The Alex

I booked a night at The Alex Hotel with my daughter to celebrate a special birthday. When booking the reservation (at full price through the hotel Web site), I asked for a high floor with a view. When we arrived, someone was checking in next to us, and was told by the reservation agent that there were many rooms available that night.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I arrived at our room to find it was on the lowest guest floor of the hotel (4th) overlooking a parking garage. I went back to the front desk and was told that no other rooms were available. The non-insulated windows let in traffic noise all evening, including a garbage truck that spent about 25 minutes compacting hotel trash in the middle of the night.

When we checked out the next day, my daughter asked the front-door desk clerk if she could have a hotel pen as a souvenir of her stay, as it was her birthday. He smiled and said "No." That seemed to be a good summary of how guests are treated at the Alex -- more as intruders than valued customers.

I should also mention that my daughter had four insect bites on her arm when we left the hotel.

I asked the front desk for the email of the manager of the hotel and was given a general "info" email address for Mary Lou Pollack. I sent her a polite email with my comments about the hotel. When she didn't reply, I called her office. She did not return the phone call. A week later, my husband called her office. She said, in a brusque voice, that she had "forwarded" the email somewhere. My husband asked her for the name of the company that owns the Alex Hotel. She said "I will not tell you."

So there you have it. If you're looking to be treated poorly in a substandard hotel -- where poor service seems to be a management prerequisite from the top down -- The Alex should be your choice. If not, choose any other hotel in Manhattan.

The studio suite in my estimation was very small. For a hotel which is considered a luxury hotel, the attention to detail is not acceptable. The shower handle fell off in my hand, the shower caddy was broken (metal with sharp edges), the cold faucet in the sink was missing the "cold" label, there were wires exposed and hanging out of the wall by the nightstand lamp, the room was hot and we were unable to control the temperature so had to shut it off entirely. The refrigerator was so loud that we had to shut that off as well, there was a panel under the sink which had fallen and was not put back in place, the room was so small that when walking in front of the foot of the bed, you had to try not to hit your legs on the furniture at the end. We had a dinner hotel package and was unaware that we should have received vouchers for dinner upon check-in. We were charged for dinner and had to work to get this resolved. The hotel also didn't have a note at check-in that the room was prepaid. There was also a car service which was setup in advance and the hotel did not have a note of this in our record. Overall. . .extremely disappointing.