Residence Inn by Marriott Philadelphia Montgomeryville — Hotel in Montgomery Township

This was really, really disappointing. I've stayed in a number of Residence Inns, and always enjoyed them, and somehow this one in particular instead failed on nearly every count. The staff were mostly lovely, but the management/organization situation seemed to be something of a disaster. We had several problems, all of them poorly handled:

the overnight front desk person the day we arrived was late to her shift by what we suspect from the clock time was at least half an hour, we and several others had to wait around in confusion with no one there before we could check in

the shower was missing a critical plastic piece, causing it to leak very badly, and the maintenance tech agreed it was broken and apologetically told us he had no way of getting the missing part (nice guy, clearly knew what he was doing, had been hamstrung by lack of organizational support), so this went unresolved

when we arrived there was a sticky stain on the carpet, which we of course reported immediately; we were told housekeeping would address it, and then this was never mentioned again, or addressed in any way

we were told housekeeping was required to service the room every 7 days, so on the 7th day of our stay we requested housekeeping (in particular, clean towels and TP) and were told that actually it'd be Friday, "but they'd get someone to send towels and stuff", and this never happened or was mentioned again

on Friday, housekeeping knocked to tell us that in about half an hour we'd need to leave so they could do their job. We waited half an hour, left, came back an hour later to find no housekeeping had been done, stuck around in some confusion for ANOTHER hour, and then housekeeping turned up and seemed surprised to find that we were there. I can only assume the left hand was not talking to the right hand here

the TV claimed to be able to sign into our Netflix account but it refused to actually do so; if you clicked "log in" it wouldn't ask for credentials, just loop back to the "sign into any of these services!" window. not sure what could possibly have been going wrong here, maybe just failure to hire and pay an actual IT person?

the air conditioning was very loud and we suspect from the intermittent ominous sourceless dripping noises it might have been leaking in the walls somewhere, although thankfully I did not detect any signs of mold

we left some stuff in the fridge accidentally, and they managed to be not even zero but actually negative help. I asked in the app the same day we left if there was any chance it could be grabbed and held overnight to be picked up the following day, and I was told they'd "leave a note for housekeeping" and I should call the front desk in the morning; I called the front desk in the morning and they clearly had no knowledge of this. I asked if they had my items and would it be all right to send my husband to pick them up (a three hour drive!) if so. If they'd simply said "no, sorry, your room will have been cleaned and emptied already and we don't have your stuff" I would have been like, okay, that's fair, this is totally on me, thanks anyway, but NO, they assured me they thought they DID have it and asked for a contact phone number! So I sent my poor husband on a fetch quest, and WHEN HE GOT THERE, after three hours of driving, they said, oh, sorry, actually no, it probably got thrown away yesterday, can't help you.

If this was the first Residence Inn I'd stayed in I'd have sworn off the whole brand, but I can't emphasize enough that it's literally just this one! All the other...

This was probably the worst Marriott property I’ve ever stayed at. It would’ve been 1 star, but 1 employee saved them from that.

Friday evening we (myself, my wife and our 4yr old son) checked in, immediately we noticed the room wasn’t cleaned well. The couch was covered in stains, and everything just seemed a little poor quality and there were no paper towels (pretty standard for a Residence Inn). The room felt warm so I turned the AC from 75° to 70°. Around 7:30pm I opened up the fold out couch and saw there were no sheets or blankets. I opened every closet and drawer in the room and no sheets or blankets anywhere. So I called the front desk to request them. Nobody answered. I let it ring for 6 minutes and nobody answered. I called back a few minutes later and let it ring for 4 minutes, no answer. I sent a message on the app, no answer. I went down to the front desk and the attendant was just sitting down there, not doing anything. I said, “I tried calling down, but there was no answer. We don’t have any sheets for the pull out couch.” The desk attendant said “oh well housekeeping is gone for the day, they come back tomorrow at 8am if you want them to give you sheets.” I said “but I need the sheets tonight, to sleep on the couch tonight…” He then responded “oh well I can get them for you if you want them, I can give them to you when you come back.” I said “come back? I was hoping to get them now.” So he said “oh well I can get them if you need them.” He still did not get up or move at all, just looked at me. So I said “yeah, I need them. We need to use the pull out bed tonight, so we were trying to make the bed now.” He huffed and puffed like I asked him to do the hardest job ever, got up and went to the room directly behind him, less than 10ft and got me a set of sheets and blankets, I asked for a pillow too and you would think I’d asked him to make it from scratch, he went back and got me one pillow.

Took the sheets up to the room, and of course they weren’t the right size for the couch, but I made them work.

It had been ~2 hours since I turned the AC and the room was not any cooler. The thermostat said it was 74° but was set for 70° and it wasn’t running at all. The room felt hot and sticky because not even the fan was running so there was no air movement.

The AC eventually kicked on for a few minutes here and there throughout the night, just enough to make it somewhat tolerable, but still uncomfortable.

The only saving grace was Sunday after we checked out, my son told me he had hid a toy in the bedroom dresser drawer and asked if I packed it with his other stuff. Even though it had been a few hours since we left the hotel we were still in the area so I stopped by hoping to find it. Taj at the front desk was soooo understanding and helpful. When I told her what happened she said “oh yeah, kids will do that. Let’s see if we can find it.” She got in touch with the housekeeping crew who said they had not cleaned the room yet, so she had the housekeeping supervisor let me in and sure enough it was right where my son said it was! He was so happy and I was relieved. I could only imagine if the lazy person working Friday night had been at the front desk when I came in, he probably wouldn’t have done anything, but Taj made sure we got it. She was the silver lining in the dark dark of this hotel, and the only reason I didn’t give the hotel a 1...

Based on personal experience, I would like to give the hotel a one star review. Objectively speaking, I will give it two stars. Overall, this place is underwhelming for what they charge a night.

PROS:

The saving grace of the hotel is the kitchen. Having a room with an oven and range instead of a malfunctioning cooktop like most extended stay properties makes life easier for families. There is a full size refrigerator and freezer too. There are plates, silverware, utensils, and bowls. Some of these things seem to get stolen from the rooms so beware that a few things could be missing.

Decent size bedrooms and showers up on the third floor.

Functional Wi Fi

Free breakfast if you need it.

Cons:

HOUSEKEEPING IS HORRENDOUS. They do not show up 3/4 of the time. They never have clean towels. Employees can actually be seen in vacant rooms laying in bed, watching TV, or just sitting on their phone when they are supposed to be working on getting rooms ready for the next guest to check in. You have to beg the staff to get them to do the bare minimum. The head of housekeeping should be fired. With the exception of a few hard working and kind people, most of the housekeeping staff are lazy. They lie and act belligerently when you have to go to management for recurring issues with housekeeping. The head of housekeeping came to my room and screamed at me after we went a week without towels.

Management does not address issues with the staff. They will tell you contradicting versions of what hotel policies are based on different issues that arose during our stay.

Staff needs overhaul throughout.

Stop advertising a pool online. It's gone, take it down so people stop getting their hopes up about getting to swim when they come here.

Hotel smells really bad inside.

Charging parking daily

Overall, very disappointed after spending two months here. We were not treated well and it is safe to say I would never come back to this hotel or recommend it to anyone who needs a place to stay for an extensive amount of time. You can fix some of the problems such as making things more clean. Unfortunately, you cannot change the way people are. If we were treated more kindly during our time here, this would become a 4 star review. The staff was a huge letdown. I hope the few good employees we met find a way to get promoted because they...