Friday, November 04, 2022
Extreme disappointment, Brevard NC editon
Bunny and I choose The Bromfield Inn because The Red House Inn was no longer, having been sold last year. The Bromfield Inn is beautiful, but it turns out it's not suitable for us.
The owners are new to the bed-and-breakfast business, having bought The Bromfield Inn just a few months ago (and after we had made reservations with the previous owners). The owners are a mother and daughter team, and thus, I will refer to them as Mother and Daughter. Mother lives on site and currently manages the inn, while Daughter is still in Florida closing up her real estate business there.
Anyway, as Bunny wrote in a follow-up email to The Bromfield Inn:
- From
- Bunny <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
- To
- The Bromfield Inn <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
- Subject
- Re: Thank you for your stay
- Date
- Thur, 3 Nov 2022 16:01:00 -0400
Good morning!
We did indeed enjoy most of our stay at your beautiful inn. However, we will have to seriously consider our options for future visits. The deal breaker is the lack of heat in the room. Neither of us is wired for being cold, and we were very cold most of the time. Except when we were in a hot, steamy shower! I would imagine that even in July, the temperature on our floor would be set for A/C, 70 degrees [21°C —Editor] or so, which would mean we would have the same problem then as we did in October. Not sure this is a good fit for us.
Other things include the lack of access to a microwave to reheat what we would bring home from our dinners. We also use a great deal of ice every day for our water and soft drinks. You have no ice machine for your guests. That matters to us.
Our suite was lovely, especially the dressing room area and the roomy shower. However we would trade all of that for temperature control in our room. We have never stayed anywhere in our 15 years together where we could not control our room temp. We were quite surprised. We would not have decided to stay at your inn, had we known there was no heat in the room. It never entered our minds.
We appreciate your proximity to downtown, and Sean enjoyed sitting outside by the fountain, as long as it was sunny. As soon as the sun went behind the trees, he came inside. It was lovely for him to be able to have his bi-weekly game at your dining table in front of the fireplace. Heavenly. But you can see the problem. He was comfortable by the fire. We aren't wired for these temps, and we acknowledge that people come to Brevard precisely for these cool days and nights. We are the exception. We realize that. But, again, we have never experienced a room with no heat.
Mother's hospitality was beyond belief. She is a jewel. We tried to work with her as much as possible. You probably don't have many guests who spend most of their visit in their rooms, and we tailored our activities to correspond with her schedule whenever we could. We especially appreciated that she printed my NYT crossword puzzles.
We will keep you in mind! Thanks, again!
Bunny and Sean
Bunny felt bad about not wanting to stay there and felt it necessary to info The Bromfield Inn as to our decision. Explanatory feedback like this is more important than a good review. For someone to take the time to write about the difficulties shows they really care about the service (or stay, or product or whatever). How you reply to such crticism is important. For example, this is not the reply you want to send back:
- From
- The Bromfield Inn <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
- To
- Bunny <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
- Subject
- RE: Thank you for your stay
- Date
- Fri, Nov 4 2022 09:47:45 -0400
Bunny,
So sorry to hear this. Maybe Key West, FL temperature would be better for your trips and an air bnb seems more to your style.
We follow hotel industry standards to keep a building temperature with multi-guests. We set our units at 70 degrees [21°C —Editor] in the winter and 76 degrees [24°C —Editor] in the summer months. The U.S. Department of Energy suggests thermostat settings be 68 degrees F [20°C —Editor] or lower in the winter and 78 degrees F [26°C —Editor] or higher in the summer. I know everything was done to keep you and Sean comfortable. We have rooms that have fireplaces so that might be an option as well.
We won’t ever have microwaves in any rooms or common areas. The smell of food thru out the Inn that is not controlled via our kitchen isn’t something other guests want to experience. We also don’t want to attract ants, etc. from food being in the rooms.
Unfortunately, on our end, you had a red pj set that bleed on to our sheets. Our sheets are bamboo and a set costs $325, which I will need to charge back to you. Let me know if you have a different credit card you want charged? I am happy to mail you the now pink king size sheet set but clearly they can’t be used anymore.
Sincerely,
Daugher
Mother
Innkeepers
The Bromfield Inn
www.thebromfieldinn.com
828-577-0916
Bunny took offense at the Key West line, and was livid at the addtional $325 charge for the ruined bedsheets (an accident, and certainly was not intentional).
I realize that it may be difficult and expensive to retrofit a house to have separate climate control for each room, but even at The Red House Inn (another formerly private residence turned bed-and-breakfast) they were able to provide us with some spot heaters to take the edge off the temperature. And they had ice.
Also not mentioned was the one-ply toilet paper. At the prices we were paying to stay there I would have expected better, but I'm sure that it too, was “hotel industry standards” to use such rolls. If you are going for an up-scale ambiance, it's a weird thing to pinch pennies on.
Suffice to say, we won't be staying there again, and we won't be recommending it to anyone either. Sad, because aside from a few issues that could be easily addressed, it is a nice place.
