Hi everybody,
The initial idea in Colombia was to spend a month in Bogotá, a month in Medellín and a month in a beach area like Cartagena or Santa Marta.
We booked through booking.com at the Affinity Aparta Hotel hoping to spend a month in peace and with better quality than what we had had at the Tequendama Suites in Bogotá.
I entered the apartment and I first found out that there was no washing machine even when we had made the reservation with a washing machine. Then I saw that the chairs, sofa and curtains were filthy, the walls were broken.
I immediately called the front desk to complain about everything.
The cleaning lady came up almost crying and making a lot of drama with the excuse that the girl who had cleaned the suite was new and that she was going to be fired.
Then a supposed manager came up to say that “surely we had made a mistake when making the reservation and we had chosen an apartment without a washing machine.”
That afternoon around 10 people entered the apartment to see the conditions in which it was.
To make matters worse, that night when I went to take a shower, I found that there was no hot water, and the technical staff was not able to solve it. Also, the shower drain was clogged, and everything was flooded.
Seeing that they had been unable to solve any of the problems and that I had to take a cold shower, I called the reception again to say that I was leaving the next day and that I needed my money back. The night shift manager called me back and said I would be refunded the full amount including that night.
So, I proceeded to book a loft through Airbnb for a week.
I must point out that the lady of the night shift told me that the system had mistakenly assigned us an apartment without a washing machine because they had no more availability.
We didn’t find anything on booking.com. Also, The Affinity Aparta Hotel and almost all aparthotels in Medellin are managed by the same company, so there were no decent options.
The next day, at 8am, I called the reception to see if they had already wired the money and it turns out that nobody knew what had happened the day before, they had not even opened an incident on their system. I had to tell everything again and already very upset because they were kidding us.
After 4 hours they finally call to tell me that they were going to make the refund and that we had the confirmation in the booking.com chat. When we went to see, it was a rather strange and ambiguous text in which they spoke of “fees” and “penalties”.
Since they were acting so fraudulently, I decided to call the police.
With the police, the manager of the morning shift said that her colleague on the night shift had made a mistake in giving us the information and that the company was not responsible for her mistake. That they did not know the amount that was going to be reimbursed or the penalty until the next day since that day was a holiday and the banks were closed.
You see what an abnormal situation that a hotel does not know the amounts and the rates that they handle when we could see it perfectly on booking.com.
We left there with nothing clear.
The next day, at 9 in the morning there was still no news from anyone, and we decided to call the booking.com customer service. The agent who assisted us put us on hold and called them. When he spoke to me again, the agent was in shock because he had been told that “they still didn’t know the amount they were going to reimburse”.
The agent opened a case against the accommodation, and we sent him all the evidence we had by mail. Here I make a parenthesis to tell you that booking.com manages incidents much better than Airbnb.
Within hours, a certain Juan Carlos called us, claiming to be the manager of the hotel. He told me that he had personally gone to see the conditions of the apartment and that I was right about everything and that they would give me a full refund. He had me on the phone for almost an hour asking for forgiveness.
He also told me that there was no hot water “because the technical staff had put the heater’s batteries upside down.”
After this, he and another woman called us countless times throughout the week to let us know the status of the refund. To a point where it became annoying.
After posting the negative review, Juan Carlos himself responded by saying that “I was slandering them and that what he had told me on the phone was only to prevent me from reporting them to the authorities.”
In fact, I have the conversation recorded. The photos of everything I reported to booking.com can be seen in the review I left for the accommodation on Google and TripAdvisor.
That’s when I began to realize how hypocritical and liars some Colombians can be.
You see the negligence in the management of a hotel that supposedly has been providing services for 26 years. It is not possible that the manager will have to go to see the apartment in person in order to make a refund. It’s as if Jeff Bezos had to personally come and approve Amazon returns.
This also means that all staff are useless because they are unable to take decisions or solve problems.
In addition, if you are a decent and intelligent company, you manage the reimbursement immediately, you get rid of the people who are complaining, and you save the money of having 10 employees from here to there mediocrely handling an incident.
Another important piece of information is that the apartment we booked cost $1,500 a month without breakfast, which is an absurd and exorbitant price for such a pigsty because in addition to everything I told you, the internet worked poorly, it was poorly isolated, it was excessively noisy, and the kitchen was poorly equipped. With that money you find beautiful accommodations in Europe.
We lost 2 whole days with this problem, and we had to completely change the planning we had.
On the one hand, what happened was good because we didn’t have to spend a month in that hovel and because we didn’t have to spend a month in Medellin, as we had initially planned. A week there was already too much.
Diego says that what happened to us at the Affinity Aparta Hotel was the way destiny told us that we didn’t have to spend a month in Medellin and that we had to leave Colombia as soon as possible.
We lost 2 days, but fortunately we didn’t lose a month in Medellin, nor did we lose the entire 3 months that we initially planned to spend in Colombia.
Bellow you can find the link to my YouTube channel: