Etage Executive Living — Hotel in Pittsburgh

On Feb 1st , my family and I had one of the worst experiences ever with attempting to stay at the Etage. We had booked weeks in advance because we were coming into town for a surgery—slated to stay 3 nights. Initially, I spoke to several nice associates that offered the allowance for us to check in early and even offered us an upgraded room. We were driving 8 hours. We stayed here before and had a lovely experience and everyone was so accommodating.

We arrived on Feb 1st around 3 am. We decide to stop past the hotel to inquiry if they would be able to accommodate us that early. We had full understanding that it may not be possible but we were passing through downtown.

Shomar was the associate we had the displeasure of interacting with. He was sitting in the lobby when we arrived and was clearly irritated. When I explained I had spoke to someone about a possible early check in he stated “ You didn’t speak to me.” I explained it was not him but a very nice woman and I also had chat logs. He explained that there were no rooms available and we could either call back at 11am OR leave our number. I turned to my husband and asked what he would like to do. He stated that we should leave our number. When I told Shomar this, he said “just call at 11am.” My husband and I were confused because he just stated we could leave our number.

Additionally, when I first booked they stated they would be kind enough to call us. My husband asked if there was a business card for a manager we could speak to in the morning. Shomar became irate telling us we are rude and to get out…very disturbing behavior. Me, my husband and my young son left. My husband remembered we had a package delivered there weeks ago that they stated they would hold. He went back and asked Shomar. He stated there was no package.

At this point, we didn’t want to agitate an already unstable individual. As we were paying to leave the parking garage , he knocked on my car window and asked us to come back in. My husband told him that me and our son will stay in the car while he comes back in.

Would you believe that he FOUND our package and had FOUR rooms available?????? FOUR empty rooms. He was talking to a woman colleague on the phone and from what my husband told me, she told him exactly where to find our package and that he should have offered us one of the EMPTY rooms. We were fine paying another night!

We called hotels.com immediately and escalated the issue to a manager. Not only did we cancel and get no penalty , our $500+ back and hotels.com gave us a substantial credit. Management from hotels.com called me back the next day and were extremely concerned. If this associate would have encountered people who were not level headed, this could have ended terribly. My son and I were visibly shaken. Hotels.com assured me they would escalate this incident to the marketing team as this is something to consider when doing business with a company. Looking at all the complaints of “customer service” is egregious. They also advised me to file a formal complaint with management.

As a business owner myself who travels, I have decided to cancel plans to stay here in May. We ended up at KASA on the south side and had a wonderful experience.

I could never in good conscience recommend someone to stay here after our experience. Basic soft skills are lacking with employees here and will be the downfall of obtaining viable partnership with other companies.

Till this day no one has reached out to me. As I’ve traveled back and forth to Pittsburgh for business, I wouldn’t dare stay here again for leisure...

Overall an extraordinary property that will far excede your expectations!

Initially we were in one of the rooftop “penthouse” rooms, assuming it would be a nice treat. The studio style room was directly across from the rooftop basketball court and alongside the pet walkway and other activities provided for guests on the roof. For a few days we tried to like this room, as it was very spacious and lovely, but because the entire studio apartment was glass, there was literally no way to have privacy. We asked about getting the windows darkened which they did but still, when I walked out to the rooftop area and looked back into the room at night, I could still clearly see my wife standing in the bedroom waving at me. Very unsettling to say the least and did not exactly invoke the romantic, intimacy filled evenings I had imagined. We ended up keeping the lights almost completely off the entire time at night to get some kind of privacy but we could still tell that people could see us by their reactions. I really have no idea how I would be expected to feel comfortable in a bed surrounded by glass with people walking by just a few inches away from the glass looking around, and in some cases pointing to you and remarking to their companions that they can see you! To make matters worse, fhe flip side of this tinted glass system was that during the day, these smokey glass windows provided only a dreary, dull, dark and foreboding view of everything outside which was depressing after a while.

After a few days, I requested a downgrade from the penthouse. The “downgraded” room we were assigned on the 11th floor was actually a thousand times nicer than the penthouse! Our new room was literally one of the nicest, most thoughtfully designed hotel rooms I’ve ever stayed in, a complete change from the original room!

I am so grateful to the nice young lady who helped us with this (believe her name is Saraha but not sure of the spelling) as I would have had a terrible impression of this property otherwise. She saved our vacation! Our new room provided bright wonderful views of the city from every room and the bedroom had built-in blinds although they were unneeded most times because nobody was walking by inches outside our window.

It appears the penthouse rooms are often reserved by groups to have lavish parties and things of this nature where they can open the big glass doors out onto the rooftop, enjoy the views and drink and party on the roof and these rooms are actually really well suited for for that purpose. If you’re looking for a more traditional room however, I recommend strongly you avoid any of the penthouse rooms. The studio penthouse room we had was actually small by comparison to the 11rh floor room, with all of the glass walls angled sharply to the ground so much of the floor space was too low to be usable and of course it suffered from the privacy issues I mentioned above.

When we left we had the distinct pleasure of being assisted by the regional sales manager Chris Homa who is obviously someone who knows his business well and takes it very seriously. Clearly our satisfaction was his main priority.

With all that said, the location of this hotel is perfect, the rooms are large and modern with great views, and the attached fitness club is absolutely fantastic! We will definitely be staying here again anytime we visit Pittsburgh but from now on will be skipping...

BEWARE - READ BEFORE BOOKING!**Billing FRAUD

I was so excited to stay here because the property is beautiful so I had reserved it far in advance. I’m in my 20s and easy to please when it comes to hotels.

I called numerous times on my drive over to let them know I was coming in late but no one ever picked up the phone. Spoiler: no one ever answers the phone here.

When I arrived with my guest, the checkin guy was completely rude. He even apologized for being rude for no reason without us saying anything about it.

He gave us a random key that was laying in front of him (clear that it was one someone just put on the desk while checking out). We go up to the room and it’s a dirty room. Please see photos. We show him the photos and he acted like it was the biggest inconvenience to him and got annoyed and wouldn’t even listen to us or anything we had to say. We asked where the basketball hoop was and he said floor 9… it’s not on floor 9.

He gave us another room but didn’t give us a hotel card so he walked us up to the room himself. He was upset with a security guard for not bringing us up so he spoke to him in the hallway and it was completely unprofessional and uncomfortable. He told us to come down the next morning and get a card.

The next morning, we came down for a card and another front desk man was so rude. ACCUSING us of not staying there and trying to get a key saying it is impossible for us to have stayed here without a key. We tried explaining what happened the night prior but again, the employee did not care at all nor listen. After much hassle and disrespect, he gave us a key to our room. I guess the guy the night before never put us in the system, put us on a no show list but charged our cards. This caused part of the issue with the morning because there was no record of us checking in.

I contacted hotel management to ask about the charges and they told me the amount charged was correct. I had to lock my card because of how many charges are coming in. I think there’s fraud going on in this hotel and the worker at the front desk was charging with the system offline and there’s no proof of it on their side. Only what I caught on my billing statement. Around $800 of charges for a one night $181 stay. I told them that I keep getting charged and they’re like well we don’t see that? Yeah cause he did it OFFLINE and out of the system. I know this because the employee told us this. Now I’m stuck with all these fraud charges. They can’t even see how many charges there were on their end because the worker did the charges offline....