TripAdvisor.com Review of Motel 6, Sturbridge

TripAdvisor.com has let me know that they posted my latest review of that awful Motel 6.  However, they did remove my first review, as per their policy of having only one review per person posted.  That is fine with me.  I’m just glad that they understand that sometimes, places change, and that fellow travelers have the right to know the most up-to-date information.

You can read the review HERE.  Complete with pictures!

Oh, and I almost forgot to post the lame-assed form letter, emailed in .pdf form, to my email from their website…

Do I look like I just fell off the banana boat?  I doubt that this is an “isolated incident”, and once someone pisses me off, they get not a dime more of my money.  I will certainly never stay at that particular property again, and I’m not likely to stay at any Motel 6 anywhere, anytime.

I’m waiting on an answer to another email I sent.  After seeing something on the local news about the fines that the city of Boston slaps on residents and businesses that do not properly remove snow and ice in a timely manner, I went to the Town of Sturbridge website.  I asked them if they had such a law on the books, and then sent the link to this post, with the pictures.

I am gunning for these Motel 6 assholes, big time.  I hope Sturbridge does have such a snow removal law on the books, and that Motel 6 gets fined, retroactovely.  That snow that was there this past weekend was about a week old.  In Boston, the fine for businesses is $200 PER DAY that goes by without it being removed.

Now there is even more snow; it snowed Wednesday, and it turned to rain in many places, Sturbridge included.  So if they did not remove the snow/slush, it all froze solid, much like the way it was when we were there.

On Wednesday night, Mike went outside to remove any snow and slush off the car, and around it.  Othweise, it would have frozen solid, he would not have been able to get out on Thursday morning, and walking around would be slippery and dangerous.

I don ‘t know if the Town of Sturbridge will respond to my email, since I don’t live there.   But I did mention that we are members of Old Sturbridge Village, and being that the Village and tourism is a big part of the local economy, they should at least give me the courtesy of a response.  And hopefully they will send someone over to that place to investigate the issue.

I’ll keep you posted!

Bigger is not always better

…when it comes to banks. Especially now, with so many big box banks failing or getting close to it.  I saw something on the TV news a while back about how using a small local bank is better than staying with one of the big ones.

Well, we’ve been doing this for years.  We got tired of all of the endless bank mergers.  We started out with BayBank, which merged with Bank of Boston to become BankBoston.  Meanwhile, Fleet Bank had merged with Shawmut Bank, and then Fleet bought out BankBoston.

Every time there was a merger, our monthly fees to have the account got higher and higher.  By the time our account was changed to a rather expensive one at Fleece Bank, we’d had enough.  We went in search of a very small local bank that looked like an unlikely candidate to be sucked up by a bigger bank.

We decided on Central Bank, who are headquartered in Somerville, MA.  They currently have just nine branches – Arlington, Burlington, Chestmut Hill, Malden, Medford, Melrose, Somerville, and two in Woburn.  If any of these locations is convenient for you, consider checking them out.

Their fees for a basic checking account are WAY lower than the big box banks.  Free checking requires a minimum balance of $500, not $5,000 like some of the bigger banks.  If it dips below $500 any month, the fee is about five bucks for that month.

Also, Central Bank cares about their customers’ security.  You have surely heard of the big breach with Heartland Payment Systems.  Well, apparently the bank has found that Mike’s debit MasterCard was one of those which might have been compromised, and they sent him a letter telling him that they were canceling his card and issuing him a new one with a different number.  Chances are that nothing bad happened, but better safe than sorry.

So far, no word about my debit MasterCard…even though it is connected to the same account, mine has a different number than Mike’s.  But they have replaced mine twice in the past due to other possible security breaches.

So yes, you can get all of the banking services you need, for much less money.  We’re happy we made the choice we did!

What is Fandemonium?

And who directs it?  Well, I don’t know exactly who the Director of Fandemonium is…but I DO know that it is a great website for job seekers in our Six Great States and beyond!

The economy may be bad, but the truth is that there ARE jobs out there, you just need to know where to look.  Signing up for a FREE account at Director of Fandemonium is a great way to start.  I was looking at this site, and they have some big companies featured there, all of who are looking for help.  Hewlett-Packard, for example.  They have offices all over the place, one is not too far from Mike’s work in Andover, MA.

Not into high-tech?  Well, there are plenty of other job categories to browse through, including accounting, real estate, health care, and even my former line of work, restaurants and hospitality.

If you are looking for gainful employment, go and check out the Fandemonium site today; there is a lot of information there that will help put you on the right track to success!

Motel 6 – Sturbridge, MA – STAY AWAY!

I can’t believe that I wrote a positive review of the Sturbridge Motel 6 a few months ago.  Well, I take it all back.  Why couldn’t this place have just sucked the first time we were there, so we could have moved on back then, and found somewhere new to stay?

Well, since it was okay the first two times, we went there again this past weekend.  Mike wanted to go to the big Railroad Hobby Show out in West Springfield, and we like to stay in Sturbridge for this because we can also easily hit Old Sturbridge Village the next day if we feel like it.

The weekend was a disaster.  We knew we were in for it when we arrived, and saw that they did a piss-poor job of clearing snow and ice from their parking lot.  I took a couple of pics with my phone so you can see for yourself.

This is a view of the parking area from the doorway of our room:

And this was the ONLY sorta clear path between the room and our car, also taken from just outside the door of the room:

But don’t be fooled by those *bare* patches of ground there…that is BLACK ICE…very slippery and dangerous!

This place advertises free WiFi as well as data ports in case you want to use dial-up for internet access.  Here is a screenshot of the property’s website that indicates the availability of said amenities.  Click it for bigger.

Since I would not be attending the train show, but staying behind in the room while Mike went, I was hoping to be able to get some work done online.  We already knew that the WiFi didn’t work in the rooms the first two times we were at this place (but it did work outside, however, it is too cold to be sitting outside now!).  So we brought an older computer that had dial-up software installed, along with a phone cord to plug it into the data port on the room phone.  I maintain this Juno account as a back up, for when the power goes out or my DSL at home goes down.  I had already configured a second location, this motel, with access numbers that are local to the Sturbridge area, so as not to run up long-distance charges.  I also made sure that it was set to dial 9 before the number, because that’s how the in-room phones work.

So I plugged it in and tried dialing in.  I got an error message saying that there was no dial tone.  I picked up the phone, and sure enough, there was no dial tone.  I tried dialing to make an outside call, but still no dial tone.

I pretty much gave up, and was ready to let this slide, just as I did with the so-called free WiFi, when we came upon another issue.  Mike tried turning on the light over the vanity.  It would not turn on.  I went over to check it out.  The light switch was on the same circuit as an outlet that had the in-room hair dryer plugged into it.  I tried turning on the hair dryer, and nothing happened.  So I found something that I KNEW worked, my cell phone charger.  I plugged that in to try to charge the phone, but nothing happened.  It seemed to us that this circuit was completely dead.

I was royally pissed, and we decided to walk over that skating rink of a parking lot over to the office.  The same woman who checked us in was still there, we think she is the owner or manager or whatever.  I told her that we wanted another room, because stuff in the one we had didn’t work.  I honestly did not think that this would be a problem, as the place was nearly empty.  There was only one other car in the parking lot.

After we told her what wasn’t working, she asked if we’d used anything in the room, like the bed or towels.  Well, no, we did not use the bed, as we’d only been there for about half an hour!  But Mike admitted that he used one of the hand towels…I mean, he had to pee, and then he had to wash his hands in the sink with the non-working light over it.

That seemed to upset this woman, and she did not want to give us another room.  So she went over to our room to check out the problems.

Somehow, she got the vanity light and the hair dryer outlet to work.  I don’t know what she did, perhaps it was some persnickety thing that only the owner of someplace would know.  But still…shouldn’t we, as guests, just be able to turn things on in the expected, conventional way?

We kept that light on the whole time we were there, fearing that if we turned it off, we’d not be able to get it to come back on again.

As for the phone, she unplugged the cord from the one on the bottom, plugged it into the data part, and got a dial tone…a rather crackly one, but it was a dial tone.  This still did not solve the issue of why the dial-up internet did not work, and she refused to acknowledge anything about that.  She did not ask if it was all okay, if we still wanted to change rooms, as it was clear that she did not want to do this.  She also did not apologize for the problems, actually, she acted as if WE caused the problems.  She was rather rude and surly, and really has no business being in the hospitality biz.  Later events cemented that opinion for us!

I did try unplugging the phone and plugging it directly into the computer, and dialing up that way.  It still did not work.  I kept getting a busy signal BEFORE it finished dialing the access number.  Juno’s help documentation said that this was likely caused by a problem with the number I was dialing from.  So I just gave up.

Oh, but it gets better!  More after the jump…

more »

Fast Lane Transponder Fun – NOT!

I was watching channel 4 news earlier tonight, and Jack Williams, one of the news anchors, answered a question submitted to their Declare Your Curiosity site.

Apparently, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority has decided to charge those with the FastLane transponders 50 cents per month for the privilege of having them.  They will deduct it right from whatever credit card or bank account yiou have on file wih them.  Also, they will be offering the transponders for free, as opposed to the $27 or whatever it was that I paid for ours a few years ago.  And replacement transponders (because the battery does die eventually) will now be free of charge.

The viewer asked if he could get his $27 back, now that others will get new transponders for free, but he will still be assessed the 50 cents per month anyway?  Sadly, Jack said, no, you are stuck.  Sheesh, you’da thunk we were asking for free video cards or something.

I feel as if we have been double-charged here…we paid for the transponder, yet we still will have to pay 50 cents a month just to have it?  And does the free replacement transponder deal apply to those who paid the $27 for the first one?  Jack did not say, and a visit to MassPike.com told me nothing.

Fifty cents a month is not a lot of money, but to me, it is the principle of the thing.  If we already paid for a transponder that is now free for new signups, we should be grandfathered in and not be charged.  At the very least we should be told what the deal is, if we pay the 50 cents per month, do we get a free replacement transponder when the old one dies?  I have found NOTHING about this one way or another.

The only correspondence we have gotten from the MTA was something that said that we would have to pay $2 a month if we want to continue getting monthly paper statements for our FastLane account.  They now have a thing where you can sign up to get emails when the new statement is ready to view online.  Now, Mike likes paper statements for everything, but hell, I can print out the online statement for him for a LOT less than two bucks per month.

It annoys me that the MTA is nickel-and-diming people to death.  What will be next, something that counts the number of people in the car when you go through a toll, and charges you per person?  I shouldn’t say that too loud, it might give the gub’mint some very bad ideas.  The way I see it, if they want people to buy and use the transponders, to reduce traffic backups and all, quit charging people anything to use them!

Of at least floopin’ update your damned website, and tell people if our 50 cents a month fee will entitle us to a replacement transponder when it’s needed, whether we paid the $27 for the first one, or not.

Is that so floopin’ hard, and too much to ask?