Hotel-Pension Kima

I had a dispute with the Hotel Kima when I cancelled a booking. We each had different interpretations of the cancellation terms. I cancelled at a date where I believed I should not have been charged; the hotel thought I was liable to pay for the full rate because of a special exemption period.

Regardless of who was right or wrong, the hotel approached the whole dispute in a way which was rigid and extremely unhelpful. Clearly the Hotel Kima does not believe that "the customer is always right"; they seem to feel, at least in my case, that the customer's views should not be considered at all.

Over the course of the dispute, they repeatedly refused to address the multiple specific issues I raised about contradictions in the cancellation terms; offered no compromises or suggestions of ways to resolve the dispute; did not acknowledge or respond to a compromise I proposed; and even suggested they could charge me full price for a night which fell outside the special exemption period.

They made no concession to the idea that I might in any way be justified in my interpretation, instead implying that I was obtuse (they said 99% of their customers understand their terms). When I decided to dispute the charge with my credit card company and ultimately post my story here, they accused me of not fairly representing their views, even though I had repeatedly tried to see things from their perspective: in the end in fact, as I told them, I understood why they believed in their interpretation of the terms - but I also felt strongly that the terms were contradictory and that my interpretation was absolutely justified. Their response was to repeat over and over that the terms were clear, and then accuse me of being intransigent.

I recommend avoiding any place that has this sort of attitude.

Our trip was for my mother's birthday, and coincided not only with the Cup Final, but also with the long Pentecost weekend and the Carnival of Cultures. The hotels we had stayed before were fully booked, as I had started looking too late. I finally found a nice-looking hotel, Hotel Kima, off Ku'damm. They had three singles left, but told us this would be one of the busiest weekends in the year, which was why they raised their rates. They were still a lot less than many of the other hotels I had checked.
We paid 70 Euro for a single, the usual rate is 35 to 65 Euro.

The hotel is in an old building, the elevator is a museum's piece but worked every time. The entrance hall is large, with stucko on the ceiling, in the staircase there are art nouveau windows, near the breakfast room there is an old sink done in art nouveau style.

Our rooms, however, were modern. The mattress was very firm and comfortable, the bathroom small but adequate. Our rooms faced the inner yard, so they were really quiet.

Breakfast was included in the rate, it was okay, nothing special, the cheese was the cheap supermarket variety, but it was not too bad. The breakfast room is too small for all guests, several people had to stand waitng for others to finish. Some more tables or the option to have breakfast in your room would be a good idea.

A very nice touch: I had asked for a small bottle of sparkling wine to be served at the morning of my mother's birthday. We got a bottle of Prosecco and when I wanted to pay I was told it was a gift.