My girlfriend and I were traveling from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, so we decided that Morro Bay was a decent place to stop for the night. We found the Morro Crest Inn through a voucher we saw in a travel discounts catalog. It gave the price as $30/night.
After calling the woman at the front desk she told us it would be $55 as it was Memorial Day weekend, which was fine as we had expected that. She also told us she had a brand new room with a king bed available for us. Great!
When we arrived, she was pleasant enough, but did insist on payment by cash despite me giving my credit card number over the phone earlier. She bumped 10% tax onto the $55 making it $60.50 altogether. Still reasonable for Memorial Day we thought.
Our 'free continental breakfast' consisted of a store-bought fruit pancake and some coffee packets which she gave us, then told us to follow her in our car to our room. We were already at the motel, why do we need to follow her? She insisted we had been booked somewhere else and it was 'just 1 mile away'.
3 miles later we arrive at a totally different motel, nowhere near the area of Morro Bay. What's worse is that we weren't actually booked into any of the regular motel rooms either. She took us upstairs into her house, to her bedroom (we could see the pictures of her family on the wall) where she told us to wait for 10 minutes while she cleaned the place.
In fairness, the room was nice, but we felt very uncomfortable staying in a stranger's room and it was very unprofessional to start cleaning it in front of us. We kindly asked if it was possible to go back to the original motel. Yes, they did still have vacancy's but only with 2 queen beds. That was fine, that's all we needed. But then she tried to charge $10 extra for that.
After a lot of discussion she agreed to take us back to the other lodge, and when she met us at the front desk she insisted we pay $10 deposit to ensure that we only used one bed. If we didn't use the other bed, then we'd get the $10 back. So this woman was trying to charge us extra for what we paid for already!?!
I asked for my money back because I was starting to get annoyed by the whole situation. Every other motel in Morro Bay had availability, so finding alternative would not be difficult. She pointed to her 'no refunds' and 72 hours cancellation policy and was very clear that our $60 was not going to be returned. I persisted that she had scammed us, first with the breakfast, then with the location, then with the room. She then became very rude, told us we could use both beds, she was 'tired of this' and threw the keys onto the desk and walked off to her office, closing the door behind her.
Our new room was fine, clean with a nice bathroom and exactly what she should have given us from the start. I had never asked on the phone for a king bed, I said I would take whatever was available. So why she didn't put us in that room from the start is a mystery. I suspect that she saw a chance to take advantage of two students.
Best part of all is that in the morning, another customer walked past our window carrying some mini muffins and orange juice. Turns out they were giving out breakfast at the front desk to all the guests.
I'm sure some people have had a decent experience here but I would save yourself a potential headache and go somewhere else. This woman is rude even on the phone so if you call for reservations, beware.









