The Cabins at Healing Springs — Hotel in Lansing

I had a very serious problem with this property and they acted dishonestly. I booked through Booking . com, and it clearly stated that it was a non-refundable reservation and the total would be $135. No additional fees or charges were disclosed anywhere on the page for this property. However, when I clicked the button to book, I got a credit card alert that $163 had been charged to my credit card. I got a message through Booking . com from the property, and buried in there in noted I had been charged a "$28 cleaning fee for a medium sized cabin". I sent a message back saying that I had been overcharged as this cleaning fee was not disclosed anywhere on the property's page on Booking . com. They stated that it was but they could ask Booking and Priceline to make it more prominent. However, this was untrue at least as to Booking - it is no where on the page. They tried to cancel my reservation without my permission with Booking.com, sending them a message saying I had engaged in "guest misconduct" and had "yelled" at them. I had not been a guest yet and never spoke to them, nor did I send any messages that could be interpreted as "yelling". I only asked for a refund of the overcharge. I explicitly told them several times that I didn't want to cancel my reservation, I was just contesting the extra money they charged because it was not disclosed. However, I got notification that they refunded the entire amount of the charge, although I still had an active booking. I contacted them explaining that I did not cancel the reservation and was happy to pay the agreed upon amount of $135, and asked them to confirm that I still had a reservation. They never responded. I had two long phone calls with Customer Service at Booking . com, and the property would not respond to them either. After hours on the phone with Booking. com, they helped cancel the reservation. Booking . com confirmed that this property did not disclose a cleaning fee anywhere on their page. At any rate, the behavior on the part of this property was dishonest and unprofessional. I do not know about how the property is, but I am very concerned about how they behaved during the booking process. Honestly, if the property had just responded to my initial complaint about the overcharge and admitted they made a mistake in not disclosing the cleaning fee ahead of time, I would have just paid it. My main concern is just that this property not continue this practice of charging customers for fees that are not disclosed...

This past weekend, we decided to have a spur of the moment trip to the mountains. I made a reservation at this place through Travelocity probably an hour out from arriving. When you search for hotels it automatically defaults to 2 adults! I will admit my part of this error! I should have changed it BUT traveling with a 2 year old, who usually includes that? Anyway, we get there and get checked in. We have unloaded the car and it is raining. My daughter, excited to be outside, is loving playing in the rain puddles and talking to the free range chickens that live there. It’s about 5 pm. The manager then comes back and talks to us to inform that there was a complaint about our daughter and that people come there alone without kids and she was loud. We had to leave the room we already paid for. She stated that she had a “family” room that could work for us. Ok then, we pack everything up and went to look at the other room. It was located directly above the office with no ac, the bathroom was actually downstairs and the only airflow you got was opening two big barn doors as windows and the door to the room to get a cross breeze. That door lead directly to the stairs. The “windows” opened from the ceiling to the floor. Completely unsafe for a toddler! We go back to talk to the manager and I specifically ask if we cancel and leave will we get our money back? Her response was, “oh yea, you will have to go back through who you booked and it won’t be a problem.” Ok then, we will go ahead and leave and find something more suitable for our puddle jumping, chicken talkin menace of a child! I call Travelocity within an hour and tell them what happened, they state they need to call the hotel to confirm the cancellation. They do and the manager proceeds to tell them that it is non refundable. I again tell them guy I just spoke with the manager since we were physically there and he calls again and gets the same statement. Now again, I completely understand my fault in this, what we have a hard time understanding is why tell a customer one thing and then tell someone else something different! She could have told us that to begin with but chose to lie instead! So now I have a claim with Travelocity since I did purchase the insurance and will have to wait, or dispute with...

I wavered between 4/5 stars, because of what this actually is. The property/cabin is pretty utilitarian and spartan, so 5 stars doesn't seem right. On the other hand, if that's what you're looking for, Healing Springs does it very well, the price is right, the cabin was clean, and the process was easy. So count this as 4.5 stars.

Check in: we didn't check in until after dinner, as it was getting dark. No problem finding the property or cabin, and self-checkin was easy and went off without a hitch. There's even a little general store where you not only get your key, but they also have snacks/drinks/etc that you can charge to your cabin or pay on the honor system.

Cabin: 3 adults total, we stayed in the Barn Loft. It's definitely dated (and the floor in the sitting room definitely goes uphill then back down as you cross the room), but that's about what we expected. More importantly, everything was clean and the AC in all the rooms blew COLD! Kitchenette and bathroom are downstairs. The kitchenette was nice to have, even though we didn't use it. The shower could use a redesign, as it's pretty hard not to get a bunch of water on the floor. But that's a small complaint.

Property: Great lil property tucked back but still accessible to West Jefferson. It's really cool that they let you get water from the spring! I will say there was a little canvas tent erected to the right of the barn loft that looked CREEPY at night (checking it out the next morning made it look like maybe they keep firewood in there?)

Check-out/billing: Check out was easy. We left the place clean, but it's still nice to see that no mysterious, undisclosed fees or penalties got added to our bill.

Overall: If you're fine with a fairly bare accommodation, it's hard to beat this value in the area!...