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.
Leave a Reply
Sounds like you booked the hotel from hell. I haven’t had a situation where being cheap backfired on me in a couple years. It has happened to me twice. I booked a terrible room in Daytona one year. It was so bad that I slept on top of the covers. My other mistake was booking a cheap room in Savannah. The room was dirty and the TV didn’t work. Both times I sucked it up though. I didn’t have any other options.
Haha oh lord you know it’s bad when you don’t want to get under the covers!
Yea I definitely would have done the same thing. That’s why I am always hesitant when I see that one commercial where they asked if you would pay for a hotel without seeing it first but it would be a 3-4star hotel. That may be why I usually pay a little more to stay in a place.
Yeah, I’ll never make that mistake again. It’s not worth ruining a vacation over.
Oh Wow, I would have been out of there too. I can handle basic and non-luxury, but it has to be clean and not look like someone was murdered in the room. We just stayed in a Hyatt House in Salt Lake City for $89 and it was super nice, so I would think you’d at least get decent for that price.
Haha yeah I would prefer not to sleep in a murder scene.
I always wonder why this has to happen to people with Trip Advisor around. I’m on that site like it’s my job when we plan a trip. They have extensive reviews and I do trust them especially when it’s a lot of them. If there are not enough reviews for me to get a feel for it then I pass. I was all over that site for our Europe trip and out of the 3 hotels I had to book I wasn’t disappointed once. If it seems to be too good to be true it probably is and I’d rather err on the side of slightly more expensive then jeopardize my experience. It’s just not worth it!! Some people are okay with staying in a dump but not me. I’d rather stay home where at least I know everything is clean!!
Yeah I still feel stupid! However, all of the hotels in the small town we stayed in didn’t have many reviews, so we didn’t really know what to expect.
Oh my gosh, that is so gross! I have not stayed at a hotel that disgusting, but my parents did once. No blood stains, but roaches everywhere. It was because there was a conference in town and there was literally no other place to stay. This happened several years ago, and I think my Mom is STILL traumatized!
OH MY GOD I would not be able to do roaches at all.
Oh my gosh! I would have died! I have used Groupon for hotel deals and always check ratings and check out the area on Google maps’ street view 🙂
Yes, it seems like everyone knows to check Google street view before booking. LOL I did not know that!
This is a hilarious story, I could not stop laughing….Yes, my advice is always read the reviews and never ignore reviews, I don’t. Thank you for sharing this post.
LOL Thanks for laughing! 🙂
Dude! (That’s all I have; I am that horrified.)
I hope the experience didn’t impact your view of Colorado! If there was blood and a hoarder living next door, you may want to notify the state.
Haha well we went to Colorado in June and loved it, and still love it this trip as well. I was only horrified for one hour thankfully!
My wife and I ended up in a similar experience while moving across the country. Fortunately, however, our room lacked the blood stained spots that yours seemed to be endowed with.
Lodging is one of those areas that’s difficult because prices can vary so significantly. And, after staying in a few nice places, it seems that a place $50 cheaper couldn’t be THAT bad. Somehow, it is!
Thanks for sharing and congrats on becoming fully self-employed!
Thanks Rob!
Has being cheap backfired on you recently? Sure. Haven’t we all! I wanted to go to Prague for New Years’ Eve a few years ago and decided to book with a Czech company as I like to support local initiatives. What a big mistake!
When I got there, my reservation that I had made in Berlin, was missing and this was Boxing Day (December 26th)! They had no reservation or booking on their database and even though I had a print-out apparantly, it was all “fully booked” and there was no point in arguing, as there was a long queue of people who had a similar problem!
Since I used to live in Prague, I knew a few places. I checked around. Too late. It was a busy period and I could see myself being stuck with nowhere to sleep or having to go back to Berlin! So I went to the university hostel. Same thing. However, one of the girls there said she might be able to squeeze me into a mixed hostel. The price?A couple of dollars, which I agreed to.
It was a hostel so I spent more time outdoors than indoors, but when I got back, someone else was sleeping in my bed AND he or she, wasn’t alone!
AHHH! That really stinks. Sounds like a bad situation.
Colorado is one interesting place to visit. Did you go to the Garden of the Gods or seen the Pikes Peak? I’ve heard it’s a must-visit in Colorado. I can’t wait to visit those this November.
No, we haven’t visited that area of Colorado yet. It’s the only area we haven’t spent time in!
Haha yeah it’s hard to forget the bad ones.
My wife and I were making a trip back to Ohio from Florida and we decided to stop in Alabama for the night around 3 AM because I had been driving all day. So we settled for someplace cheap and found a motel that looked “Ok-ish” from the outside but when we went to the reception desk we were in for all kinds of surprises.
The reception area smelled of rotting trash but again 3 AM I was just ready to sleep so we checked in anyway despite a big red lettered sign behind the cashier that said “Absolutely no refunds!”
We went to our first room and opened the door and were hit with the overpowering smell of smoke. Not fire damage smoke but like someone decided to have a smoking convention in the room. Neither of us are smokers so it was really strong. Everything just stunk of stale old smoke. Pillows were dirty, the bed sheets had some black unidentifiable stains, and it was just gross.
I went to the front desk and said I wanted another room as that room wouldn’t do. We were accommodated with a new room that smelled of previously being flooded and mold. I went into the bathroom to see if at least the shower was usable but instead the entire upper ceiling had black mold clinging to the ceiling tiles and walls. My wife looked at me and said we’re leaving and that she’d drive till the sun came up but she wasn’t going to stay at that motel.
We grabbed our bags and went back to the front desk and demanded a refund. I told him we were not going to stay in a room that has black mold and neither would a health inspector. We were refunded immediately.
We drove for about 30 miles until we came across a Holiday Inn and dropped a $120 on a room without a second thought.
This was almost 6 years ago and we still remember that nasty place to this day.
UGH! Sounds horrible.
OMG that sounds horrible!! I’ve definitely been bitten by the cheap hotel bug, but after several bad experiences I’ve decided the extra cost is worth it. The conditions you found were far worse than anything I ever encountered, but I, too, learned the hard way that hotels are not just places for you to sleep. Now I try to look for B&Bs because they seem comparable or even cheaper than chain hotels, plus the breakfast is a great bonus!
I wish we could do B&Bs! We have two dogs though. Do they allow pets? I’ve found that most do not but maybe we need to look harder!
Yikes! That sounds freakishly bad. I’m cheap, and look for cheap hotels. I have even slept in my car many times when traveling, but I don’t think I would have stayed there either.
Too bad you didn’t think to get photos. That would definitely help get your money back. If it is a hotel chain, I think I would email them a link to the reviews page, and to this blog page, and let them know how many people read your site. If it is a local place, I would definitely add this story to the review page.
Wowzers! Glad you found a better place to stay.
Yeah I definitely should have taken photos. We didn’t open anything though, and the camera was in one of our bags. We didn’t want any of our things to smell like the room LOL