El Cortez Lodge

The woman at the desk was grouchy and accused us of things we hadn’t done. My dad had booked one room for me and two friends for a night, telling her we needed space for four people. We’d been in the room for maybe two minutes when I went to the car for luggage. As I left, five or six people came out of a room two doors down, got into a truck, and started to leave. She ran over to my dad, said she couldn’t rent to him, would put the room charge back on his card, and told us to leave. She said we had too many people and pointed at the truck. We told her we didn’t know those people and had never seen them before. Then she claimed she’d seen camera footage of “many, many people coming and going all day and night when you stayed last week.” We’d never stayed there before. She also said she wouldn’t have rented to us if she’d “known what kind of people you are.” It was bizarre, unprofessional, and infuriating. My dad called the police, who confirmed she’d refunded him, which she hadn’t done before they asked. The money still took several days to show up in his account. Buyer beware.

The room was awful: a broken lamp, a broken nightstand drawer, no towels, no shampoo or conditioner, and stains on the sheets. After paying for two nights, we decided we only wanted to stay one. The woman at the desk apparently misunderstood and canceled both nights, leaving us without somewhere to stay that night. She said she’d voided the sale and returned the money to our card, but we checked several times and it still wasn’t there. We waited at least 15 minutes. She also kept our room key, with all our things inside, and refused to give it back until we paid again, even though the refund hadn’t appeared. Once the money was back, she took another 15 minutes to walk us to the room. While we packed, she told us to hurry, despite there being no customers at the desk. I’d never consider staying here again. I’d rather sleep in my car.

We go there for some privacy, but the cleaning lady makes it miserable. She’s always snooping around and tries to push us out before checkout at 11 am, even trying the door with the master key. I don’t think that’s right when we’re paying to stay. She also says we made a mess or threw parties on the previous visit. No, lady, we just go there to get some privacy. Once, we asked her for clean towels because we needed them right away. She said she didn’t have any, gave us a nasty look, and we could see clean towels in her cart. We let it go, but she seems to ruin the night every time. She’s worse than my parents. If they don’t fix this, they’re going to lose a loyal customer, and that’s a shame because we bring business to the place.

The managers are good, but the cleaning staff can be nosy. They sometimes knock while there’s still half an hour before checkout. The owner’s wife has also had bad manners and judged renters unfairly, nearly doing that to me on my first visit. My fiancé was the one who went to the office, while I’d just gotten off work and needed to rest before my second job. As long as I keep to my own business and management does the same, it’s fine overall.