AKA University City — Hotel in Philadelphia

Originally, we spoke with Carla about trying to book a short term stay due to my husband and I temporarily relocating to Philadelphia for our daughter to be born at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We were referred to their hotel/apartments from CHOP as they supposedly have CHOP rates for families in need. From the get-go something seemed a bit “ car salesmany” about her; which I overlooked as we were in a bind and needed to try to come up with a solution as quickly as possible. Carla knew from the beginning that our unborn daughter has a very rare heart condition in which she would need several open heart surgeries to “fix” and an even rarer chest wall defect that again, requires surgery. Even with knowing that information it almost seemed as if she was trying to “upsell” me with their apartments. I’m in sales- and I know the tactics and she was definitely using them. Which to be honest is extremely uncomfortable given the situation we’re in financially with the necessary medical costs to help save our daughters life. When we originally were quoted, we were quoted a rate that was too high. She asked us what we could afford and magically she was able to make it happen. After speaking with my husband, the number I initially stated we could afford seemed out of reach because that’s when we found out about additional surgeries. That’s when she basically threw it back in my face and said “oh, well I did exactly what you asked”. I explained what happened and she tried the additional sales tactics stating most of the other hotels in the area don’t have kitchens or washers and dryer’s and we’d be forced to eat out every night and go to the laundromat. It was all too salesy for me and was a bit offensive, so we basically responded with “we’re not going to spend additional money on ourselves when that money can go towards our daughters medical bills that are necessary for her survival”. At that point I think she got the hint and backed off a bit.

Flash forward to yesterday- only 2 weeks after the last conversation we had regarding the apartment. My job was kind enough to try to help get our family some help due to everything going on. It’s not definitive but something they’re really trying to process for us. With the additional funding we could afford AKA. I excitedly reached back out to Carla because I FINALLY felt like things were aligning after months of stress going back and forth with our doctors and trying to find a place to live. Suddenly, once they found out I may have additional funding the rates went up over 60%! Keep in mind, we were never told that the prices could change- especially so quickly. If we were told differently we would have acted upon something more aggressively. I have all the text messages between Carla and I to prove it. Literally 2 weeks prior we were offered a rate that was $65 less per day but then magically it increased? I’ve been in the hospitality business- including property management and I can tell something fishy was going on. After voicing my concerns that we were being taken advantage of, Carla said she’d speak with her director and get back to me. The next day, I called and spoke with the director (who I will admit was much more pleasant to speak with but unfortunately not very helpful) and she basically told me “oh yeah, Carla should have told you the rates could increase, I’m sorry”. After months of trying to solidify something- all of it boiled down to “sorry”.

When a couple is going through a hardship such as trying to save their child’s life- the last thing they need is additional stress. Unfortunately that’s EXACTLY what AKA did. I cannot in good faith recommended a place that takes advantage of vulnerable people and leaves them high & dry because they can all of a sudden book rooms at higher rates. Don’t say you’ll help families in need and then leave them hanging the second you can book a room at full price. That’s classless and quite...

tl;dr; Overall this place is fine, when considering the price and reputation, I was disappointed in my experience. If you're in need of short-term furnished options there's not a ton of alternatives in Philly, but otherwise I’d go with nearby alternatives that seem more worth the price (e.g., Dalian).

Apologies for the long length, but I thought the context would be useful so you can ask the right questions of leasing to decide if AKA is a good fit for you.

– Great –

Front desk staff are generally excellent, very polite and helpful.

Overall, the building quality is good, what you'd expect in a building of this caliber in many respects. I'll note some important exceptions below, but the bed is solid, the appliances are fine, the HVAC is excellent, elevators rarely have a wait, and the gym is equipped with good equipment (though lacking any reasonable power lifting equipment if that's your thing). The views are great.

The parking garage is a bit pricey, but excellent. Well lit, always spaces available, covered walkway to the main building.

– Meh –

The furniture is high quality materials and construction, but it's not comfortable (except for the mattress). It’s mostly form over function designer stuff.

Noise transfer between apartments. I heard my neighbors above and beside me scooting chairs around every day (extra annoying since the building supplies the furniture!). I also heard music and television bass more nights than not (fortunately not too late at night though). There's a lot of students in this building who will turn something down when you ask, but they'll be right back to it the next day.

Slow packages. It takes several hours before a delivered package is logged into the system, and it takes staff 3-5 minutes to get a package from a room 10 feet away. I know it’s sorta silly to complain about a few minutes, but that's a long time to stand there, and it adds up quick when there's a line.

The trash chute didn’t work the entire time I lived there. You just dump your trash in the room, and it gets full and smelly.

The building does a poor job enforcing rules. People will take up the limited covered parking pull-up spots for hours at a time, park recklessly and take up multiple spots in the parking garage, or hold onto a luggage cart for days at a time (it's not uncommon to not have carts available to haul stuff from your car), etc. I realize residents are the culprits, but other buildings I've lived in at this price tier have found ways to manage these issues.

– Bad –

Fire alarms were nearly weekly when I chose to move out mid-lease. Perhaps that doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a roughly 40 minute interruption to your life each time (seriously, I timed the last one, 40 minutes). You end up stuck in or out of your apartment the whole time, and it's hard to do anything other than sit there waiting for it to end because the audio for the system is so obnoxious -- it just plays loud audio in a nonstop loop the entire time.

The frequency of full water shutoffs is frustrating. Less common than the fire alarms, it's still at least once a month. During these instances you will be asked to refrain from using any water, including flushing the toilet, from 8pm until the next morning.

Broken appliance process. My unit’s dishwasher was broken, and it took weeks to fix. Maintenance responded very quickly to begin working on the issue, but they couldn’t get it working for weeks. Other buildings in this caliber keep extra appliances around to swap in working units for tenants while they get the broken...

Stay elsewhere.

We stayed here while my daughter had a surgical procedure at CHOP.

We booked this hotel simply because it had an indoor pool and that would help the kids keep their minds off the impending surgery. Only to find the pool was closed for cleaning that week. I really wish someone would have disclosed that prior to us booking this hotel. When we asked the front desk about it this simply didn’t offer an apology.

Also, I had requested a few blankets to our room a week before check in knowing I would want to get the kids settled into bed to have a good nights rest before the surgery.

Checked into our room and found it very odd that not only was our request not given but there were absolutely no towels, no hand rags, and soap. The couch looked like someone had just jumped on it, a dark drink had been freshly spilled on the carpet, the tub had bar soap stuck to the bottom of it, and crumbs littered the room. I immediately told the front desk who didn’t bat an eye and just said “ok. We don’t have another room.” Not to mention the sink disposable wasn’t working causing the sink to fill with water so we had to wash our dishes in the bathroom sink.

So I cleaned the room myself, scrubbed the tub, and on my hands and knees Cloroxed everything from the kitchen to the floor. I requested the towels and blankets, which showed up to our door 4 hours later, around 830pm. All the while my kids sat on the couch waiting for me to be done, tired from our flight to Philadelphia, and crabby, wanting to go to bed.

The next day I received a text asking how our stay was going and I responded with our issues.

Within two hours, a manager came to our door and told us the front desk had made a mistake and put us into a used dirty room. He apologized and offered us a new room and a discount stay. I said we would be okay staying in the room because I had already cleaned it but if he would consider letting us leave a day early after our daughters surgery and not be charged for the last day we had booked. He said not a problem at all and that we had already dealt with enough. I thought “Wow, how nice to address this within two hours of my text.”

Not so fast….. this is where it got weird.

I went to the front desk after our daughters surgery to speak to them about leaving early and about all our problems and they claimed they had no idea I spoke with anyone and acted as if someone impersonated a manager. Very strange and upsetting.

Front desk said we would be getting a call from the manager because they can’t offer any type of discount at that time. It’s now been 24 hours after check out and not one call has been received.

For our other upcoming medical appointments we will be looking else where to stay. Huge...