The Colonies at Williamsburg — Hotel in Williamsburg

IMPORTANT PLEASE READ IT ALL BEFORE GOING THERE : We came in around 9pm and was welcomed by Jahuya at front desk who send us to a first unit. After getting there I could hear people inside and our key card wouldn't work. I called from there and told the agent Jahuya that the card wasn't working and I could hear people in the unit. She told me to comeback to the front desk and that there was no one inside and she would re-do the keys. I told again agent Jahuya I could hear people in the unit and she double-check and said there was no-one and gives us new card keys. . Going a second time the card wouldn't open the door and Wali (maintenance-security guy) was in the parking lot and I asked him to come. He knocked harder on the door and people were affraid and said it was there unit. Wally was nice enough to call front desk and spoke with supervisor Jadis who he asked her to give him the number of an empty unit he could open us to put our grocery in as we were waiting for approx 1 hour going back and forth to the front desk. She refused to give him another unit number and we had to go a third time to the front desk. Supervisor Jadis then started in front of my wife and daughter to tell us it was miscommunication and it was a new system. We had to wait another 10-15 minutes for her to find another unit. Going a third time we got to the new unit and there were people inside AGAIN !!!! We had to go back to the front desk a FORTH time. We waited again another 10-15 minutes to get new key cards and this time she send us to a unit at the far end of the property finally with nobody in the unit and we were able to get in after a 2 hours and 4 times total check-in period. I travel everywhere in North America and never encoutered that in my whole life. Supervisor Jadis said she would refund the $30 property fee that was charge coming in and to come on Monday to speak with a manager.

On Monday I went to the front desk and spoke to Jocelyn, front office manager. She couldn't believe that after the first time the staff didn't made sure to send us to an empty unit. I only asked to have the $299 exchange fee to be refunded. She said she would ask the general manager and comeback to us. I have to say that she was really empathetic and really felt that she took full mesure of what happened. She check the system and said neither Jahuya nor Jadis had made the first $30 propety refund and she would do it right now.

With no news on Wednesday, I came back to front desk and spoke to another front desk manager lady who I unfortunatly didn't wrote her name down. I told her that the $30 wasn't even refunded yet and she said they were having problement with the system. She did finaly refunded it and said to comeback the next day that Jocelyn would be there. She also said that Jahuya and Jadis had told her I was rude to them. At that point I could believe my ears. Not only they didn't left any notes to have no trace of the 4 times check-in but they lied to their manager to cover their mistakes.

I came back on Thursday and told the story to Jocelyn who told me that Keith Marr, general mangaer would call us during the day as he was the only one able to refund a $299 for all the inconvinience as she could only refund the 24 credits ....... that still today hasn't been refunded after 2 weeks.

In the meantime since our arrival we had 2 different nights to call security once night it was around 1am and the other night it was around midnight for the unit on top of us making our roof shake.

Friday, we came to see Jocelyn on our last day and told us Keith Marr would call us back today. When we finaly left on Saturday morning, she said again he would call us during the day...... and never did.

I am 46 years old and it's the first online bad review I leave of all my life but at this point I think it was important for people looking to go there to know. We are limited here with leght or review but feel free to write to full version on Tripadvisor.com to get a better idea why...

Before I mention the drama with customer service (they charged us three separate transactions without our permission + and didn’t try to fix it or help ) I’ll leave my thoughts on the units /property first . Over all this outdated resort is no better than your average hotel .

We used two units . One unit had a weird musky dirty hotel smell , the toilet didn’t flush half the time , and the DVD player would not work .

The other unit smelled neutral but the ac didn’t cool off the unit well, it remained stuffy and almost toasty . I imagine once the heat picks up it will be miserable .

The parking is not assigned , it’s first come first serve . One of the units we used had only two spots for the whole building because all the other spots were handicap spaces . Parking spaces are cramped up and half the time all the close spots are taken . The over flow parking was a few buildings + a walk away - not convenient when you have to bring in luggage or reload it to leave town, not good for those with little kids . They gave us a parking pass but we saw no one else use one for some reason . Normal hotel parking is much easier ,

The towels feel like sandpaper , my husband went to Target to grab us a few that weren’t gross feeling . No blisters please !

Walls are thin , you can hear the unit next to you easily . There was an older couple next to us and we could hear them loud and clear …they probably heard our kids as well. (We were not there much except to sleep ) I’m sure it would stink to have college kids or a louder family next to you .

There were some weird stains on the bar soap holder in one of the bathrooms .

I’d suggest bringing your own hand soap and dish soap as well because all that is supplied is a micro sized generic brand of bar soap . One of the units didn’t come with dish soap , the other unit did . We also brought our own cleaning supplies .

The bedding is very thin and doesn’t keep you warm , not very soft or comfortable.

Also, you might want to bring some dvds for the kids because there was nothing on tv that my 7,8,+ 11 year olds liked . The tv channel selection wasn’t good for adults either .

The good part about this location is that there is a Starbucks 1-2 minutes up the road on the same road , Target is maybe 10 minutes or so . away. (The location closest is better than the one by the big highway, there’s two. ) It was only a 10 minute drive from Jamestown Settlement and one hour to the Richmond science museum .

Now ..about that bit of drama, we had prepaid in FULL before we came, the service desk girl kept telling my husband it was a deposit for some reason . This definitely gave us red flags . . We asked if we could stay one extra night last minute so all we had to do was pay for ONE night + the $20 fee. The girl working the service desk charged us three separate transactions for it - well over $500. We don’t have that kind of money laying around usually .Before we left the next day I double checked that my husband was aware . He went back inside and showed them the transactions, the girl on that day had to call over a coworker and neither of them knew how to fix it or what to do . They told my husband the manager would call him in one hour . We still haven’t heard back from anyone in the company and will probably have to get the credit card company to step in and reject two of those transactions . This situation, wich sounded a lot like the first worker was being shady and trying to steal , was not handled well. We were ignored and lied to . My husband is nice and they probably thought they could walk all over them, I regret not going on there myself because they wouldn’t have pulled the same stunts on me .

If you have a large family it’s probably worth the $160 price , but the prices will double once tourist season kicks in and it isn’t worth it . This wasn’t worth the price tag for an average size family , this is $100...

Be advised for those thinking about the timeshare presentation

I signed up on a kiosk in a home and garden show to when a Lowe's gift card for $200. Next thing you know I'm getting a call saying that I won the card, but that I also won a vacation. As the conversation went on, of course there were more stipulations added and it became clear this was a timeshare situation (even though they say they aren't...). It turned out it wasn't even a Lowe's gift card, nor $200, but as we had family in the area and the representative said all we had to do was listen to a presentation for 60- 90 minutes and "tell people about us" and yes she repeated that twice, I decided it would be ok to go (my husband had sold the marketing for blue/green so he explained how this worked later). I also asked her if I could bring my 1-year-old which she said was fine because it was family friendly. Later in the email they said the presentation was 90-120 minutes and the stipulations but again seemed doable. I expected them to try to sell, be persistent, and to listen to someone explain around an hour and a half.

I am writing this review because there were several things that just do not sit right with me. First of all they went over in time, two separate people spoke to us after they found out we were absolutely not getting this "timeshare" and we were there for 2 and 1/2 hours. At the beginning our representative, Brenda, was saying she's at no pressure person etc. she changed when she realized that we were really not going to be buying anything and she started making comments about how she should have " called out from work today," " I just knew it was going to be a weird day," and got a attitude. But what really got me was when she started saying that we could be the reason somebody lost their job and that we shouldn't have done this to anybody... It's not our problem that your marketing team said what they said to get us here or that you chose to work your job that you knew people had a choice whether to buy or not. She also got frustrated several times when we were redirected to our son, he's one so we have to watch him closely, literally he got a hold of a half a crayon luckily he brought it from me but that could have turned out really poorly... The staff was nice and joked around with him but still.At one point our representative asked me to repeat something she had said to make sure I was paying attention, which came off incredibly patronizing. She said she had to keep us for the 2 hours because that was her job even though it said 90 minutes in the email and was frustrated when her boss said we couldn't leave. If everyone is expected to be there two hours say that. At one point my husband tried to speak with the manager Travis and was told to sit down and it didn't work that way... Again, I know they have to do their jobs to tell us about vacation village and that they were going to try to sell things. But the lack of respect about time and the comments were unnecessary, and frankly if anyone was interested in buying something like this and reading this review or even mentioned it to me I would tell them to look anywhere but here after this experience. We may have not bought a package, but when you treat your marketing folks poorly, it still shows the kind of quality you guys are as a company and it certainly did not make a...