It was bad. I mean… B A D. Here’s a breakdown of what happened during our 3 night trip in our 1 bed 1 bath unit on the 3rd floor:
- Friday: checked in at 4pm. Realized electric in the unit didn’t work, aside from the kitchen. Didn’t have any lighting or way to charge electronics. Contacted support through the app, they said it could be 24 hours until someone relocates us. I escalated this (because… no electric? Kind of important?) and a rep came to look at our unit after about an hour. He said he would put in a request to relocate us and said we would be compromised for the trouble - they sent us $100 through Airbnb. He also said we would hear receive instructions for our new check in information within 15-20 minutes. This was around 5:30. We didn’t hear anything for a few hours, and finally around 9/10pm received new check in information for a studio on the 6th floor (significantly smaller than our original unit, but it has electric, so whatever). We pack up our belongings and move up to the 6th floor after we get back from dinner, around 11pm. Settle in and head to bed.
- Saturday: we sleep in until about 10am and wake up to an automated text from Sonder saying that we need to check out by 11am. We’re confused and a little upset that we hauled all of our belongs upstairs only to move…again?! We weren’t sure where to go, but thankfully we had screenshotted our original code to get back into our unit with no electric. We leave the studio and haul our stuff to the elevator, only to find out that both are out of service! So we head to the stairs and get back to our unit. I contacted support through the app to see if maintenance was still planning on visiting to check out our electrical box. About 15 minutes later, a man shows up from Sonder to check on our electric. He said that “it looks like a small explosion occurred in our electrical panel and it isn’t safe to stay here.” And that “Sonder will relocate us to the ‘best of the best’ for our troubles.” He asked us what kind of a view we wanted because our experience was so bad so far. He said that we would be relocated ASAP. This was around 12pm. We headed to lunch, then did some touristy stuff, but by 6/7pm still hadn’t heard any news on relocating rooms? I reached out (again) to support to see if there was an update, but they just gave me the run around and acted like they were having an issue pulling up our reservation. Luckily, we were walking through the lobby when I saw a Sonder employee. I told her about our experience and asked if she could find an update for us— she said her manager would come up shortly and discuss the situation with us. Unfortunately, they never showed. We had dinner reservations at 8, so we headed out. Still didn’t hear anything on relocation. I reached out to support on the app around 10pm and they sent us check-in info for our new unit….. yikes. They ended up moving us to a studio on the first floor with a beautiful view of a brick wall. It was loud, the bed was the equivalent of sleeping in a cardboard box, and the bedding was line newspaper.
- Sunday: we wake up in our “beautiful” unit. We FINALLY spend a whole day enjoying DC without worrying where we’ll be sleeping tonight. But we’re upset, because we paid $600 for a unit that we never ended up using. Refunding us $100 was minimal and we opened a case with AirBnB because Sonder wouldn’t assist. I’m really thankful we booked with AirBnB because we did end up receiving another $100 back, only after the case was escalated to a supervisor with Airbnb who directly spoke with the DC location.
- Monday: woke up and left (with some shoulder pain that I can’t seem to get rid of from that cloud9 bed). Couldn’t wait to get out of there.
In conclusion, Sonder ruined our trip. I’m only writing this because I don’t want Sonder to ruin your trip as well. Save yourself some time and stress and just book a different place.