OT More trouble with the Hilton

[micky]

OT More trouble with the Hilton

They don't list what they havent' got.

It suddently occured to me: Is it possible the room in Dallas won't have a bathtub? I stayed one day at the Hilton in Heathrow, 50 yards from the airport, and that room didn't have one, but that was a room they gave me just until the next plane left around 6PM. I figured it wasn't a real room. (The plane in Philly had a flat tire, and it took an hour or two to change it, and I missed my connection in London.) And it was England. Who knows what goes on in England!

So I called the hotel tonight and indeed, it doesn't have one. I didn't get around to teling her about the wedding, and for about $30 more, I could have an accessible bathtub.

An accesible bathtub isn't much of a bathtub, is it? Is this the same thing we talked about here? Where you have to sit on a bench and don't get wet above your belly button, if that much?

Then she said that for 320 dollars a night I could have a room with two bathrooms. But I don't think that means for sure it will have even one bathtub.

So I'm looking at the web, and it lists for the Lincoln Centre Hilton in Dallas, a bunch of kinds of rooms, and you can click on Amenities, and the "Amenities" are exactly the same for every kind of room. Even the accessible rooms list the same thing: "For your Convenience Bathroom Amenities ...." But they don't say what they are. One kind of room has "Additional Bathroom Amenities and Hilton Robes" but they don't say what they are.

Frankly, I don't think they have bathrooms either. If it has no bath, but could have had one, it's not a bathroom.

I should stay at the Motel 6. They have bathtubs.

I coudln't get straight if the problem is that they've rented all the rooms with bathtubs in my price range, since it's only 36 hours in advance, or if they just don't exist. Her accent was too strong for me to understand everything she said, and I don't think she understood my quesiton about this. Maybe when dawn comes, also come native English speakers? Or at least 9AM.

Here is the list, the same for every room. They have duvet covers, whatever those are, but no bathtubs. No notations about what they don't have. Perhaps they don't have hot water.

Room Amenities List For your Comfort

Air Conditioning Alarm Radio Bathrobe Black-Out Curtains Clock Radio w/ MP3 Connection Duvet Covers Ergonomic Desk Chair Feather Pillows Non Allergenic Hilton Eat Right Menu Hilton Serenity Bed Hilton Serenity CollectionTM In-Room Movie Channel Lever Door Handles Non-Smoking On-Demand Movies On-Demand Video Games TV - 46 Inch Flat Panel HD TV-Cable TV-Pay per view TV-Standard Network Thermostat (adjustable) Workstation

For your Confidence

Alarms - Audible Automatic Door Closer Double Locking Doors Electronic Locks Electronic Smoke Detector Emergency Call Button on Phone Secondary Locking Device Wide Angle Door Viewer

For your Convenience

Bathroom Amenities Convenient Electrical Outlets Cuisinart Coffeemaker Desk Level Electric Plugs Evening Room Service Available Hairdryer High Speed Internet Access Iron/Ironing Board Newspaper M-F (USA Today) Remote-Controlled Television Telephone - Auto Wakeup Telephone - Two Lines Telephone - Voice Mail Telephone - in Bath Two Phones with Dataport Two Phones with Speaker Two Phones with Voicemail

It looks like they own all these. Probably don't have bathtubs at any of them. Hilton Waldorf Conrad Canopy Curio Collection Double Tree Embassy Suites. Hilton Garden Inn Hampton Inn Homewood Suites Home2 Suites Hilton Grand Vacations Hilton HHonors Worldwide

[Willy]

If you don't like showers, stay home. I stopped traveling when the TSA started groping my balls.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Sorry Micky, but you won't be able to visit me. I have no bathtub either. Took it out two years ago and made a huge comfortable shower with a seat.

Thinking back, I recall a few places now that had no tub. We rented a villa in Italy with three bathrooms, all had showers, no tub. Quite a few hotels, both Europe and US had no tub. I guess it saves cost and saves space.

My wife has been in a couple of hospitals and they had no tub either.

[philo]

Sheesh, I take showers only...I bet I have not taken an actual bath in

25 years.

Recently my wife, step-daughter and I tried something different when we went to NY

Instead of spending a fortune on hotel rooms, we stayed at a "bed and breakfast". We had a private apartment with four times the room of a hotel but for about half the price.

Doubt we will ever stay in a hotel again.

and yes, they did have a bathtub.

[Frank]

He can't compare Europe to US and hotels closest to the main attractions are generally expensive and can lack things like this.

Only time I stayed in a hotel near Heathrow was many years ago and hotel was a short shuttle ride to the airport. Very modern hotel with all the conveniences including a large indoor pool and restaurants.

[micky]

I thought about going somewhere else, but they've arranged transportation for out of town guests to a barbecue Friday night, a dinner Saturday night, and the wedding on Sunday. I pretty much have to be where everyone else is. Plus there is a chance people will be knocking on doors later to go to a bar or something. I'll be totally left out of that if I'm not there.

I looked at google maps thinking maybe it would show a cheap motel next door, but they don't list what every building is, only if the owner pays to be listed. (I read that someone had been paid to put phoney names on the map and he had put 50,000 phoney names.)

Then just this morning I thought of local.yahoo.com . That is a great webpage. It helps you shop and lists places almost according to how close they are to the address you put in.

So I put in 5410 LBJ Freeway, Dallas, Texas, 75240 , the address of the hotel. It came up in the listing as location 3.

One close hotel is location 2, the Sheraton Dallas North, but it's on the other side of the LBJ Freeway and the other side of the Dallas North Thruway. A full 8-ramp cloverleaf in between the two hotels. I doubt there is any way to walk, and I don't know if the Sheraton has bathtubs. It might not be cheap enough.

The closest place listed, and probably in easy walking distance is at

5550 LBJ Freeway, only about a block, and it's called Platinum Surgery Suites. It sounds like one has to get surgery to stay there, and that's asking too much of me.

Well, it's not a hotel at all. Yahoo got mixed up because it used the word "suites". " Platinum Surgery Suites Multi-Specialty Clinic/Center in Dallas Texas Platinum Surgery Suites is a health care organization in Dallas, TX with Multi-Specialty Clinic/Center listed as their primary specialization." I don't want to stay there, until they admit what their primary specialty is.

What a strange name. Are people so stupid they'll think the medical care is good because it says "platinum"? This just makes me think the care is bad if they have to resort to silly names.

How close is that to Dallas?

[micky]

I'd still come see you, even if you have no bathtub.

If you don't want one, that's your choice. You're not a hotel with more than 100 rooms, who can't manage to put a bathtub in any of them, it seems.

Europeans can't be accounted for. That's one reason I didn't think the Hilton Heathrow would have an effect on a Dallas hotel.

And maybe water.

The longest I've been in the hospital was when I broke my leg in Guatamala, in 1971. Ten days. Every day a sponge bath by a cute nurse, a rather complet sponge bath, but I was a total gentlemen. Finally the last day, and I'm thinking, Who says she wants me to be a gentleman? Give her a little credit (or whatever). So this time they read my mind and send me a different nurse, not cute at all.

I don't think I've ever had a bath or a shower in a hospital. IIRC, outside of Guatamala, I've just stayed dirty.

[micky]

So I called the Hilton again. Last night the woman had too much of an accent to be sure of what she said.

Today a different girl again offerred me (perhaps for extra money) an accessible room with an accessible bathtub. Not worth having even for no more money.

Then like last night, even without my asking, she started in on the features the room had; the size of the bed, the 40" tv. I already know approximately and that wasn't why I called. I know they're told to do this, but it's a waste of my time, so I interrupted.

I asked about the fancy rooms.. Did I hear last night that they had two bathrooms? Yes, they have such rooms, but she couldn't tell whether there was a bathtub in either.

Last night I thought since they have no bathtub to offer me, maybe they'll give me a complimentary breakfast, so I asked if breakfast was included. It was already included, she said, even though nowhere does it say that. Not on the email confirmation, or the web listing. or the webpage that says what comes with a room. There is on a webpage something about a package of wifi, breakfast, and parking for one car, woth $63, but it didn't say how to get it or how much it cost. But she said I already get breakfast. We'll see.

She was very nice, and when I asked said she was in the Phillipines. I told her about a good friend's Philipina wife, whom I liked. I think the girl last night also had a Philipine accent but much stronger, and she talked too fast.

Then she wanted to transfer me to what I thought would be a recording, but it was a guy trying to sell me a package. I asked if the places would have bathtubs and told him how tomorrow's hotel didn't, and he told me he would refund me $100 on that. Wow, $20 seemed about right, or maybe 20 x 2 nights. but 100! Later it was apparent I only got that if I paid 255 for some Select membership, things I'll barely use if at all. I told him it was in his interest to end the phone call, so he could talk to someone who might actually buy it, but he was unconvinced. I'm glad I'm not a telephone marketer. He had a great voice.

Sorry that the story is so anti-climactic. The End.

[micky]

After all this.... they said for early checkin have to call the hotel itself.

Asked them about bathtubs. They said all the rooms except those on one floor have bathtubs. What a waste of time this has been. Next time, call the hotel itself. .....We'll see if she's right.

For early checkin, I have to ask when I get there.

[trader_4]

You really don't get around much, do you?

[dadiOH]

Count your blessings. In a perfect world all bathtubs would disintegrate into dust thereby leaving room for generously sized showers.

[Ed Pawlowski]

OK, I have the solution. Is there a Lowes or Home Depot nearby? They have tubs. You'll have a choice of which one to use. You'll have to take your own towel though.

[philo]

Then just go there and enjoy it. I am sure that for one day out of your life you can take a shower and not a bath. Sure does not seem like a big deal to me.

[Tekkie®]

micky posted for all of us...

They don't want you there. You are the cheap ass relative that lives in the basement. Your door will be silent.

I say again cheap ass bastard.

Some snippage of BS...

No, a Sheraton would never have bathtubs for your slimy ass. Slip a day worker $50 and he MAY hose you off.

I have told you before get a handicap/roll in shower. It will have a hand held shower head to was your pate with.

Dealing with assholes like yours. They will probe but find you're all asshole. You need a Platinum card to pay for the probe.

You don't want to pay for anything...

[micky]

I know. There are days here I don't take a bath OR shower.

But the idea of a stay at the Hilton (which still has the connotation of good) make me think it will be a vacation. How can it be a vacation when I have better facilities in my very modest home?

Plus their charging more to the wedding guests than they charge John Doe when he makes a reservation.

Plus their customer service people (in the Philipines) don't know if there's a bathtub or not. (They both looked 2 or 3 times for a couple minutes each. Either they were painting their fingernails or they really don't tell them. And there really are rooms that don't have bathtubs, on that one floor. It should say this on the webpage before one even makes the reservation. Someone who takes shower would like a room like that which, one would think, is either cheaper than the same room with a bath or has something else good about it.

Plus not saying breakfast is included, if in fact it is, and if in fact it isn't, not letting customer service know that.

And I think I left out a thing or two.

Everyone talks about how private enterprise does a better job than government, but a lot of private enterprise is screwed up too. (I learned that when I was a computer programmer, too.)

[micky]

LOL

Until I was 10, the bathtub was surrounded with walls covered in something linoleum, and it was coming up at the seam in the middle and plaster would be knocked loose by the shower or a physical blow. For some reason, my father didn't have it fixed. Maybe he liked baths.

So I got used to baths.

In college and Chicago, almost entirely I took showers for 6 years.

But in Brooklyn, the landlord didn't understand the cold water pumping system in our 6-story building, didn't run it right, and when someone flushed a toilet, (with a Flushometer), the cold water pressure plunged, and the shower was too hot to bear. If you made it cooler, when the cold pressure came back up, the water was too cold to bear. And the bathtub was so big I could almost float in it. So that's 11 more years with baths and no showers.

And now I'm hooked.

[philo]

You mean to tell me that you are going to another country and let such things as the possible lack of a bathtub spoil the whole thing for you?

Like I said...just go and enjoy it and quit letting something that may be different from an American experience ruin it for you.

I once sat on a plane next to a guy who told me never to go to China because they have scratchy towels in the hotels.

I told that to a Chinese friend of mine and we both had a good laugh. He did say that yes, the towels there are scratchy though.

[gfretwell]

This was the bathroom in a $350 a night villa in New Zealand. It would make old Mock crazy.

[micky]

She (the second one) said her brother could make me a bathtub out of 20 large palm leaves and waterproof it with tar from a banana plant. She told me she was single and 22 y.o and lives in a suburb of Manilla. She said she had a spare bedroom. She said "these calls may be monitored for quality control" but for Hilton they really aren't.

The people in Texas do think it's another country.

And what about the waxy European toilet paper? I'm never going back there!

My gosh! I can see myself writhing on the floor trying to take a bath in a quarter inch of water.

One time in a foreign country I stayed in a hotel with a bathtub, but they had disabled the stopper. This was after 5 of my 7 weeks in the dorm with no bathtub at all and of course nothing but showers, and there was the tub!! So one of the two nights I took a candy wrapper, one made from the new almost indestructible plastic, straightened it out, and covered the drain with that. It worked pretty darn well. I didn't fill the tub very deeply but that was on purpose.

[trader_4]

Many of us would much prefer a large, nice shower instead of a tub and consider it a better facility. I've never used a tub in a hotel. When I first read your post, I was going to say that I found it hard to believe that a Hilton in Dallas wouldn't have bathtubs, but then I haven't seen major hotel chains like Hilton accept Paypal either and somehow you found that.

That's pretty bad.

Maybe Dallas is out of the field of vision from the Philipines.

Either they were painting their fingernails or they

The difference is that if you don't like what's going on at Hilton, you can go to the Westin or dozens of other choices. With govt, it's not so easy to go to a different one. And if enough people don't like Hilton, there is a corrective force, when they lose customers.