We are currently on another road trip to Colorado. We are attempting to climb and summit a few mountains, but we also want to explore different areas we may want to move to.
Since we have been going on so many trips lately, I have been looking for different ways to save money. I am a personal finance blogger after all, so that only makes sense.
So, I found a place the other day. We have been booking everything as we go, and since it was Labor Day weekend, nearly everything was already sold out or extremely overpriced. I found a hotel for $80 a night, and we only wanted to stay there for two nights. Our total damage was $160.
It was a great price when compared to the other places I found in the area for Labor Day weekend.
However, the cheap price was the only good thing about this place. Being cheap though can cost you money. Below are some of the bad things about the place we paid for:
- The room smelled very bad. Like a dead person… I wish I was exaggerating but it is the truth. We couldn’t breathe because it was so bad and at one point I even had to put my shirt over my nose.
- The room next door had their door wide open. My dog almost ran inside, so I peaked in and I was horrified. It was filled almost to the ceiling with trash bags and garbage. There was also a crazy pile of shoes that was around four feet high and six feet wide.
- There was a blood stain and splatters about a foot wide on the carpet right in the middle of our room. It was impossible to miss.
- There were multiple hairs all over the bed and on the pillows. This means nothing was washed or cleaned when we went in.
- There were BIG stains all over the bed. Talk about wanting to barf everywhere.
- The fridge in the room had food stains all over it. It was absolutely disgusting.
- The pillows were stained yellow.
- There were multiple brown stains on the wall.
- The door and window both did not lock. This was scary considering I would be working from the room a lot alone since Wes had plans to do other things.
- We saw several other people enter their room, only to leave seconds later and not come back.
- They claimed they had good wifi, but there was not a single person at the hotel and I still couldn’t get a single thing to load. Keep in mind this is important because I work from my laptop.
- They also claimed they were pet friendly, but when we arrived I noticed that there was no grass. When I asked the person at the front desk, she said there was a park just right around the corner that we could go to with no problem. Well, it turned out the park was four looooong blocks down a busy street and there was no sidewalk there. This meant I had to walk four blocks down a busy street with two dogs and then cross this busy street where there were no sidewalks (not even a curb), streetlights, stop signs, or anything. That is just too dangerous and mean for me to do to my dogs multiple times a day.
- Lastly, someone claimed they saw a ghost in their room and they panicked. Haha this still makes me laugh but it made me wonder what kind of crazy people were at this hotel.
Wow, it’s just scary writing about everything we saw in the one hour we were there.
We checked in, left to grab something to eat, got back to the room and immediately started finding another place to stay.
At first, I was extremely upset that I prepaid for this place. However, since this was a “vacation,” staying in a place where we literally wanted to throw up just wasn’t going to work.
I found another hotel and booked it as soon as I could. I then walked into the front desk to the gross hotel we were at and checked out immediately.
And this is how being cheap backfired on me. I didn’t want to spend an extra $50 a day in order to stay somewhere “normal” and instead I ended up wasting $160 and a few hours because we couldn’t bare to stay in that hotel for more than a few hours.
I know there are others who are fine with staying anywhere and they only care about having a place to sleep, but I just could not do it. I thought about it for a slight second just because of the money I’d be wasting, but then I realized how crazy that sounded.
Luckily enough, the person checking me in at the next hotel asked where we just came from and how our day was. I explained our horrific story and how I was so glad that they had room for us at their much better hotel. He said he could NOT BELIEVE where we came from and that he knew we must have been horrified because we were actually not the first person who did the exact same thing we did (check in at the bad hotel, only to leave and go to his hotel). He then said he added a discount to our stay and that it was no problem. I told him he didn’t need to but he insisted. Isn’t that awesome?!
Anyway, here are my tips to avoid making a costly mistake like I just did. Being cheap can cost you money!
Read the reviews.
I am a serial review reader, so I can honestly say that I read numerous reviews about this hotel. The reviews weren’t the greatest, but it sounded like a lot of people were just used to luxury hotels so I ignored them.
OH MY GOD was that a huge mistake.
From now on, I will always trust bad reviews, especially when there are a ton of them.
Compare the pricing.
The other hotels in the area were about $50 more per night. I thought I didn’t want to spend that, so that was the main reason we booked the BAD BAD BAD hotel.
In the end, the $50 extra per night was well worth it.
We received a clean room, a fantastic dog walking area and even a trail along a river to walk our dogs, fast wi-fi, breakfast in the mornings that was actually good, good customer service, and more. We also feel much safer here.
Think about how badly you want to save money.
I thought that since it was only two days, that I wouldn’t really care about how cheap the place was. I thought for $80, that the hotel couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, because $80 still isn’t dirt cheap. Considering I’ve stayed in nice hotels in the Caribbean and Florida for around $100 a night, I thought an $80 hotel would be somewhere near average.
Nope, I was wrong. I couldn’t make it an hour so there was no way I would have been able to make it two days.
I didn’t want the savings that bad and I realized that once we arrived at the hotel. This hotel should have been no where near $80 a night. I think it should have been one of those $29.95 highway motels that I often see.
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Oh good lord that sounds like a horror movie. We stayed in some rather dingy $40/50 motels through the US and even a caravan park once 😀 but all were pretty decent, definitely nothing to complain about even at the price. I would have done the same in your situation! BLOOD!
Yeah it was disgusting. The smell in the room was worse than the huge blood stain too 🙁
Wow, I am so sorry! I always check yelp… I find that it’s the most trusty site.
This place didn’t have that many reviews, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I’m still grossed out just thinking about it!
Ahh what a terrible experience!
Being cheap has occasionally backfired for me, usually in the form of transportation. A few times I’ve opted for the mega-cheap coach option instead of flying or getting the train.It seems like a good idea to save £20 on the travel at first but very quickly being stuck on an uncomfortable coach for an extra 6 hours just isnt worth the saved cash.
Yeah I’d rather get their faster and spend a little extra money.
Wow, what an awful experience. It’s a surprise a place like that is still in business.
I had a negative experience once, no where near as bad as what you’ve described, but bad enough to convince me that going cheap on accommodation is not the way to go.
Yeah, I still cannot believe that this place is in business still!
Wow! Blood stains on the carpet?? I would have been out there!
This is just another example of when sometimes paying a little more is worth it. We had a similar experience when we had to go to a wedding in Tennessee. The hotel room was so bad that my wife and I refer to it as our “camping” experience.
Haha we actually debated getting out our camping gear and staying in that. However, Wes didn’t want his camping gear to touch the floor so we decided against it!
Yeah, I plan on disputing it. The person at the hotel said “no refunds” even though it was absolutely unfit for anyone to sleep in and we were there for less than an hour.
That’s terrible. Hotels are one of the places I don’t skimp for this reason!
Yeah, we usually don’t skimp, but there weren’t many options since we have our two dogs with us.
Even over Labor Day weekend $80 should still get you an okay hotel especially if you pre-pay. You don’t need to stay at fancy places. Rustic is fine but that place is unacceptable. I would definitely start with the credit card company and if that didn’t work move on to the BBB or the state attorney general. Or, call the hotel and let them know that they can give you a refund or you will call the police and let them know of the drug activity you saw there. Frankly it sounds like a place fit to lose their occupancy permit/business license.
We once ended up stuck at a hotel where the hot tub was private and you had to reserve it by the hour. Online reviews are so hard because there are the people who lose their marbles if for $80 they don’t get The Ritz. The upside is that it’s a hell of an entertaining story you’ll laugh about for years to come.
Oh this reminds me of a similar experience in NJ that I had many years ago; think Charles Manson look alike running the hotel, stains, torn curtains, smells and termites. Ugh. I’m so glad that you were able to find another place to stay!
Ugh that is so gross!
Agreed, going cheap definitely has its risks. But I would be sad if experiences like this scared people away from ever trying to save money (some of my spender friends would use this as an excuse to stay in 5 star hotels!). It’s good to set boundaries so you don’t spend too much, but likewise your story probably also shows that it may be beneficial to also set boundaries on minimums? For example, some minimums might be not to compromise safety (if a hotel is located in a dangerous area of town) or not to disregard terrible reviews like you mentioned (a few bad ones might be OK but the majority should be positive)? Glad you were safe and comfortable in the end! 🙂
Yeah, I definitely would not be against an $80 hotel is the future. There are other things to think about though. I should have been more realistic than thinking I could get an $80 liveable hotel in a mountain town!
That sounds horrible! With sites like Trip Advisor how do those places stay in business? I love when people take pictures and leave blunt reviews so I know what I’m getting into.
I know, I should have trusted the TripAdvisor reviews. There weren’t that many though (like 5 in the past 12 months), so I didn’t really know what to expect.
Ugh!!! This sounds awful!! I worked for a hedge fund a few years back that owned a hotel and I learned a lot about the hotel industry during those years and I thoroughly examine all of my choices before I make them because of that. I find that Trip Advisor has great feedback on most places. They certainly had honest feedback on my former hotel.
Yeah, I religiously read TripAdvisor, but there weren’t that many reviews so I didn’t really know what to expect. Surprisingly, it was about 50/50 when it came to bad reviews and good ones.
Yuck. This looks TERRIBLE! I’m so sorry you guys had to go through this experience. Would DEF give these guys a bad write-up, also. I think my worst experience was choosing a cheaper airline. It was late, disorganized, and just a huge pain in the butt. Needless to say, that airline never got a penny from us after that! Hope this doesn’t ruin your entire trip and you are both back to having a blast soon!
It only ruined our trip for about one hour LOL. Life is good now! We are in Vail at a super nice hotel 🙂
I would have done the same thing. The money would be the least of my worries at that point. What I like to do before booking a hotel is pull their address up in Google Maps and switch to street view to scope out the neighborhood. It won’t help determine the condition of the room but I think you’ll find it useful since the creepier hotels are usually in the more run down neighborhoods (and in this case you’d at least see whether there’s any dog friendly areas nearby).
Yeah, we should have done that. I completely forgot to do that in this case!
Oh gross, I wouldn’t have been able to stay there, either! I don’t blame you for leaving. It sucks when being cheap backfires, though. Quality does matter, especially when it comes to where you’ll be sleeping. I also don’t deal well with bad smells :/.
Yeah, I’m a “snobby” person when it comes to where I sleep. I need a place where I don’t want to wrap myself in a trash bag LOL
That sounds terrible! I definitely would have left as well. I hope you leave a scathing review and that you took pictures. Is there some way you can report the hotel to a health authority…?
I didn’t take any pictures sadly. It was so gross so we just wanted to get the heck out of there.
wow that is an awful experience. i am used to being a bargain hunter but that is a horrid experience
Yup, it was bad!
This was a good experience for you. 🙂 We have to face one or the other time this sought of things in our life. Though these are bad but it teaches lessons of life.
Yes, it definitely taught me! 🙂
Yeah!! 🙂