andy966's dashboard

I have always believed that the Marriott corporation was all about Customer Service until the experience I had this past Memorial day. I had booked reservations at one of their properties called the Renaissance-Esmeralda Resort in Indian Well, CA. Had some good reviews so I thought we give it a try. I called them to make reservations and I booked 2 double bed rooms. I actually made sure that they were going to have 2 double bed rooms since we have a party of 8 people, 6 Adults and 2 kids. The reservation agent said that would not be a problem.
So we drive the 2 hours to get there and find out that they are out of double bed rooms and that they can only provide 1 and 1 king sized bed room. Hmm.. 8 people sleeping on 3 beds. Not sure how that would work. It also turns out that several other people at the front desk line had the same problem and they were voicing their frustrations as well. So the front desk clerk disappeared for about 5 minutes to return with 2 letters and told us that we can go to their sister property the JW Marriott-Desert Spgs Resort‎ and that she had already called them for us and they will have 2 double bed rooms waiting for us. I thought, "Ok, that was very nice of them to at least try to accommodate us." So off we go to the Marriott only to find out that no one called the Marriott and verified the 2 double bed rooms and that they only had 1 double bed room as well. The manager that came over to give us this news seemed didn't bother to apologize nor did he seem empathetic to our needs. I wasn't being a difficult customer nor did I ever raise my voice or demand anything. I am the VP of customer service for an internet company so I would only treat others the way I would want to be treated. So I stated my situation and implored with the manager to help us out. But he just simply stated that he could not help us regardless of the situation since we did not reserve the rooms with their property. I pointed out that regardless of the property, he represented the company that booked us the rooms. He just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "not my problem." I asked him if he could at least then provide 2 king sized rooms and 1 double room. He immediately said "NO!", without a thought. Then after a few minutes of him looking on his computer, he finally told us he would give us a king sized room with a foldout sofa. Since I didn't have much of a choice, I agreed and took the 2 rooms.
So my 3 frustrations are:
1. Overbooking at the Renaissance
2. Lying to us about calling the Marriott and verifying the rooms
3. Lack of empathy for our situation
I will have to think twice now before booking another stay with this company, but I can say that I will never book rooms with the Renaissance-Esmeralda again.

First, my wife and I were big fans of Boomers since we have 2 kids that are 6 and 8 and have had a Birthday party there a couple of years ago.
However, our recent experience with Boomers was not great, actually it was pretty bad.
1. Your party coordinator didn't seem to be thoroughly trained at her job. She really wasn't sure what she was supposed to do next and only brought out part of our food order and didn't know there was more until we brought this to her attention.
2. The bag of tokens we bought was labeled 450 and during the process of dividing the tokens, we realized there was less than 350 tokens actually in the bag.
3. About 1/4th of your game machines in the arcade do not work.
4. The laser tag arena seems old and run down. You only have 9 working vests which look like they have never been cleaned and the actual arena looks like it hasn't been vacuumed in months. There was only 1 person working this area and he really didn't have a clue as to how to run this area.
5. Your soda machines were all empty or out of order that day and your concession stand line took 30 minutes to get some soda. From what I could see, the people behind the counter were poorly trained and understaffed.
6. The girl behind the prize counter was much more interested in chatting with her male co-worker than helping us find prizes for the kids.

I do not think that I will ever return to the Irvine Boomers again after this experience nor will I ever recommend this location to people I know until things get better.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully this will result in things getting better.

United changed gates on me for my flight back from SFO to Santa Ana without notice. I almost missed my flight.