Terrible experience
We booked the Pinecone Suite at Crane Hot Springs back in January for a stay in October. Check-in was quick and easy, and we were provided a guide to show us to our room and tell us about the property and amenities, which included the hot spring pond and a private soaking tub on the patio of our suite.
After 8 hours of driving to get there, we decided to take an evening nap before enjoying a soak under the stars. We woke to find the power was out. Without power, there was no running water, either. Without running water, we could not fill our private soaking tub, take a shower, or even flush the toilet. We decided to go check out the pond, but there was no hot water being pumped in from the spring, so the temperature was tepid bath water.
We had plans to go elsewhere to watch the eclipse, so we woke early in the morning and found there still wasn’t power. When we called the emergency number provided, it went to voicemail. I walked around in the pitch black but did not see any staff anywhere. Other patrons were packing up their cars and leaving, so we decided to do the same.
We tried calling the office all morning; I was able to get through for a few seconds before the call dropped. We hung around Burns for hours hoping to hear from the staff. After leaving multiple messages and not getting any response, we made the call to leave the area since we needed to find somewhere to use the restroom, shower and get ready for the day.
At 11:30 am, we finally received a call back from Heather. She said the power was back on at 6:30 and that it was a planned outage. She informed us that they sent an email 5 days prior to our visit letting us know there would be out from midnight until 4 am. She forwarded us a copy of the email, which came from “Front Desk” and not the same email the confirmation and other communications from Crane Creek was sent from, and it went to our spam folder. We did not have advance notice that the power would be out or that we would not be able to utilize the amenities or essential services as we had planned. We requested a refund for the night but were told that it was out of their hands so they would not be issuing a refund per policy.
We did not receive the email they sent and neither the front desk staff nor guide told us about the power outage at check in, so saying it was out of their hands was not entirely true. We were left in the dark – literally and figuratively – without access to the amenities we came to use. We couldn’t even use the toilet, shower, or brush our teeth. No one contacted us for hours despite our many attempts to get ahold of the office to find out what was going on. We needed to move on with our day and were forced to seek alternative accommodations. We booked the room for two nights and the resort has refused to refund either of the nights, citing “policy.” When we asked to speak to management or the owner, Heather said we would get the same answer and did not want to pass the message along to have them contact us. We asked her to do so anyway, but never did get a call from them, just one back from Heather stating that they were not going to be refunding our money and suggesting we contact the local power company about getting a refund instead.
This was a terrible experience and the way the resort handled it was completely unacceptable. We did not get what we paid for, did not receive timely communication, and were forced to pay for another hotel room elsewhere. These owners have no business being in the hospitality industry. Anyone else thinking about traveling to the middle of nowhere should consider the fact that if anything goes wrong during their stay, nothing will be done about it “per policy.” God forbid there were an emergency while the power was out because we were told that their phones do not work during power outages so there is no way to get in touch with anyone.
We couldn’t tell you if the hot springs are all they claim them to be, but we can tell you the owners do not know how to take care of their guests.
