Send Your Feedback about the Furfright Hotel

Tue, 10/20/2009 at 11:52 am | Comment Feed | Trackback | Leave A Comment...

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Furfright 2009

I just got back from one crazy weekend. I’m sick, I have a lot of work to do, but man was it an absolute blast. Unfortunately, the hotel we stayed in did everything in their power (and in some cases against the law) to make our stay an unpleasant one. This is not the sort of thing a local hotel can get away with in the age of the internet.

If you attended Furfright 2009 and wish to send some feedback about the Holiday Inn in Waterbury, CT, here are a few resources:

hi-guestrelations@ichotelsgroup.com: This is the email address for customer relations with Holiday Inn corporate. Be sure to mention if you were a paying hotel guest.
lward@waterburychamber.com: Email for Lynn G. Ward, President and CEO of the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce. Be sure to tell her what local business you visited in addition to the hotel.
http://ct.bbb.org/File-Complaint/: File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and be sure to mention if you were a paying guest of the hotel.
tips@consumerist.com: The Consumer Reports website that will quite frequently bring local horror stories to national attention.

Update: Your General Manager for the weekend: Chris Costabile

Be sure to mention any problems you had, such as:

Registered hotel guests being barred from the atrium at night, even with no noise complaints
Illegal lights-out in the atrium at midnight (against CT fire code)
Hotel management falsely claiming that these policies were at the convention staff’s request
Inconsistent barring of late checkout for no apparent reason (there were not scheduled events at the hotel that day)
No a/c in convention space even after repeated requests for adjustment
Of course, any other problems that may have arisen during your particular stay.

I spoke with a local business about the kind of boost this convention is for the local economy. I was told very clearly that nothing- NOTHING brings a crowd to Waterbury like the annual Furfright convention. Hence why many of us are so puzzled as to why the Holiday Inn would allow not just bad service but illegal violations of fire code simply to try and break their contract.

Who knows? And frankly, who cares? All we can do is send feedback. I had a great time and I’ll be posting pictures later today.

Jeff

One thing I found odd: If you exit the Woodbury Room at the back (the room we showed War Dogs, Rocky Horror, and had the Frankensuit event, amongst others), and go to go out the "emergency exit" there (in quotes since it doesn't sound an alarm), the emergency exit was blocked with furniture and was in complete darkness. Were there an actual emergency and people needed to leave that way, it's dangerous at best.

I heard of quite a few people getting sick after eating hotel food, too. We heard of at least a dozen cases just walking the con, and my roommate was violently ill on Saturday.

SilverAutomatic

I'm in the process of trying to obtain proper phone numbers but... I'm going to end up making a call to the City of Waterbury Fire Marshal's office within the next day to report the multiple fire code violations I personally found while in the hotel. Will also be contacting the City of Waterbury Department of Public Health about the dity linens being delivered as well as the food quality issues and such. I'm also in the process of trying to track down a direct telephone number to the Holiday Inn DM's office in an attempt to bypass all those ass-covering customer relation email and phone numbers so that there might actually be something done about what happened. When I get the appropriate numbers I'll be more than happy to throw them up here and on JL for others to call as well.

PeterCat

When my roommate called to request late checkout, she was refused. She asked if there was another large group coming in, and was told yes. A few minutes later the front desk called back -- since I'd made the reservation under the Holiday Inn Priority Club program, they said we could do late checkout after all.

athenisis

Also, no water provided to fursuiters after midnight on Sunday. People had to go into the restrooms to get water for folks who were clearing away the stage. Also heard mention of unclean towels being used in some rooms, but I can't confirm that one.