Bed Bugs at The Grand
On first appearance, The Grand seemed like a decent hotel for a colleague and I to stay during a one week business trip to our Toronto office. The staff seemed pleasant and the rooms/amenities were very much up to par. However, during my first night’s stay, I awoke sometime shortly before dawn with an extreme itching sensation all over my body. Having already had bed bugs once ten years before, I was justifiably paranoid and immediately jumped out of bed. However, still in sleep-induced daze, when I did not immediately find anything, I resigned to catch another quick hour of sleep before my wake up call.
I did not begin to notice any bites until sometime just after breakfast when we were heading to the office. After about a half day of suffering through discomfort, I was forced to step out of meetings to see a doctor. Unbuttoning my shirt, both the doctor and I were shocked to see literally hundreds bites all over my arms and torso. What was worse was that I was suffering a moderate to severe allergic reaction and had large protruding welts all over my body.
Following the doctor’s orders, I picked up some antihistamine and garbage bags before catching a cab to The Grand. I went straight up to my room, packed up and threw my suitcase and clothing into a big garbage bag. I went down to the front desk and informed them that I had contracted bed bugs from their room and requested to be moved to another. After trying to convince me that this had never occurred before, they sent me back to my bed bug infested room with a maid who was going to “confirm” based on her qualifications whether or not there were bed bugs present.
Equipped with a large can of Raid, the maid led me back up to my room. After showing her some very small blood streaks on the headboard and what looked like the remnants of a bed bug shell, the maid denied that bed bugs could have anything to do with the situation. She then asked to see the bites and, when I showed her, she exclaimed that I was mistaken and that I was only having an allergic reaction. To this I replied that she was correct and that the reaction was to bed bugs as confirmed by my visit to the doctor.
Speaking with the supervisor on duty (at this point I still had not spoken with the manager), I was informed that, although bed bugs in their hotel was a very unlikely scenario, they would be happy to move me to the one available suite in the hotel. Upon first glance, the penthouse suite seemed like a nice upgrade and, although I still felt unresolved with the situation, thought that at least the hotel was attempting to make up for it in one way or another. It was only once I had settled in that I had noticed tiny little black specks all over the hardwood floor. Looking at my feet, I was horrified to see dozens of tiny little black flies encrusted in the bottoms of my socks. Looking around the room, I saw what my colleague later claimed as “piles of flies” littering the entire room. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny dead little black flies all over the suite. I even found some on my bed that were still twitching, evidence that the room had recently been fumigated. However, at this point, I was dead tired and rather than having another ridiculous debate with the staff, I cleared the top blanket of flies off my bed and went to sleep.
The next day, I spoke with the on-site supervisor again, explained the new problem and said I was unsatisfied with the service and conditions of the hotel. I politely requested that my medical and dry-cleaning bills be reimbursed even if I was unable to have the charge for my two nights’ stay waived. To this the supervisor explained that this was not the hotel’s problem and that they would not be reimbursing me, nor would they be waiving the charge for my stay.
At the end of the day, I am not a person who complains a lot. If I get served the wrong pizza at a restaurant, I usually just eat it so that it doesn’t go to waste and I don’t make the server feel bad. I also understand that bed bugs (and potentially other infestations) are a rampant problem in major metropolitan cities such as Toronto and can understand the hotel’s reluctance to admit to any history of issues. But, as a customer, I have honestly never been treated so poorly and, the fact that I was forced to incur a number of charges that were no way attributable to negligence on my part, just seems plain old wrong (in addition to the dry-cleaning and doctor bills, I ended up having to discard my luggage, costing me hundreds of dollars). For these reasons, I feel it is important to share my story.
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