e We had a terrible experience at the Mulberry. But I will start with the good. The exterior and public areas are well-lit and look like they are well taken care of. Check in was smooth, however, the trouble for us started when we got to our room and immediately smelled a strong odor of stale cigarette smoke. We set our bags down and began to survey the rest of the room which looked nice, when the smoke detector beeped. Then 30 seconds later beeped again and continued on. We went to the desk and requested a different room after explaining the situation. There was no empathy from the clerk, No apology as she told us, “ there are no more rooms.” I asked her if there was a maintenance person she could call about the smoke detector and she went on to explain to me that there is no one she can call, the owner lives over an hour away, and she was not willing to call another hotel in the area for me. I told the clerk that I wasn’t willing to tamper with a smoke detector in a hotel, and asked her how this was my problem? Again, no empathy and no indication she would do anything to assist with the problem. We returned to the room to stash our luggage, and began searching for other hotels in the area. After we found several highly rated hotels that had rooms available, The clerk called our room and said she had called the owner, and the owner was responding. It was after 9:30PM, we had been traveling all day during a cross country move, and we decided to go to waffle House down the street for dinner while we decided what to do. We decided that even if the owner showed up with a ladder and a 9 volt battery (over an hour later) to fix the smoke detector, the room still reeked, and by morning we would too. We booked at a nearby national chain and had a very nice room and good service. When we checked out after our dinner And asked for a refund, the clerk responded by telling us “I can’t do that“. Which was not surprising after her other responses to our concerns. The next day the charges were reversed and we were happy with that. My impression is that the owners probably do a nice job with this place overall, but this clerk was not trained in any kind of customer service or dealing with issues, and was utterly helpless when it came to even small issues. Their maintenance people dropped the ball by not replacing the smoke detector batteries on a schedule ahead of time, and their housekeeping dropped the ball by signing off on a room that obviously stunk. The owner dropped the ball by having a clerk with poor customer service skills and no resources to address issues.
97 Reviews