Sarah D.
Yelp
Beyond disappointed with the service and staff at this property. Be very careful when booking. There is a $$ penalty for ANY change made to a reservation, after booking -- even a shortening of stay and even outside of their 14 day cancellation window.
My husband and I are both working professionals and travel often - we're very familiar with hotel bookings, loyalty programs, cancellation policies - you name it. We're also familiar with quality service - having both worked in heavy customer facing roles and marketing for a long time. We were looking forward to staying at 21 Broad for a baby moon in Nantucket before the arrival of our 2nd child. At the time of booking, I called and spoke with the front desk (Maggie) about the property, Nantucket, etc. I knew our dates might have to change by a night or two, but when speaking with Maggie, she assured me there was no risk in booking and changing things later, as long as we were outside of a 14 day cancellation policy. That seemed plenty reasonable and I moved forward with confirming our 5 night stay. A couple weeks later, I learned I needed to shorten our stay to just 3 nights. We were outside of the 14 day policy, so I called to make the change and Maggie then informed me that we'd be charged a 10% fee for the nights we were no longer staying. I requested that she have her manager call me the next day.
2 days later, I get a call from the 'supervisor' who accuses me of lying and shares with me how familiar his staff is with their booking policies and that they have a print out taped to the front desk reminding them (I'm glad he thinks the print out is so necessary -- sounds like a training issue to me). He asked me if I'd read their cancellation policy within our confirmation email. No -- I hadn't, because what I had done was taken the time to call the hotel - in advance of our booking - and discuss our booking/cancellation options, trusting that I was getting the right information from their staff. Mind you, outside of this change I made...we were still planning to spend 3 nights there. I could go on and on about how the phone call went on with the supervisor trying to justify over and over again why he wouldn't be releasing the fee...and how many of these calls he has to make every day/week (sounds like I'm not the only one this has happened to - maybe they should revisit the policy or how they inform of it). Rather - this property has a management problem and should really work on training it's staff to better inform travelers that don't read every bit of fine print AFTER booking. Not that it would have mattered had I even read it, since the policy allow NO CHANGES WITHOUT PENALTY -- evening a shortening of stay.
The experience left me in tears and incredibly disappointed. We will not be staying with 21 Broad next month, nor any Lark Property for that matter. If this is how they manage a customer experience before you even arrive, I have little faith that they're executing as well on site as the reviews state to date... Super disappointed and shame on you guys for ruining a weekend we were so looking forward to...all over a couple hundred bucks. If we can afford to stay at your property, we can certainly afford the fee, but what ever happen to principal? Maybe the customer isn't always right, though I've never run a business that way...