Complaint Review: Wilderness Resort - Wisconsin Dells Internet

We stayed in the Wilderness Resort in Wisconsin Dells from Saturday, August 15 through Tuesday, August 18.  We went with a group of extended family, and we reserved a condo for 7 of the party.  (The room hosted me, my husband, our 6 year old son, and both of our parents.)  When we checked into our condo on Saturday, one of the first things we noticed was that the bathroom in one of the bedrooms of our non-smoking condo smelled so strongly of cigarette smoke you'd have almost thought there was someone currently smoking in the room.

We alerted the resort to the unacceptable issue shortly after checking in.  Due to some health issues of two of the occupants of the condo, the cigarette smoke presence needed to be cleared completely.  Later that afternoon, the resort delivered an ionic air purifier to our condo to try to clear out the air.  We went out for a couple hours shortly after that.  When we returned, not only had the purifier failed to clean the air, but the smell and spread throughout the condo.  After we returned to the condo, they came back to pick up the purifier.  We explained (and they could clearly smell) that the smoke presence had not decreased and had, in fact spread throughout the condo.  They did nothing further and did not offer to do anything further, and simply took the purifier away. 

Saturday evening, shortly before going to sleep, I went to take a bath in the condo's whirlpool tub, hoping to relax for a while after a day of driving.  I filled up the tub and went to turn on the jets to soak for a while, and the jets did not work.  This whirlpool tub is one of the advertised features of the condo, and one of the selling points that encouraged us to reserve the room. 

In addition to the above-mentioned problems, there were also other issues that added up to make this a not so great condo, including furniture so old and worn you sank into the frame of the couch when you sat down and had to be helped up (really fun for my 75 year old mother-in-law), worn, threadbare carpeting, broken items in the kitchen, and the advertised utensils and serving items in the kitchen all dumped into one drawer in a junk drawer fashion, so you risked cutting yourself on a steak knife while looking for a spoon. 

In the morning, the room still smelled so strongly of smoke that it was unbearable.  A few of us had a hard time sleeping Saturday night due to how overwhelming it was, and the two occupants with health issues woke up congested, with burning, watery eyes, sneezing, and coughing.  We then placed a new call to the resort front desk, informing them that the smoke smell was still as strong as ever and that the whirlpool tub in the condo did not function properly. 

We were given three choices:

1) have them return the ionic air purifier to the room to give it another try (if it didn't work in the couple hours it had been in the night before, how would we believe it would be effective in any reasonable amount of time this time?)

2) have them send out housekeeping to clean the room in an attempt to rid it of the smoke smell (wasn't it their housekeeping that failed to remove the smell when cleaning it after the previous guest left?  and how would that address the not functioning whirlpool, exactly?)

3) move to a different condo

Under the circumstances, a move was the only way to ensure we wouldn't be dealing with the smoke anymore and our only chance at a functioning whirlpool tub, so we said we would take the move.  She told us what condo we would be moving to, but that they needed the current guests to check out and then needed to have it cleaned, so they would get that done and then we could claim our keys to the new condo and move in. 

We set about packing up everything we had unpacked the previous day and loaded our cars back up to move to the new building.  We then sat and waited, having to push back some plans we had made for the morning, for the resort to call and let us know the room was ready.  We got antsy and my father went over to check out where the building we were being moved to was.  While over there, he saw that the condo had been vacated, so we called the front desk to see if they had an estimate on how long it would take to be cleaned.  The woman we spoke to said the condo was clean, and we could come up and get our new keys.  I wonder when, exactly, they planned on calling us to let us know it was ready? 

My parents went over to the man building to get our keys.  While there, they requested to speak to a manager, since we had just paid more than $500 for one night in a completely unacceptable room.  The manager on duty was not very sympathetic to our complaints, and she said the best she could do for us was giving us a food credit and a "Fun Pass" for each occupant of the condo.  The food credit, for 7 people, was $50.  You can't get even a halfway decent meal for seven people for $50, especially not paying inflated "resort" prices for food.  And the fun passes were to do things like mini-golf, go-karts, bumper boats, and laser tag.  Have I mentioned that, of the 7 occupants of our condo, 2 were in their 70's, one walks with a cane and has mobility issues, and another is disabled and also has mobility issues?  These cards were of little to no use for half the occupants of the condo. 

We got a surprise when we moved into our new condo.  This new condo had furniture that looked brand new, along with a organized kitchen with nothing broken in it.  The condo was also, mercifully, free of smoke odor and had a functioning whirlpool tub.  The flooring was not worn through, either.  While we were happy to be in a well-appointed condo now, it bugged us that we had just paid the same $500+ the previous night to stay in our completely unacceptable condo as someone had paid to stay in this lovely, clean and trouble-free condo. 

When we got home, I sent an email to the resort, going over what happened and explaining that we felt not at all that the situation was adequately compensated, and we felt that we should not have had to pay over $500 for a night in that room.  The response I received from Emily Assenato in Resort Management was basically denying any responsibility for the problems we encountered. 

Emily's response blamed the private owners of the condo for the condition of the furniture and flooring, blamed the previous guests for the smoke issue, and blamed US for electing to accept the offer to move to a new condo causing us to waste valuable vacation time packing, waiting around for the new condo, and moving.  She failed to address whose responsibility taking care of the broken whirlpool tub was, and ignored that, while it was the fault of the guest who chose to smoke in the room prior to our arrival, that the responsibility for cleaning the room was on them, and their people did not clean it to an acceptable level.  She also blamed us for not accepting the cleaning of the room they offered, while failing to note that it was offered as an alternative to moving to a new condo, and anyone would have taken the new condo, especially if the smoke issue had been causing them health issues. 

I also pointed out to Ms. Assenato that less than a half an hour after we vacated the condo, there were new guests moved in to it.  There is no way that was enough time to remove the smoke smell from the room and/or fix the whirlpool, so the resort willfully placed more guests in that room, knowing the issues involved.  It has to make you wonder if they knew about the issues we had before they placed us in the condo. 

As for the "private owner" what I've learned about that arrangement is that private investors buy the condos there, and they are responsible for maintenance costs and for adequately furnishing the condos to an acceptable, uniform level.  These private owners are not, typically, on site daily, and the resort rents out the condos on their behalf.  When you rent one through the resort, you are not dealing directly with the private owner, you deal with the resort.  Ms. Assenato claims the resort has too many condos to keep tabs on whether the owners are appropriately furnishing them, again abdicating reponsibility on the resort's part. 

However, those condos are to be cleaned out between guests by resort employees, giving them an excellent chance to make sure each condo is furnished at an acceptable level.  The resort also has a rental agreement they use to ensure guests don't damage the property during their stay, intimating that the resort is checking on the condition of the condos after each guest leaves (how else to know if a guest has damaged a condo or which guest it was?).  Regardless, their guests enter into reservations with and pay the resort, not these private owners.  If there is a problem with the condition of the unit, the guest can only go to the resort, not the private owner.  The resort is free to take issue with the private owner when a guest encounters a problem, but they can't hide behind their private owners when a guest has an issue, as the guest is doing business with the resort, not the private owner. 

In a nutshell, I can't see how it is acceptable to expect a guest to pay over $500 a night for a room that is not as advertised and actually affects the health of the guests.  The "compensation" the Wilderness Resort gave us wasn't appropriate for the issues at stake here or for the guests in question.  Additionally, we were given these "Fun Passes" with one and a half days of our stay left.  Even if all 7 of us could, physically, engage in each activity on the card (or even most of them), we would have had to abandon all the other plans we'd made with the rest of our extended family for the weekend to devote our time to getting at least a decent portion of the activities on these cards under our belts.  And, as for the meal credit, like I said, $50 isn't nearly enough for a halfway decent meal for 7 people.