THIS IS A COPY OF THE LETTER A SENT IN RESPONSE TO "HOW WAS YOUR VISIT?"
Hi,
I wasn't really going to say anything, and just limit myself to not ever go there again. But since you are so kind as to ask how my visit was, I will write you a summary of my experience and send some photos.
This was my first time staying in La Quinta, Jacksonville, but my husband had stayed twice before. Unfortunately this stay wasn't as pleasant as the others he described. I sent my daughter who lives in Jacksonville and for whom I stay at this hotel so I can go visit, to call and ask if she had to do check-in for us because we would get there very late that day (July 8th-9th, 2012), about midnight or later. We had already reserved and paid through your website. They told her there was no need because there were employees 24 hours a day and it wouldn't be a problem us checking-in really late.
Well,...they were wrong.
When we got there the young man that gave us a room pointed out in a no pleasant way that it was a miracle, or to quote him, we were "lucky" he had rooms available, because in his 8 years working for La Quinta he had never seen a reservation like mine, and quote "I don't even know what that is", pointing at his computer were apparently he could see our reservation, dates and names, and "What is... " reading the lettering of the promo code I had used. I told him we used a promotional code and THE HOTELS website, he wasn't very convinced for some reason, and said its better to call than use sites like expedia and others, I said AGAIN, I used La Quintas site. I asked how come we were lucky to find a room, if I had made the reservation, PAID already online, and taken the precaution of sending my daughter to call and verify if she needed to do check-in for us and pick up the key. He said, if he didn't have a room available we would of had to stay in the lobby till he got one (this was about 2am, we were really tired and didn't want to argue). We were sent to a room near the pool. The stains in the curtains, bed covers and tub (which I really wanted to clean with tylex, because I'm sure that’s all it needed), besides the bubbled, cracked ceiling, wouldn't of been that bad. What really made it worse was the fact that going to our room we were greeted by a dead cockroach in front of our door and a live one in one of our beds, not to mention the horrendous smell of cigarettes impregnated in the room. When we complaint about the obvious smoking smell of the room and sheets, they said sorry, people smoke outside and inevitably it goes in through the AC vent. Never offered to change rooms, even though I could see there were many rooms available. This week all four of us, who've never smoked, breathed in so much second-hand smoke we couldn't stand our throats.
On our second day we discovered no one had come in to change sheets, towels, put more paper or coffee in our room. We went to the counter, a gentleman checked in the computer and said sorry but since we got there so late our room wasn't assigned to anyone to clean, but he would assign it from the next day on (which he did), and brought towels to our room. He was very attentive. Even though the beds were made next day, there was no more coffee for the rest of our stay and never and extra toilet paper (they waited for all of it to finish to put more).
I stayed in La Quinta near Universal Studios and I know this one is newer, but I hope that one keeps up their great work, because we had a great time there. I think for my next visit to Jacksonville its time to change hotels and try a new one. I am very glad I paid a good rate for this stay, even though I'm not sure if that’s why I got eyeballed by the first employee, because this stay was horrible and paying full price for it would of been worse. I thank you for that at least and please forgive me for being so direct. But I just got back and have had to clean even the luggage, because the smoke smell decided to travel with us.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.