Hotel Five - A Staypineapple Hotel — Hotel in Seattle

Oh man, where to start with this one. So…. This had to be one of the most absurdly and hilariously bad customer service experiences I’ve ever encountered. I’m talking…to the point we thought it was some schtick the hotel had going, like those restaurants where the wait staff harass you or are mean and everyone is in on it including the patrons. Except in the case of Hotel Five, only the overnight front desk lady is in on it and her schtick is to be the least accommodating and helpful as possible while making you feel like an absolute idiot while doing it. Based on other comments here, we don’t seem to be alone in our encounter with the overnight front desk lady (I think her name was Neasey or Lacey?? She had black glasses)

My partner and I had a long drive from La Push and needed to stop in Seattle to sleep. Understandably, there weren’t many options nearing midnight. We called so many places and the staff were super empathetic but had no rooms. I then called the front desk at Hotel Five and asked if there were rooms available to which the conversation proceeded like this:

Her: “I’m not sure.” -awkwardly long pause- Ok. Weird response that I totally wasn’t expecting but I’m thinking she’s checking on rooms but she never indicated anything. Me: “uhm….” Her: “There was only a couple left last time I checked but I don’t know” Me: “Ah ok. Do you mind checking again? We are trying to book right now” Her: “There are a few rooms left (lists options and prices)” - she seems more annoyed at this point Me: “Ok! On your website it shows different prices” Her: “I can only tell you what’s in front of me. I don’t know what you’re looking at. Third party sites have different prices” Me: “Ok, well isn’t this your website…?” Her: “Yes. But again, I can only tell you what I’m seeing on my end. And either way, you can’t book with me. You need to book online.” Me: “Got it. Thank you.”

Anyway, we wander in and are in the middle of booking the room on the site but had questions. It was the same woman from the phone. She seemed annoyed we were there and explained that she shouldn’t have even let us in because we didn’t have a reservation currently booked. Ok. So, we ask her how to add the amenities fee as we both had to work remotely in the morning. The whole time we’re there she is looking down and doing other things and sighing when we ask for assistance booking online:

Her: “I don’t know. You have to read it. What does it say? Just read it and it should tell you”

At this point, my partner who is the most gentle, even-tempered person got a bit fed up -

Him: “How is that at all helpful? Listen, I’m sorry but we’re both really tired and have been driving a long time. We don’t know this city and just want a little help with this process” Her: “I don’t know the website. You’re looking at it now. You have to book online”

Cool.

My partner and I both come from customer service backgrounds and were pretty floored by this. If we weren’t so deliriously tired, we probably would have just laughed in the moment but we were mostly just stunned into silence. We most definitely laughed about it as soon as we got to our room though.

The rooms were just ok but very underwhelming for the price (but, hey, we were booking last minute so that’s on us). One of the lamps didn’t work but everything else seemed fine. Wi Fi worked well enough for us to work in the morning. The morning staff seemed very friendly. We did get a laugh out of the entire experience but it was absolutely bizarre. Like, why not just have an AI/self service overnight if you can’t book onsite or get any help with navigating the site? What’s even the purpose of her being there at that point? I understand if your policy is booking online at night for safety reasons. But why not explain that to potential guests and walk us through the process? It’s not within the norm or readily intuitive to anyone who isn’t on staff… It was like she didn’t want any more guests to stay there.

Anyway, that was...

Alright, so the location we loved. 12-13 min walk to Pike Place, same to the Space Needle. Staff were very nice and welcoming. Loved the free pineapple shaped cookies, loved water refill station (though the sparkling water tasted BITTER and nasty and the Hot water wasn't very hot. Also refilling a bottle TAKES FOREVER). Loved the complimentary drink at check in.

Unfortunately, there were some glaring issues that made me not entirely satisfied with our stay.

The A/C Heater--when put into heating mode, it makes a loud clicking noise every few seconds. One night, it I felt cold so I turned it on and had a hard time falling back asleep due to the loud clicking noise.

Speaking of noise, we got a second story room facing Blanchard. The bus noises driving by were VERY LOUDLY audible even through closed windows and blinds. This was throughout the night and into the early mornings.

Continuing with noise: our first night, another group on our floor had a drunken brawl or something (LOUD ANGRY YELLING, SLAMMING DOORS, KNOCKING STUFF DOWN, ETC.) This went on for almost an hour and we could hear everything down the hallway. Seattle PD eventually came and told them to quiet down.

Third night: Another group checks into our floor at 2:30AM. They were talking loudly, opening and closing doors, knocking on doors, going back and forth between different rooms. For a solid hour, we had to listen to this. We called front desk to complain, they said someone would be up to talk to the other guests but we did not hear anyone coming up. (We would have heard this, we could hear every knock). Meaning the front desk did not follow up with our issue.

Look, I understand you can't really judge a hotel based on other guests' behavior, but it shows you the level of soundproofing that these rooms have (which is pretty much none). And I guess it says something about the type of people this hotel might attract (young and drunk).

LEAKS IN THE BATHROOM: the shower door SUCKS at containing the water in the shower. We stepped out into a giant puddle on the bathroom floor after every shower; which we had to clean up using the FEW PRECIOUS Towels they give you (it's not a lot, seriously don't be stingy with towels). 1 full sized towel per person for a 5 night stay is not enough, especially when we need towels to clean up bathroom floors from leaky showers and toilets). Not everyone likes to have housekeeping do a turnover during their stay, we certainly do not because we value our privacy and we want to minimize chances of theft, but we had no choice because we were out of towels and toilet paper.

One day I was going number 2, I look down and I see a puddle growing around the bottom of the toilet. There was a small leak between the seal of the toilet with the bathroom floor.

The bathroom door is a sliding door, ours took SO MUCH FORCE TO OPEN it once it was closed, we pretty much never closed it during our stay because of this.

The lobby is supposed to have complimentary coffee out but one morning it wasn't out at 9:30AM, checked again around Noon and still no coffee.

They gave us only 2 rolls of toilet paper for a 5 night stay, and when the room was turned over they did not provide any new rolls. Had to call front desk to ask for more toilet paper.

Lastly, there is an extra $25 a day in resort fees, but what is that for? Why not bake that into the per night price?

Felt like this hotel is trying very hard but I would not stay here again given all...

Beford leaving Florida, we had called the hotel to set up a pre-authorization form in order to pay for the hotel in advance in which we were told that you had to do it five days Before check-in date to pay in advance, which We were unaware of, the lady on the phone was super helpful and able to put this through so we had filled out a pre-authorization form on the phone. She had mentioned that the payment would go through within 24 hours after receiving the form. that being said, I thought check-in was going to be super easy, and I was gonna have no issues upon arrival however, they had mentioned that there was an issue with the system, and the payment hadn’t gone through.I didn’t know about this, until after I had arrived a long day of travel, I was asked for a card for a deposit and incidentals and I was extremely exhausted, I only had a Canadian debit card which didn’t have enough money on it to secure the room. The lady at the front desk was pretty short with me due to this incident, and I felt very confused with the whole thing as I had not heard about the payment not going through prior to arrival, which made check in very difficult, and I was almost debating staying at another hotel because it was just so hard to get everything through. My mom had also, trying to figure out what was going on while the lady at the front desk was on hold with IT as the system had gone down again while I was there, so there was no way that I was able to pay for it. There was significant issues with the card for some reason I couldn’t tap anything and I of course did not have the physical card as it is not in my name, which made this very difficult the person my mom spoke to was also very short and snippy with her on the phone so both of the people that we had talked to we had a poor experience with , the level of professionalism and mannerism, trying to figure this out as I didn’t realize that this was going to happen and I know that it wasn’t her fault and there was nothing that she could do about it at that time I just had had a very long day was really hungry and super tired and I just didn’t really know what was going on. This made it difficult for me to check into the hotel. However, once it all worked out after about 45 minutes of waiting at the front desk she just checked me in with out payment at that time because it was taking so long for the system to Reboot so I ended up being able to get into my room. The room itself is beautiful super bright. The beds are super comfortable, and I really did have a good sleep, especially with the location being so close to the clipper ferry terminal. It made it for an easy departure and an easy way for me to get home the next morning but later in the evening, I did find stains and certain things on the bedding such as pen and what looks like wax I’m not sure what it was but because at that point, I was going to bed I didn’t call down as I had already spent a significant amount of time in the room and I was leaving super early the next day and was pretty focussed on my ferry and then once I got home, I just been working a ton and back to school and every day life so I haven’t had a chance to call. Other then the significant issues with check in and coming in blind sighted about the payment issue I had a good night and the free drink was nice to enjoy with some dinner. I definitely would love to stay again sometime when i am...