What a terrible experience. I travel internationally about 70% of the time, and this is one of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had anywhere in the world.

I stayed at Kura Hulanda on February 21. I booked two rooms and pre-paid my reservations via Expedia.

When we first checked in to the rooms in the afternoon, they were nice and cool. By the time we returned late in the evening, both rooms were not nearly as cool. One of the rooms was very warm and I could not get the air conditioning to work.

I called the front desk and reported the problem around 10pm. A maintenance man came to the room and tried to fix the unit. Soon a woman also showed up at our room, and together the man and woman tried to figure out why the air conditioner was not working. They replaced the batteries in the remote control, but the screen display was still very dim and they had a hard time reading it. After several minutes of trying to figure out the remote, they advised that it was now working correctly and left.

I went to bed around 11pm, and woke up sweating at around 130am. The air conditioner was off and the room was hot. I tried to look at the remote control to see why it was off, but the display on the remote was so faint that I couldn’t read it. I believe that the man and woman who came to my room to “fix” the air conditioner actually made the problem worse by possibly setting a timer, so that the air conditioner went off automatically a few hours after they left. I finally got the air conditioner to turn back on, but I woke up again around 4am and it was off again.

The maintenance man may have also made the room much more humid by activating the “Humid” feature on the remote control. The room was much more humid in the morning than it was when we checked in.

At about 530am I went to the front desk and reported the problem. The front desk agent said he would report the problem to the agent who would be working the front desk at 7am. I saw him write it down in a notebook.

I also advised him that the air conditioner in the 2nd room was not working properly, and saw him write that in the notebook.

I also advised that the hair dryer in one of the rooms was not working, and he wrote that down in the notebook.

I called Expedia to report these problems, and when they contacted the hotel, they were advised that they were unaware of these problems, and I would need to write a letter/email of explanation to the hotel. I did so a couple of days after my stay, and did not receive any response. After one week, I called the hotel multiple times, and was always given the run-around, finally being told to re-send the letter/email to Yoyce Goilo Mendez, the Sales and Marketing Manager.

I did receive a response from Ms. Goilo Mendez, but she referred me back to Expedia, saying that "I can't refund a money that I didn't get directly". She did not even address my problems or offer any explanation/apology.

Expedia says that the hotel manager must authorize any refund.

Every time I called the hotel, I was told that the General Manager, Ms. Monet, was "out of town" and she never called me back or sent a response to my emails. At one point, I did receive a response from Expedia saying that my request for a partial refund was "refused by the hotel".

To date, I have spent nearly 20 hours sending emails, calling, and corresponding with the hotel directly and with Expedia with no result. Very disappointing and frustrating to say the least.