Horrified
Best Experience: None
Worst Experience: Sterling Valley view, Kodaikanal
Day 1, 5th May 2006:
It was 3:15pm and a cool evening. It was a tiresome journey up to Attuvampatti all the way from Madurai. Person at the reception asked for the document. He asked to fill up a particular form and sign on it. After that he asked us to be seated and wait for the attender to have our luggages delivered to the room. Room no. 325 was allotted for our stay. The attender didn’t turn up even when the clock showed 3:50 pm. The manager didn’t work around to arrange for another attender. Meanwhile, if you have observed I have not mentioned anything about Welcome drink and any ‘sort’ of welcome mentioned in the package. There were two guys standing outside with a table full of glasses filled with watermelon juice. As my wife was thirsty, she asked that if she could get something to drink. I directed her to the juice desk. The guys mentioned it is only for guys who come in groups !!! what the….? Can you imagine how humiliating it was to listen to that fellow blabber that? We were denied what our package claimed.
It was 4:00pm when I lost control over my patience and demanded something to be done regarding our room and arrange for food. He asked us to visit the restaurant (didn’t mind to even direct us). Leaving the luggage at the reception we walked all the way to restaurant (searching). Once we landed at the restaurant we were informed that it is closed. As we were unhappy about the ‘welcome’, we didn’t want to hear anything about restaurant closure. We wanted the chief to answer us. It was Mr. Jayakumar (chief) who understood our situation and provided us some rice, some sambar and juice. While eating, guess what? A full sized worm was in the plate of my wife! Added humiliation. As we were hopelessly hungry, got the plate changed and finished the lunch @ 4:30pm.
And mainly, I just went through the restaurant menu. WHOPPINGLY costly. One cup of coffee costs Rs 35/-???????? (I heard Sterling in Munnar costs just Rs 12/- cup of coffee). What’s the reason for the cost? Fine. Now that I was in, I didn’t have a choice, but to empty the Rs 1,200/- which was in the Honeymoon package credit.
Asked my wife to stay at the restaurant and visited the reception again. Again I waited for 10 mins. Then the attender arrived at last. The luggage was delivered to the room # 325.
The room: A comfortably sized room welcomed us with dusty floor. Our feet could feel the dirt sticking as we walked in. Had to wear chappals all the while in the room. 10 mins. later an attender visited our room and delivered a pair of towels. Got freshened and decided to move out for a walk in the misty environment. Oh! Before I forget, there were no toilet soaps and /or shampoos for us in the bathroom. Internet advertisement says SVV is a 3 star equivalent resort!!! SVV team should be ashamed to claim that. Do they understand what hospitality is?
Returned to the room at 8:30pm and walked around in chappals. Got out of the room at 9:00pm for dinner. Had dinner paying Rs. 100/- a plate. Quality so ..so.. Returned to the dusty room. After all this it was a cold night and I looked for heater in the room. Picture this, there were none in the room!!!
Day 2, 6th May 2006:
I had bought some juice on day 1. Planned to empty the same into a vessel and use the bottle for water while going outside. Two surprises caught us unaware. Firstly, the steel vessel/ utensil in the shelf was stinking dirty. Fine, quitting the idea of transferring the juice we drank it directly. Secondly, collected tap water into empty bottle. Surprise, surprise!! Water collected was mud colored and was stinky. When called up house keeping asking for some sort of soap solution to clean the vessel, we were told soap solution would arrive within 10 mins. Waiting for him 50 mins. passed by and the guy didn’t turn up. Got dressed and left the room for breakfast at 9:15 am. When returned at 9:45am, still there was no trace of any soap solution in the room I requested. Called up House keeping again and reminded about the soap solution. Guess what? Not only did he mention that it was not there, but he was also rude in his speech. BTW, don’t assume that I might have spoken to him rudely. I’m not that kind of person.
Went for the forest package (paid) tour (package no. 4) and returned by 4:30 pm. Still found the room with dirty floor. None of the things were arranged and/ or cleaned. Before going out for a walk, asked the front desk manager about the first person of the resort. He mentioned that his boss’s name was Mr. Shekhar (98420-62189) and would be available for discussion only by 7:00pm. Returned to the room by 7:00 pm. Still found the room dirty and unclean. Grrr….. Went straightly to meet Mr. Shekhar. The front desk manager was curious to know the reason for which I wanted to meet his manager. Without revealing much, I asked him to get his manager on phone so that I could ask him to come down. Mr. Shekhar arrived at around 8:00 pm. Wasted my 1 hour.
Without creating a scene near the front desk, I asked him to lead to manager’s room. Greeted him and asked what all facilities were provided for a honeymoon package. Explaining not much, he more or less spoke about the contents of the Ms. Manju’s mail.
I took over the conversion and knocked off all the points from Ms. Manju’s mail one-by-one right in front of him. He was speechless. When I asked him about what quality of water was being provided to his customers at SVV. “Filtered water” was what he mentioned, confidently. I being an engineer myself challenged him right there that I can prove that the water provided there was nothing more than sewage water. Dirty in color and stinking to smell. He could not answer that. Nobody even cared ask us if we wanted to look at entertainment facilities. Shame on SVV.
Mr. M.D, just for your perusal I have enclosed the filter paper through which the water being served in SVV was filtered. Seeing this can anybody claim that the water being served in SVV is filtered? For God’s sake, TTDC provides Aquaguard water everywhere (Filtered + UV rays treated). Your manager Mr. Shekhar was more than a fool to claim that the water is filtered. Congrats for hiring him. It costed me only Rs. 430/- for a day + a night stay in Madurai. I’m sure, it would not have costed me more than Rs. 600/- for the same period in Kodaikanal. Then, why did I had to spend Rs. 2,700/- and stay in SVV?
The package claims that cake, chocolates and so on will be specially served for the honeymoon couple. When I said, nothing was delivered till then, he called up his guys
and asked (shouted at) them to do all the clean-up /patch-up work. He assured us that the room will be cleaned before we reached it. But SVV had lost my faith, respect and whatever can one think of by that time. Finishing our dinner, we went back to room #325 to see that the room was just better than what it was for the earlier two days. The floor was still dirty, I made that check without fail.
We just had the 2 glasses of juice that was there kept on the table (I guess the welcome drink) and touched nothing else.
There were a small plate of chocolates, a small cake and in the bathroom we found 2 shampoo sachets with 2 soaps. Purposely, I packed all the above neatly and kept it ready to return it the next day.
Day 3, 7th May 2006:
I was feeling dizzy with a sore throat when I got up at 5:30 am. Thanks to the glass of dirty SVV water that I had drunk by mistake on the day 1. After all the packing we left the room for our breakfast. We vacated the room at 9:30 am and went straight to the reception. Mr. Shekhar was not to be seen there. I entered his room and left the previous days packing (soaps, shampoos, cake and chocolates) with a note that ‘things which don’t reach on time are not any worth’. There was a surprise gift (as per Ms. Manju’s mail) surprisingly before we left that place.
I have taken more than 6 hours to draft this mail to you over the past 2 weekends. Don’t be surprised. I didn’t want to miss the main points while drafting.
Couple
Group
