4211 Suites — Hotel in Philadelphia

My experience did not go well here. This was a surprise birthday trip for my wife. I booked the apartment via VRBO and we came from 2 hours away. I arrived before my wife to decorate the apartment and put groceries away. We also had a long awaited dinner reservation that evening. After setting things up I noticed the place was very very cold. I turned the heat up to 72 in both rooms waited a bit and it just was not getting warmer and that’s when I noticed that there was an error code on both heaters. I called downstairs. They said they would send somebody which they did in a timely manner. However, the person left the room and didn’t return and I was just waiting and waiting about 30 minutes later I received a phone call that I needed to come downstairs and get a key card to change rooms.. at the same time, my wife was arriving to the hotel. So now I am frantically repacking everything, dragging it to the other room and trying to redecorate in a matter of minutes. During this time, I also noticed that it was extremely extremely hot in this unit. I turned the heat down to 65 and continued to try to hurry up and redecorate and unpack everything as I’m doing this, my wife calls me to let me know that they will not allow her in the parking garage and I’m like what do you mean just give them the $40 and you can Vallet Park. We have a room here.. I called the front desk to ask if they could please assist in the matter and I was then advised that you have to reserve parking in advance and I said well it does not say that online it just says that there’s a $40 fee & she began to yell at me over and over the same sentence “ says it on the website it says it on the website” Despite the fact that she was talking to me like I was stupid, I explained to her calmly that we did not book directly through the website we booked through VRBO, and obviously that was left out of the booking info. The girl on the phone had a very nasty attitude and was completely unwilling to help us. My car was parked on the street unfortunately my wife had to drive around for one hour and 40 minutes to find a parking space on the street. This resulted in us missing our reservation for dinner. After calling many places, I couldn’t get a reservation anywhere decent for a birthday party. I said OK we will just cook dinner here in the room well, unfortunately, despite the fact that again the listing says there is cookware in the apartments, there’s a refrigerator, There’s a stove there are cups and plates, but there are zero pots and pans. There are also no linens for the pullout couch bed. Also, I began to preheat the oven before I realized that there were no pots or pans and smelt a burning smell. I opened the oven to find a Ziploc bag with a sponge and oven cleaner inside of it ..great way to start a fire stupid way to store cleaning products.. the room remained incredibly hot at the entire night with the heat stuck at 80° and no one to help us. We were also told that we needed to close the window immediately that windows are not allowed to be left open. This was a total disaster, both myself and VRBO did try to reach out to management for a resolution and they were unwilling to help. They have not marked my booking as complete in order to prevent me from writing a review about their building on VRBO and they also have not updated the listing information to make it accurate. If you are going to stay here, please call in advance and make a reservation for parking so that you don’t have to drive around for two hours and walk six blocks in the freezing cold because they will not let you park there. Also, if you plan to make any meals, you will need to lug along your own pots and pans and make sure to check the oven before you turn it on so you don’t burn your unit to the ground. Also the doors to the unit so they slam shut on their own So all day and night all you hear is other people’s doors slamming, and you can hear every single conversation in the hallway, loud and clear And for some reason, the water coming out of the shower smells...

Generally a fine stay. I did not have much interaction with the staff other than just at check-in and check-out and they seemed friendly and fine. The room was generally clean* (more on this in a moment) and I had to do some stuff for work in the room and the wifi was fast and reliable.

The room had a living room area with a washer/dryer and a kitchenette and then a separated bedroom with bathroom. I didn't use the washer/dryer and I didn't cook anything so can't really speak to those amenities.

The front door of the building is locked from 7pm to 7am and you need your room key to access the building during those times. So it's a little extra layer of security if that's important to you. I checked in after 8pm, but someone was at the front desk and saw me at the door and let me in.

The hotel was much cheaper than others in the area so I would probably stay here again for a short stay. However just to nitpick a few things:

The walls (and ceilings?) at this hotel are like tissue paper. I could hear so much noise from the hallway, to people talking in rooms both next to me and above me, and in the middle of the night, I even heard someone snoring! My second night some dude was literally partying until 3am. Talking so loudly, blasting music. It was not good. So if you like complete silence or you plan to have very private conversations in your room, this is probably not the place to stay.

I stayed for two nights. When I left my room in the morning after the first night, I left the "do not disturb" sign on the door. I did not feel I needed anyone to come in and clean the room and for short stays, I prefer nobody come and be near my stuff. However, despite the do not disturb sign on the door, I came back to my room to see that it had been cleaned anyway. Well… mostly clean. The towel they left me had an extremely long hair on it. I am a man with short hair (and balding) and I stayed in the room alone. So that long hair was not mine nor was it the hair of an invited guest. Not a HUGE deal… I'm sure the cleaning person's hair fell out while she was folding it. It happens. But I mean, they should probably make sure that the towels, linens etc are free of hair before leaving the room. But she also should not come into the room when there is a "do not disturb" sign on the door. She came in when I didn't want her to and then left the towel dirtier than it was before she came in!

The shower has conditioner and shampoo in it as well as HAND soap. Not body wash. Hand soap. The same hand soap that was also on the counter next to the bathroom sink. I even read the instructions on the bottle to make sure that it wasn't some weird thing I had never heard of that is meant for use on the whole body. But no. It clearly says "wet hands first, apply hand wash, then rinse off." I'm not a chemist or soap expert so I don't know what the difference is between hand soap and body wash but I imagine they're two different products for a reason. So I had no interest in using hand soap to wash my entire body (even though I acknowledge I would likely be totally fine had I chosen to do so). Fortunately, I had a small travel thing of body wash with me so it wasn't a huge deal. But the hotel needs to swap out that hand wash in the shower with body wash. The two products likely only have subtle differences but you'll put your guests at ease by just making this simple switch.

If water pressure is important to you, don't stay here. The shower pressure was terrible. It wasn't bad as in the water came out as a drip. There was a full showerhead and water came out of every hole in that shower head and it sprayed an appropriate distance. But it came out at a speed that was unsatisfying and one that made me have to take an extra long shower as I felt I needed to stay in there longer to get my body fully wet.

As mentioned above, these four things are me NITPICKING, but I mention them as some of these issues might be bigger issues for others. For me, it's something I can deal with and like I said, I would...

I can’t warn you off of this “hotel” strongly enough. My husband and I stayed in a one-bedroom for one night and probably spent a total of 8 hours in the room, 99% of that sleeping. We used exactly two hand towels and never even sat on the living area furniture. You get the point - we barely touched the place. The hotel is a below average, nothing-special property with zero service, but I’m from the area, and we were trying it out in the hope that it could be an option for a longer stay in the future when we travel with our child - it would be nice to have a two bedroom option. ||We arrived at 6:30pm on a Friday, checked in, changed clothes and were gone by 7:00pm. We got back from our event at 2:00am and we were checked out again by 9:30am. A totally uneventful and forgettable stay. Fast forward to 3 days later when I get an email from the manager saying they did a “routine check” of the room and found we had damaged the bathroom vanity and they were charging us $200. Excuse me? I figured this had to be a mistake, so I phoned (4 times) and responded over email (2 times) to try to speak to the person who sent the email, and no response. I actually noticed that the (tiny, cheap) vanity was damaged, but it never occurred to me to document something like that because a.) it wasn’t that big of a deal, and b.) it’s not like the place is luxe and I felt someone should know about it (much less that they would care). Plus, as I said, I was there for a hot minute. ||Eventually the manager replied (email bc he won’t phone back) saying they stand firm that we did the damage. Needless to say, I get what is going on now - if they do indeed do routine checks, they knew the damage was preexisting and this is a money grab scam. Now that I think about it, they took at $200 hold, not for incidentals, like normal hotels, but as a “safety deposit”. That should have flagged as unusual a the time, but, well, hindsight. Nonetheless, I’ve filed a cc dispute and will let the bank argue with them from here (if they can even get a callback). ||My takeaway from this visit? If you’re staying at a potentially shady place, immediately document anything that looks off. And also, don’t stay at...