The Westin Lake Mary, Orlando North — Hotel in Sanford

We had reserved 2 rooms online for some guests to stay in. I had purchased the rooms ahead of time and put a card on file with the reservation. The reservation was listed under one of our business partners names even though he was not the one staying there as he has a rewards account with Marriott. We have done this several times in the past with no issue. When our guests arrived they were told they would need to put a card on file for incidentals since the card on the reservation was only for room and tax. This is something other guests have had to so they put a personal card on file and were insured it was just a hold and nothing would be charged to her account. After their stay however, she had been charged for both of the rooms. She contacted the hotel and was told that because she was not the person who the room was booked under, they had to charge her card instead. Let me reiterate that we have done this many times with many other guests and NEVER had this happen. I got in contact with the hotel and was told I would need to sign a credit card release form so the charges could be put on the original card booked with and our guest could get refunded. I explained on the phone the situation and why I was confused because we have never had this issue and because no one even attempted to contact us about the rooms. If they were worried that someone was checking in under our reservation, I would hope they would reach out to the person whose name is on the reservation to confirm that someone isn't stealing their room. The manager was incredibly short and dismissive with me and kept saying this has always been their policy even though, again, we had NEVER had this happen or even heard of this being a thing. Once that was done, it would take 3-5 business days and she would get her refund. After the form was signed, our guest had called the hotel several times trying to get an update on her refund but she was constantly given the runaround. I then reached out directly and was given the runs, having to call 5 different times (including one call where they straight up hung up with me after 10 minutes on hold) to talk to someone. They then continue to give me the run around saying the manager was in meetings or with a guest, etc and would call me back. I would never receive a call back. At this point, it had been almost 3 weeks of total silence on the hotel's part and I was told there was literally only one person I could talk to about this (the manager who was rude from before). When the refund was finally processed, they still managed to mess it up by only refunding her for 1 of the 2 rooms and refunding the rest to the wrong credit card. This situation has been incredibly frustrating and completely ridiculous. This situation would have totally been avoided had someone just called the number on the original reservation to confirm that the people checking in under our reservation were the correct people. I don't know how we were expected to know that there was a form that had to be filled out to charge the card on the reservation and again we have gotten rooms for people under a different many times in the past and not once has anyone ever said anything about this form or had an issue like this. The complete lack of care and transparency through this process was abissimal. It should not take two people 3 weeks of consistent calling to get a response from someone (which came as an email NOT a call). Absolutely infuriating that it took that long and they still manage to do it wrong. We will no longer be partnering with them and sending our guests here in the future. And this is for the manager specifically: Your total lack of care in this situation was ridiculous. If you are the only one who can handle issues like this as I was told, you should hire someone else. It is abundantly clear that you cannot handle these situations 1. in a timely manner and 2. with any sort of understanding and empathy. You had every opportunity to make this situation right. This is a failing on YOUR part and YOU need to take...

Attention to detail is every thing and this hotels staff consistently misses the mark. For one, they don't honor the terms and conditions of the Elite Status welcome gift requirement for Platinum members. The Marriott site states that you have a choice of "1000 points or breakfast for two". In Westin properties. The manager, Anthony, told me that they don't have to honor that and that we could have 500 points or a $5 meal credit. I ask if we would be penalized if we moved across the street to the Marriott and was told that they would give me meal vouchers for breakfast. I shouldn't have to push the point on this issue....wrong start to the weekend but that was only the beginning. I shouldn't have pushed breakfast. The sun shines into the restaurant and directly into the buffet area in the AM. This illumination is like putting a black light on a bed in a hotel. The cabinets were the buffet is served are filthy, smudged with food splatter and finger prints. Some of the fruit was over-ripened, all the bread was stale, the bacon was under cooked and the scrambled eggs were soupy. The waiter told us that instant eggs are almost always soupy and they could make us some fresh cracked eggs instead There was a sign for vegetables which never appeared and though the restaurant had just opened the food was mostly lukewarm to cold. I think the potatoes were from another day as they had that taste. We asked that the room be cleaned between 9am-Noon because we had our dog. "no problem, we'll send someone up now" When we came back at 1:45pm, The room had not been cleaned. We ordered room service twice. The first time they didn't have what we ordered and instead delivered us some coffee with no food. The second order we requested cocktail & tarter sauce with our seafood and got neither....Marinara sauce was delivered instead. At the entrance of the resort on both sides of the sliding doors are two large trash receptacles on the outside and one on the inside ALL were overflowing with trash as well as trashed stacked around the bottom of them at 9pm, 5am and at 7:45am. I told the front desk about this and it was finally cleaned up. The one in the lobby is easily within an eye-shot of the front desk, no excuses. Front desk staff get out from behind that desk and clean out those trashcans. I think they must think "that's not my job" When we returned to the hotel after an event, there was literally NO parking in the front or back of the hotel. I called the hotel and the phone rang and rang, I drove around for 25 minutes until I could identify someone leaving and snagged their spot...I'm not sure if it was in the Westin or the McDonald's parking lot. I hope my car is there when we leave. It appeared that a lot of unchaperoned teenagers were here. We heard them screaming and laughing well into the night and morning. There is a newly refurbished Marriott across the street. I checked with them this morning and I will not have any of the Elite Status Loyalty programs issues there and will stay there when we return next week. Most of the staff is uninspired, they simply don't pay attention to the needs of their Guests, they say "no problem" and they don't follow through.. If they knew the lot was full, they should have had a hotel representative at the entrance assisting. If they knew a Guest had a service failure, a manager should have checked in to make sure that the situation was turned around. The leadership here needs to be trained or replaced at the very least the GM should be fired to send the right message to the staff that this behavior is intolerable. It's sloppy and not worthy of the Marriott family of hotels...

This was not a good visit. I travel all over the world and I have stayed in many great and not so great properties. This was a beautiful property riddled with issues.

There was no water available for showers or toilet when we arrived. We weren't informed of this by the front desk; we learned of it by reading a paper shoved in the door. I had been traveling all day... this was not welcome news. It appears the water was turned off intentionally for testing or some kind of planned system work, but had I known that, I'd have stayed somewhere else. We generally arrive very late at hotels.

Next, the refrigerator in the room didn't work, but we didn't realize it until the next morning. We had medication which had to stay cold and left it in the refrigerator only to discover it got warm.

To add insult to injury the small digital display of our air conditioning control panel was distorted and only showed partial digits; we were unable to set the temperature correctly. We realized this a few hours later when we woke up, sweating.

The clock in the room had a night light feature on it which was impossible to turn off. Only some of the buttons worked on the unit. It appeared to be damaged. That's probably why we couldn't shut the light off.

This became a problem at 5:00AM when an alarm started going off on the clock. No combination of button pushing on the damaged unit would make the unit be silent. I finally had to get up and unplug it from the wall, which wasn't easy, as the cord was tracked behind the built in night stand.

The second night of our stay the WIFI was turned off for some reason; testing, again, or something to that effect. (Sigh.)

When it was finally time to leave (thank goodness) after the second night of our stay, I went down in the early AM to check out and have some documents printed, but I could not find anyone behind the desk. I called the main hotel number from my cell phone, standing there in the lobby, and could hear the phone ringing for over a minute. No one came. I started attempting to use the printer and computers in the small business area by the front desk. Although the printer was connected, I was not able to print my document. This was after, of course, I went through the laborious process of emailing myself the document from my computer, logging in and then opening the email on the business center computer, and finally selecting the "print" option, except nothing...