Complaint Review: Westgate Resorts - Orlando Florida

I stayed for one week at the resort and overall my stay was okay, but there are some areas that require serious attention and a review of personnel training and procedures. I complained to the management with a letter after my stay, but they didn't even respond to me.

1) The ice maker in the refrigerator did not work. After turning it on and waiting 24 hours it still did not work. I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall to discover the water was turned off. I turned the water on but the hose leaked badly so I had to turn the water back off.  It would seem that the issue was not reported or not repaired. I find it hard to believe that other guests would not have reported that the ice maker did not work. Someone turned the water off and the average guest probably would not have bothered to do it and not called room service about it if it was leaking. If it was reported, maintenance dropped the ball and didn't repair it.

This caused me to have to go on a scavenger hunt to find the ice machine for the building. I found the machine on the 3rd floor only to discover it was out of ice. I find it unfathomable that there is only one ice machine for an entire 6 story building in the summer heat when a lot of the rooms are probably split rooms with the single bedroom not having a refrigerator to make ice. How does one ice machine for a 6-story building make sense to anyone in Florida heat? As bad as that was, there should be signs outside the elevator door on every floor telling people where the ice machine is located since there was only one for the whole building. Find a way to add more ice machines. One machine per building is not acceptable.

2) The light bulb above the tub was burned out. Housekeeping should have caught this and maintenance should have replaced the bulb prior to my arrival. This leads me to think that housekeeping was cleaning the bathroom in partial darkness and didn't do or say anything about the light being out.

3) There was black mold growing inside the shower in the caulking and along wall edges and corners. Housekeeping should have caught this and used shower spray cleaner with bleach to kill the mold. There was also mold growing on the a/c vent above the bathroom sinks and on the wall in the toilet area. There was also a lot of unsightly looking hard water deposit buildup on the shower window ledge over the sink due to water leaks from the shower. This is not something an owner or guest wants to see in their room.

4) The air conditioner air intake vent had a lot dust accumulation on the metal grate. Maintenance / housekeeping should be checking and cleaning this as people with allergies like myself suffer with headaches from the accumulated dust which I did in that room. I woke up with headaches everyday either from the dust on the vent or the mold in the shower or mold in the a/c vents them self.

5) The outside doorbell did not work which I found out after my food delivery person could not get my attention and stood outside for 15 minutes trying to back trace my room number to call me to alert me that he was outside. Because of this I had to leave the outer door open for other deliveries which didn't sit well with the guests in the adjoining suite due to security concerns. Someone on staff should be checking this. Housekeeping can check it when they clean the rooms and report it to maintenance.

6) The patio screen door closer was falling off the frame and only being held by one screw on the door frame. It was evident multiple repairs were attempted which all failed. A simple fix for maintenance would be to use a steel hinge backing plate measuring 2" x 4" found at Home Depot / Lowe's or easily fabricated and mounted on the aluminum door frame and then mount the closer hinge to the steel backing plate. Maintenance department is slacking.

7) There was black hair on the walls of the jacuzzi that had dried and were stuck to it. After I filled the jacuzzi up I could see lots of hair floating in the water which I did not appreciate. Housekeeping is slacking and may need re-training in paying attention to details. Of course, if the light is burned out above the tub (see above) they probably did not see the hair in the tub. So then.....did housekeeping just not report the burned-out light or did maintenance just not fix it?

8) The Flamingo Bay spa / jacuzzi water was cloudy and below the skimmer basket. This means the water was not being filtered and the chlorine level may have been low. I saw this during the evening while I was at the pool and the following morning when I went to check if the water had cleared which it didn't and the water was still below the skimmer basket. Whoever is doing pool maintenance is slacking. It would not be hard for resort security to visually check these things on their patrols and report them to maintenance and have maintenance check these things several times a day to ensure water levels and water quality are being maintained properly. Preventative maintenance is better than reactive maintenance.

9) On the day of my check-out, which I believe the required time was 10:00 am, housekeeping entered my room at approximately 8:30 am before I had vacated the room. I was not yet ready to check out. I had not used housekeeping the entire time I was in the room, so it was disturbing to have someone just enter my room without warning. Why is housekeeping entering rooms before checkout time if they don't know if the occupants are still in the room or not? There is a reason check-in / check-out times exist.

10) This next incident didn't apply to me directly, but it showed me how the maintenance department is being run. The room across from me (1316B) somehow flooded their room and maintenance responded with a water vacuum. The loud noise of the vacuum is what caught my attention causing me to open my door to see what the loud disturbing noise was. I could see maintenance vacuuming up water from the bathroom area which only lasted a few minutes before the vacuum was turned off as I watched. I thought it was curious that they did not vacuum the rug which was clearly wet and had absorbed water. After maintenance left I looked inside the room out of curiosity and found several soaked towels on the floor. As I walked over the rug it squished under my feet from being water soaked. The vacuum never came back on, the room was cleaned up and the door left open all night to dry the room out I suppose. The rug was still wet however. They never used rug drying fans and to my surprise new guests had checked in the next day. I was really surprised because there is no way the rug dried out overnight just by having the door left open. This means new guests had been checked in with a wet rug that at some point is going to grow mold and mildew on the bottom. This is shocking that maintenance would clear the room as ready without properly drying out the rug before allowing new guests to occupy the room.

11) During my stay, I upgraded my ownership to All Unit / Week. I understand that my new account number and status had to be updated with corporate. When I returned home I tried to log into my owner account but I could not because I got an error message that my account was locked. I called the phone number provided in the error message and spoke to a customer service rep who explained that it may be due to my account being upgraded but was not sure. The rep told me to attempt to log-in in three days. I waited four days but I still could not log-in because my account was blocked. I called customer service again and explained what happened. The rep couldn't tell me why my account was blocked or anything dealing with technical questions, nor if my ownership upgrade had anything to do with why my account was blocked. In the end, I had to be issued a temporary password to access my account. The rep was asking me questions as if I was just starting my online profile as a new owner when I have been an owner since 2007. I just find it curios that two people really couldn't tell me or explain why my online account profile was blocked or answer any of my questions about it.