Fortune House Hotel — Hotel in Miami

Nice rooms, crazy and aggressive staffs, total discomfort, overpriced and hidden charges – Avoid this hotel and avoid nightmares.

The staffs are un-helpful, only duffer girls, make severe mistakes in reservations and repeatedly. You have serious threats to your stay at this hotel (search for my website with same name, specially made for this hotel.). They threat for police if you don’t change room. I will never go again. Peace of mind is more important than anything else.

There are also several hidden charges. I paid more than $200 per night while the final price was shown $159 per night on Expedia. So you will always have to pay $50 to $100 per day extra for different mandatory stuffs that you never enjoy. I am going to charge back for damages and sufferings.

I didn’t understand first, why this hotel had got just 111 good reviews out of 211 and 100 negative reviews on Trip Advisor. It was remarkably half of the visitors who had bad experiences and majority of them had terrible experiences. But now I understand the reviewers completely.

Hotel is big but breakfast room is very small. A/C in restaurant is too cold and staffs don't agree to change temperature as they have manager's order. We got sick. Breakfast has no variation at all. So we had 11 days exactly same things or less to eat. Tea, milk etc with free breakfast need to be paid extra. Only water is free (strange).

Internet was much irritating as every 1-2 hour I needed to login. So you can't receive emails while sleeping and also can't use live help or you can’t receive calls if you use skype. Internet was also below the average speed.

You can't stay in lawn of hotel with a car even 5 minutes as they will bother you to move on. Even for pick-up or drop off they will ask you $7 every time if you take longer than 1 minute at their lawn. And mind you, you must pay everytime you come.

Reservation staff named Bruna forgot to extend my room and next day I heard that for 1 day I will have to go somewhere else as the hotel was fully booked for a wedding. They could have notified before so that people who are for longer period could keep in mind. We were sent to some very bad one manned hotel and the Girl Thailmi reserved the room by that hotel on wrong date (one day earlier). So we faced surprices because that hotel was also fully booked. The receptionist at that hotel after my requests managed one room. When came back to Fortune House, got worse room until I objected. We had to pull-up our luggage (4 suitcases) ourselves because nobody helped for 1 hour. Flight got cancelled due to New York Sandy and extended the stay but next day heard that the staff (Victor) again forgot to extend rooms. They compelled to go out or go to worse room. Bruna Threatened for Police if we don't leave the room because owner was coming to stay in that room (??). It was really terrible. If you want to 'enjoy' your Miami, don't go here.

Now I understand why more than half of reviews (112) on Tripadvisor are negative. I would give -10 if it was possible. Except room there was nothing that was honest or professional. We lost 5 days in changing rooms every time. Staffs threatened for police and compelled to change rooms. 3 times rooms were not extended and we got problems. This is really a mis-managed hotel. There is nothing good to count. And what can I do with room if I can't stay...

Complete waste of money.. I had problems with customer service before I even checked in. I gave the hotel a chance even after reading bad reviews. Big mistake. The girls working at the front desk are completely incompetent. I put my card on file 3 months in advance and the lady explained they only charge $1 to verify the card is active and will not process any more charges until check in. The next morning I discovered they charged my card $1 plus a $529 charge. First of all, the hotel was supposed to be $450 per night and somehow after "taxes and fees" came out to $529! Absolutely ridiculous. When I called to inquire about the charge they explained that they always charge the first night on the card. Then when I told them the lady working the previous night assured me that was incorrect they put me on hold for over 30 minutes. I hung up an called back again and they transferred me multiple times and continued to put me on hold so I never got through to anyone who could help.

A day before arrival, I called to make sure they could accommodate two cars and she said sure, absolutely no problem. It would just cost $40 per day instead of $20... Okay so now I have to pay $20 per car per day for valet when I'm paying $529 per night! Okay well at least they have space...

I arrive the next day and valet tells me one car per room. Okay so I go to check in and complain about parking and they tell me whatever the other lady told me the previous night was incorrect because their garage was full for the weekend. They told me to park the second car at the hotel next door.

The room was pretty nice itself. We had a two bedroom suite with a bay view. The view wasn't a view of the bay but more like a view of the four seasons hotel next door and all the other buildings. At least we had a balcony though.

So okay I'm over all the other bullshit and then I realize there are multiple things wrong with the room. The ice maker doesn't work, the lock on one of the bathroom doors is broken, the toilet in the master bathroom doesn't flush and we have to take the lid off the back of the toilet and re attach the piece to fix it. The next day we call to get towels. Over an hour passes and they never bring them up. Then we order room service and they explain that because the hotel is full, they can't bring it upstairs. We had to physically go to get our own room service and towels! Then during check out, I called to get a cart to carry our luggage downstairs. No cart for 30 minutes. Call front desk again to remind them... Another 30 minutes and still nothing. So I walked downstairs and three bell boys are standing by the front door talking! Then the lady tells two of them to come upstairs with me. They weren't busy, just casually talking by the front door. I can't even believe this. I will never pay for this place again. Horrible experience. Tons of hidden fees that aren't explained during check out. We spend over $1500 for three days an they can even provide any kind of customer service. Do...

BE AWARE. OWNERS ARE LIARS.

I DO NOT recommend staying here. My friends and I booked here through Airbnb, got on one of the elevators to try and go back to our room on the 26th floor after eating dinner, and it kept suddenly dropping repeatedly, while also making a loud thud noise each time. It got stuck for a moment between floors and would not open no matter what buttons we pushed. Luckily, we were able to get off it safely, and we tried holding it open so that no one else would get on it, and potentially get hurt. The staff then yelled at us over the elevator intercom to just stop messing with it and let it go, so we did. We decided to check their elevator certificate of operation and it expired July 31, 2023, so almost 2 years ago (see the photo we took below). They then proceeded to let that same elevator operate for a bit longer, allowing other people to get on it, until they eventually blocked it off. Another staff member who was riding one of the elevators taking luggage to another room even straight us told us that 2 of their elevators have been sketchy for a while and that it's happened to him before when riding them, so at that point we definitely didn't feel safe getting on them. Myself, my husband and my friend all ended up walking up the rest of the way, which was 19 floors of stairs, just to avoid the elevators. We were too scared to get back on the elevator after it dropped like that multiple times. We then ended up contacting Airbnb support to get a refund, once the Airbnb host stopped responding to me, and had to provide Airbnb with proof that their elevator certificate was, in fact, expired. Once we provided the photo proof, thankfully, Airbnb refunded us so we could go stay at another hotel. This place honestly ending up being an absolute nightmare for us, after originally thinking it was going to be very nice. BE AWARE that these owners are liars. They are trying to say that my friends and I are lying and that we never even attempted to stay here, even though we have pictures and video proof of us being there on this date. In addition to the horrible elevator experience, the pool was closed for maintenance when we arrived, when we walked up the 19 flights of stairs we smelled sewage on multiple different levels, and some of the stairwell lights were burnt out, so it was dark and didn't feel very welcoming.

I understand that our booking was through Airbnb and not the hotel directly, but either way, we should have been made aware that they don't keep up on their elevator maintenance, especially having to go 26 floors up.

I wanted to post this to make others aware that this place has unsafe elevators, and now because either the owner, the Airbnb host, or both, are clearly mad that we called them out, they are trying to call us liars and say they have no record of us staying here, and no incident with the elevator occurred that day, which I clearly have screenshot proof of via the conversation with the...