, there's no trapped spirits here. There's God and Satan no in between. Take...

We booked for June. My wife got very ill and I tried to cancel. There would be no refund that late. Check the policy. They agreed to let me rebook for later, which was nice and we were thankful for that. ||We stayed in the speakeasy suite, we arrived about 4 pm on Saturday of Labor Day weekend. When we arrived it smelled very musty and it bothered my wife's allergies. There was what looked like an air purifier in the lower room. We could not get it to work. We sent an email to the email address on the wall. It bounced back. We called the number, it goes to voicemail. Someone called us back as we were leaving for dinner. Said he would bring another air purifier and if it didn't fix it he would try to find us some other arrangement but all their properties were full. We got back later that night after dinner and it was a little better but still quite musty and still bothered my wife. We could not get the temperature down in the room. So in the morning (Sunday) we called again to see about the air conditioning. No response this time. It is controlled by a remote which was not where it belonged. We eventually found it and turned the temperature down hoping that would help with the musty smell. It didn't seem to change anything and the room stayed warmer than we would have liked the whole stay and the musty smell never went away.||The food is premade and left in a warmer. Kind of like a gourmet gas station bagel sandwich. Your only option for coffee is an espresso machine which I watched 5 different people including myself struggle to make a coffee. No one got it to work easily.||The place is pretty nice if it didn't have that musty smell but the food and lack of presence of any sort onsite for the price of the stay does not add up. Next trip to Charleston I will look elsewhere and I suggest you...