Courtyard by Marriott Raleigh Crabtree Valley — Hotel in Raleigh

My company put us up here over three weeks for training. Each individual stay was a different experience.

The staff was helpful and friendly, but that was the only thing that was consistent.

My first room, the shower door was broken and always sliding open. While watching TV the next morning, the cable box suddenly reset itself and turned the power off.

The second room had a mattress that was hard as a rock and a TV remote that struggled to change pages when scrolling the TV guide (the channel up button was not working).

The following week I had a room that had not been remodeled to match the rest of the rooms. Instead of a sliding door, it was a push door that constantly caught on the wall. The shower also did not initially have any hot water. I called maintenance and they were very prompt in double checking everything. This time it turned out it simply needed more time than normal to initially heat up, and there were no further issues with the water.

The following week was yet another room, and this time the TV remote once again did not work properly. The channel down button did not work at all. The signal on the TV also cut out one night randomly. The in-room refrigerator was not level, rocking back and forth every time I touched it like an uneven table at a restaurant.

We're in our final week of staying here, and we've now gone almost 48 hours without hot water.

All of this is in addition to normal wear & tear like plugs that no longer connect; chips on doors, furniture, and walls; and drawers that don't want to slide properly. There is only one ice machine (on the second floor), and at the end of every floor is a microwave for guests (instead of having it in the room). It might be clean in the morning after housekeeping moves through, but that won't last long.

The elevator was scary to ride in. It jerked sharply when it began moving up, and sometimes when stopping. There were a couple times I was concerned we had stopped...

The rooms were great, nice and clean. The front desk staff that greeted up upon check-in was extremely friendly and helpful. The evening staff, however, demonstrated poor social skills, was unapproachable, unhelpful and apparently distrusting of guests. We asked several times for bedding for the pull-out couch. We were told the first time to check the room again because we must have been unable to see it the first time we searched the room. After searching both rooms again for the bedding we assured the staff member that there was no bedding in either room. She was visibly irritated and after about 20 minutes brought just the sheets (no blanket) for the pullout. A little later we tried to purchase an item from the snack area. We waited where the staff member could see us with the items, but we were ignored for another 15 minutes so we finally returned the items to the shelves and headed back to our room. The staff member immediately shot out from behind the desk and appeared around the corner. She yelled down the hall at us asking us what we needed in an unfriendly and suspicious manner. We decided to drive to the nearest convenient store to purchase items in less time, for less money with less attitude. Hopefully the footage from security cameras of the front desk from that evening are able to be reviewed to see the angry facial expressions and body language from the evening front...

The lighter side- Frequenting Marriott properties often, my expectations for the "fitness centers" is low- a treadmill, an elliptical, and a set of dumbells is all I count on. With such a low bar, and adjusting my routine to comply with this minimal equipment, I was bummed to find the weights missing the 10lb dumbells altogether, and only having one 15. Trying to maintain routine on the road is hard enough- it was disappointing to have to further adjust my already minimal Marriott workout further.
Honestly, if that were the only shortcoming, I doubt I'd have mentioned it at all. The toilet bowl having a leftover gift from the previous guest wasn't a nice welcome either but after flushing it myself I could see how that could have inadvertently happened; super low flow toilet required a full 2 flushes to evacuate fully. No problem really- just ya know- eh. However, the true cause of my review, after submitting a written concern to Marriott's corporate website, and now not hearing anything back since, I felt it may be necessary to let any potential guests know that their p.m. front desk staff may include a man who has clearly chosen the wrong line of work to pursue. Inhospitable is a tremendous understatement; the man was purposely attempting to be intimidating, and was incredibly disrespectful. I'd pass on this one folks. I'm thinking I may look into being a Hilton lady from...