Fraudulent hotel
Fraudulent hotel
I made reservations for my family several months ago at the
Safari Garden Hotel in Puncak. I requested a suite with two
rooms, one for my husband and myself and another for our daughter
and her friend. Sri (Jakarta 769-1071) and Sri (Puncak 253000)
confirmed the availability of Singa 2 at Rp 80,000 per night (as
listed in the current rate sheet).
Safari Garden Hotel's brochure states that all rooms have hot
water and, by virtue that they state televisions are in all
rooms, one might expect that all rooms have electricity. This is
not the case. We checked in on Monday, Dec. 19, 1994 to find most
lamps not working and no water at all on one floor. Toilet sheets
were missing, and generally the rooms were substandard. We were
shown numerous other rooms including Duyung(s) where floors were
flooded, lamps did not work and animal feces were on the beds.
The staff brushed the feces onto the floor and declared the
sheets clean.
We proceeded to Zebra(s) where the first room we looked at had
no electricity at all. We stayed in the second because it was now
past midnight and the two small children were quite tired. None
of the rooms we inspected vaguely resembled the nicely furnished
rooms in the brochure. The front desk manager agreed that the
rate for our Zebra room (listed at Rp 110,000 in the current rate
sheet) would be provided to us at the same rate quoted for our
original room.
The room boy gave us breakfast "chit's" and warned us that
breakfast was only served from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. The next morning
we arrived for our "included breakfast buffet" at 8.15 a.m. --
and lo, habis! Breakfast was over. We ordered nasi goreng from
the menu (which is what we were told was on the buffet) but the
chits were no good when ordering from the menu even though they
removed the buffet early.
My husband went to the front desk to check out. The Zebra room
promised at RP 80,000, due to the staff's errors and the poor
condition of a dozen rooms, was now Rp 160,000 for our family.
That was double the promised rate and 50 percent higher than
their published rate.
No amount of reasoning did any good and the front desk staff
would not return my husband's passport until he paid the
outrageously fraudulent higher rate. And yes, we were required to
pay for our "included" breakfast in addition to the theft at the
front desk. When I requested the address of the owner of the
hotel, several employees refused to provide it. This renders it
impossible to inform him of the problems at the hotel in any
other way than an open letter to The Jakarta Post.
RUTH E. DAVIS
Jakarta