Eurostars The Boxer♡

I had a confirmed reservation on booking.com and they overbooked and so I had no place to stay. It might be a wonderful

1.0

I liked this place until checkout & bill

4.0

This is a nice hotel that was conveniently located for a one-night business trip to Massachusetts General Hospital. The room was nice and I took advantage of the complimentary bicycles for an early-morning ride along the nearby Charles River greenway. Oddly, there were no washcloths and no bath mat in my room. I don’t know whether that was a housekeeping mistake or standard procedure, but I made do using hand towels instead. It was fine and not worth bothering the front desk over, but I would expect a full compliment of linens at this price point. I had planned for the above to be my 4-star review. Then things fell apart at checkout. The price quoted at check-in had seemed higher than I remembered, but I figured I would address it at checkout because when I was checking in (1) I had a meeting to get to, and (2) I did not have my confirmation immediately at hand to verify the rate I had booked. I found my confirmation email before checkout. The first thing I noticed on the confirmation was a $20 resort fee. That is what it is, but in the fine print it said the fee included a $10 voucher for the PlayBoston Arcade, Two bottles of water, and WiFi. I was not told about and did not receive the first two things. And I had to call back down to the front desk to get the WiFi password. (At which point they told me it was written on my keycard holder; it wasn’t - there was a blank line where the password should have been). The base rate on my confirmation was $408; with taxes and the resort fee, the total was $496. The hotel never provided me with an ordinary receipt, either by email or printout. When I asked the front desk attendant for an itemization, he printed some sort of spreadsheet-looking table with tiny print that didn’t itemize taxes separately, so I couldn’t tell exactly what base rate I had been charged. It did show that I was being charged a “bed and breakfast” rate that I had not booked, did not want, and that nobody had told me about. That means I should have been given a breakfast voucher at check-in, but was not, and the included breakfast was never mentioned. A different front desk attendant only gave me the breakfast voucher after I had already checked out and my card been charged the full amount. If I hadn’t questioned the total cost, I would’ve never known my room included breakfast and also an additional charge for “mandatory gratuity” for the breakfast service even if I didn’t eat there. There was also “amenity fee” of $23.95 (not the $20 from my confirmation) for a total of $565. I decided to stay for breakfast since I’d paid for it, even though I’d planned to go elsewhere. When I needed my water refilled, after waiting a while, I had to go looking for the waitress. I found her behind the bar literally working on her makeup. So to recap, I effectively paid $69 for a breakfast I did not want, that nobody was going to tell me about until I questioned the charge, did not particularly enjoy, with a mandatory gratuity for poor service. The front desk agent told me he had no authority to adjust rates and instead gave me a business card for a manager to contact later. I sent two detailed and polite emails to the manager asking for this to be resolved, and got no response whatsoever. (More time wasted unnecessarily.) Ultimately I had to notify my credit card company and initiate a chargeback. Mistakes happen, but there’s no excuse for not having anyone at the hotel who can address a checkout issue at 8:15 am on a Thursday, or not empowering their desk clerks to correct the rate when the customer has a written confirmation. And even less excuse for the complete lack of response from the designated manager who I contacted at the direction of the front desk. Needless to say, I won’t be back.

Guest review

8.0

Walking distance to most places

− The breakfast was not worth the price and there was no dresser to put your belongings. The tv also did not work.