Guest User
November 25, 2024
I booked 4 nights with La Stella d'Oro through my Capital One portal for our first 4 days in Italy. The first night, we arrived just after 8PM to an alley entrance dotted with commercial scale trash receptacles & motos. The building is actually an apartment block with residents and a B&B, it is not a hotel. There is no elevator, It is a large stairwell with timed lights and a strange smell. This stairwell is shared with residents of the building. When we arrived at the door just after 8PM, I reviewed the travel portal booking and did not see any special check in instructions. Looking at the website, they wanted us to contact them to arrange check in. So we waited 2 and a half hours, called and messaged their 2 provided numbers repeatedly, but unfortunately no one responded. I also searched my email and phone for any message from B&B. No effort was made to contact me despite me spending over 500 euros on a booking. At around 11PM, I had to book a charming hotel down the street where a nice gentleman welcomed us and we crashed for the night, as I had to get up at 7AM to rent a car. Having just settled at a charming 4 star hotel that was cheaper, I asked if we could just cancel the reservation. Review my attached correspondence with the B&B over WhatsApp to get a sense of my tone and diplomacy, which was not reciprocated. You can see that communication with this B&B was at the least, difficult. After several odd messages and a message deleted by the staff for reason unknown, we arrived back to the hotel after a wonderful day out at a castle in the Chianti Rufina region. When we arrived the door was buzzed open from above. No one helped us bring our bags up to the rooms. After lugging these up the stairs, we were greeted by the cold and unwelcoming gaze of a staff member behind a desk. He curtly showed us a bill for 3 nights and asked for an additional 33 euros (cash only) in city tax. He then asked us if we would like to do the breakfast, stating with a lack of manner that he needed to know now. There was a female companion who did not appear to work their who offered us water in a seemingly apologetic effort. We were then given a distant and unwilling introduction to the B&B itself before being curtly left to ourselves. Because we were not impolite or demanding of anything at this time, we felt very unwelcome. My wife & I discussed and thought it best to be polite and simply check in because it was a small operation and not a hotel. We assumed that they were greatly irritated that they needed to refund us a night from a hospitality perspective. We had not pushed for this but it seemed apparent from the bill. While this might make the behavior make sense in light of this, I never received a refund for the 4th night. So the behavior was bewildering to say the least. We had paid in advance and could not leave, which I would have liked to do immediately after this interaction. It would be silly for me to say that I felt uns