Disconnected at Villa Bellagio Bussy-Saint-Georges

It just gets worse

Everything that made our hotel a great relief to move to in terms of location, quality and availability of services seems to have been lost to circumstances within the control of the owners but left to decline into atrocious service.

I cannot for the life of me understand how a 4* hotel cannot have “Do not disturb” signs to put on the door that other guests tend to steal the few available from other doors to put on theirs.

In my case, I had to retrieve mine from the room next to mine and then mark it up so that it could be identified if stolen from my door again. It is unnecessary but not with housekeeping staff desperate to meet their quotas that they will enter your room if it is not barricaded.

Having the “Clean my room” sign on my door has made no difference either and I have not been able to demand something be done about it until this morning for that fact that I have been working unusual hours.

96 hours offline

What irks me most is that the hotel offers free wireless connectivity as part of their attractive package and for one it is probably the biggest reason why I will consider staying anywhere away from home.

Four days ago, the service went down but having returned to the hotel at just before 3:00AM I could not be bothered to chase up the problem until the morning. At dawn, I went to speak with the desk clerk about it and I was allowed to use the computer at the reception to send an urgent email to work.

Later, when I got to speak with the desk clerk on day duty, he simply offered the view that it was a free service to which I retorted, the free service was essentially what made their hotel attractive compared to the competition.

Lies and flies

The manager then said this was a problem with Swisscom and that more hotels were affected, we took that on face value but there was something suspicious about us not getting a signal from the access points, the problem could hardly be with Swisscom.

I got my colleague to call up Swisscom on the third day suggesting he report the problem without intimating Swisscom of what the hotel had told us before and we learnt that they were not aware of the issue.

Talking to the manager later, I tried to spare her the embarrassment of letting her know that she might have been caught in a lie by preparing her for what I was about to say. She swore Swisscom had been informed but I let her know that the problem we had in the hotel by reason of the knowledge of networks the four of us had pointed to problems in the hotel.

The truth is bitter

With our call incident number we made two further calls to Swisscom with the hope to resolve the problem and we learnt this morning that Swisscom was no more doing business with Villa Bellagio Bussy-Saint-Georges and this can only have been due to the hotel not meeting up with its obligations.

What I find most irksome is that the hotel having put out a falsehood about the state of affairs regarding wireless network connectivity stuck to the story without realising that some of their guests will indeed try to determine the root of the problem and report back their findings without mincing words.

A new sign

It is with that in mind and the fact that every advertisement about Villa Bellagio Bussy-Saint-Georges touts free wireless internet that doesn’t exist and the prospect that the next 10 days I will spend there will be as harrowing experience of being incommunicado that I have taken a picture of the sign outside the hotel and updated it with today’s reality.

A red cross over the Free WiFi offer because that is the case and until that changes, anyone who needs internet access as part of their hotel deal should consider other accommodation for now.

Getting bad attitude from one of the desk clerks and the running down of what is supposedly a 4* hotel by 0* staff having been offered a service they are making no moves to restore is just not the way I intend to spend the next week and my name will be known by the time I leave.

As always, I am not a vexatious customer, just one with a requirement that I reasonably and any one reasonable person will expect to be met.