OYO 27730 Pawna Lake House

I’ve never had a stay this bad. The bathroom toilets had no water, flies were all over the room, and water dripped from the fan. When we asked for the room to be cleaned, the response was to leave the door and window open. It felt unhygienic and unsafe for women. They took the full payment at check-in, then were careless and inattentive. Only consider staying here if you’re out of options and have to find somewhere for the night.

We paid for a deluxe room and were given a classic one, with the caretaker saying only one room type was available. Then why list two? After we arrived past midnight, we waited a long time for the caretaker to wake up and let us in. The extra mattress was dirty, and its pillow had no white cover. He first refused to give us glasses, then said he would bring plastic ones, but eventually gave us paper cups. Really disappointing.

The view is the one good thing here. The rooms were dirty, the TV and Wi-Fi didn’t work, and the taps and flush tank were broken. There’s no food service either. I’d only choose this place if there were no other options.

We booked two rooms for ten days through the OYO app, then called the hotel as customers normally would. The staff asked us to cancel the OYO booking and book directly instead. We had run into similar problems with other OYO bookings before, so we agreed to avoid trouble when we arrived. The total was 16000/-, and I have the Google Pay receipt. As far as I could tell, they didn’t ask us to sign anything, so they weren’t officially keeping a record of guests’ stays. We arrived at Hotel Pawna Lake House, at “368, Hotel Pawna Lake House, Pawannagar-Kamshet Rd near Maval Dhabha, Lonavala,” on the evening of 8 July 2022. The washroom water supply was unreliable: either the basin or the washroom had water, but both didn’t work at once. There wasn’t a restaurant nearby, so we had to go 2-3 km for food, despite the listing saying complimentary breakfast was available. The lock on one room didn’t work and could trap someone inside if it shut from the outside. We asked them to fix it, but they didn’t. There were also power problems, a serious issue because we had said when booking that we worked from home and needed electricity. On the evening of 13 July, we came back from Imagica to find the power out. Staff said it would be fixed by morning, so we waited. It still wasn’t working the next day. When we asked AVINASH if the electricity would return, he said it wouldn’t. We couldn’t work, and our phones and laptop were uncharged, so we said we had to check out. The staff agreed and said they would refund the remaining four days, 1600/- per day for two rooms, or 6400/-. The owner arrived on the morning of 14 July 2022, as we were checking out. He said there was a problem with his bank connection and promised the money by the end of the day. We’ve followed up since, but he hasn’t returned the amount the staff agreed to refund. We escalated the matter through the website an OYO representative gave us. After four days, I still hadn’t heard back. OYO hasn’t helped either, just repeating standard replies that did nothing for us. These local hotels should be blocked from online platforms such as OYO if management is using them illegally.