I have been on the road now for 14 months now in my new position.  During this period I have stayed in 3-4 hotels each week.  During this period I have never felt a need to switch rooms due to issues in the room.  This recently changed with my stay at the Comfort Inn-Southpoint. I am a Choice Privileges Elite Platinum member so I have stayed in a number of Comfort Inns and know what to expect.  Sadly I have stayed at the Sleep Inn-Southpoint across the street on several occasions and while it is nothing fancy, it is clean and functional.  My only complaint at that property is the workout room is like a sauna so I noticed on this trip that this Comfort Inn was only about $6-7 more so I thought I would give it a try to see if it was an upgrade.  This was a mistake.

I was checked in by a friendly but obviously new clerk without any issues.  I got to my room and found it to be ok but nothing special.  I unpacked, changed clothes & settled in and got my iPad out and tried to connect to the internet.  That didn't work so I tried to connect with my iPhone and was successful after about 10 tries but the signal was so weak it wasn't doing much.  Finally, I broke out my company laptop and it didn't pick up a signal at all.  I called the hotel's internet provider and had to leave a message.  After waiting for some time, I finally called the front desk to see about moving to a more central room since I was at the end of the hall.  I was informed that wouldn't help but I was offered a "booster box" to help increase the signal. I asked if that would help my iPad and was told it would.  I went down to the front desk and brought it back to my room in it's little zippered carrying case.  I opened it to find a box that you plugged into the wall along with an ethernet cable.  Obviously this did my iPad no good but I did get my laptop connected although it was still fairly slow.

I went to dinner and came back in time to turn on the old-style clunky TV to the first game of the NFL season only to find my TV picture resembled a snowstorm.  I called the front desk and was asked to turn it off for 5 minutes and try it again.  Again, it was still snow so I packed up everything at 8:35pm and went down to trade my keys in.  I went to the new room and the TV worked although I missed the kick-off.  I was barely in the room and the manager on duty, Mohammed came up to make sure everything was ok which I appreciated.  Unfortunately this was erased by the fact that the internet still was pretty worthless and may have been worse than the other room.  The real cherry on the cake was when I pulled back the covers on the king bed to find a dark stain in the same spot on both the top sheet and the fitted bottom sheet which means this stain soaked thru from the one to the other (see picture) after the bed was made. At this point I was too tired to pack up & move. Luckily the stain was far enough over to one side so that I didn't have to come into contact with it while sleeping.  I can only hope it was coffee.  A hot shower & lots of scrubbing in the AM was my first order of business. The three employees I came in contact with were all friendly but did not make up for all the short comings of this property. Needless to say, this will be my first & last visit to this Comfort Inn.