NEVER STAYING HERE AGAIN.
Context: We are two young women from the U.S. who stayed for six nights.
When I first booked the hotel, I called to ensure the bedding was feather-free, as my best friend and I are both very allergic to feather pillows and comforters. I was assured that we were getting a feather-free room. The morning before we checked in, I called again to ensure we had feather-free bedding, and I was assured we did. Then, at check-in, I asked the front desk staff if it was feather-free, and I was once again assured that it was. Once we arrived at our room (after being told to use the wrong elevator bank and had to go back down to the lobby and walk to an entirely different elevator bank), to our surprise, the pillows and bedding were, in fact, NOT feather-free. After trying to call down to the lobby using the phone in the room (which did not work), I had to physically return to the front desk to ask them to please bring feather-free bedding.
The rooms were pretty beat up. There were scratches on the walls, missing corners of walls (as they had been damaged), and scratched pots.
On our first day (Sunday…the night after we checked in), we asked housekeeping to clean the room. They did a fine job but ate some of the snacks we had left out in the kitchen. We were both very weirded out, making us both uncomfortable.
On Wednesday night (we checked out on Friday), we asked for a late checkout at 2 p.m. The gentleman who helped us was very kind and assured us that this was not an issue and that we would not be charged an additional fee.
Come Friday at around 1:45 p.m., we two young women were zipping up our bags and changing into our clothes to go to the airport when a man from housekeeping (without knocking) opened the front door. We immediately got dressed and opened the door. He was standing directly in front of our room. We said that we had until 2 p.m. to check out and to please wait until then, and we were met with attitude. We were also given no apology for opening the door on us.
At 2:05 p.m., we were at the front desk and were told, with attitude, that we owed a fee for checking out late because “we were supposed to check out at 11 a.m.” We both calmly (while also confused) communicated to the person checking us out that we were told on Wednesday night that we were given late checkout without a fee. After several minutes of back-and-forth (with much attitude), it was agreed that we would not pay the late fee.
We would have happily paid if we had known of the late checkout fee on Wednesday night. Instead, we were told that it was free, and then this fee was sprung on us with disrespect and attitude.
I want to clarify that the majority of the front desk and cleaning staff were lovely and very kind. We were happy to see familiar faces and say hello throughout our trip.
We are already planning our next trip to Berlin and will not stay here again. This is unfortunate, given the convenient location, access to transportation, and many nearby attractions.