What a terrible experience.
On arrival, we walked to the front desk smiling and happily said "hello!". The front desk lady looked at us and literally went: "it's early". We had arrived about 3 hours prior to check in.
Ironically, we had just come from the Hilton in DC where we'd also arrived early - their response was: "Welcome! How was your trip? We have a room available for you so lets get you checked in immediately".
The lady told us we needed to pay $50 to check in (which means they have a room available but just like to add on unnecessary fees). We would've paid, but her attitude soured us so we decided to wait. I knew at this point we were in a "nickel and dime" hotel.
Which proved correct when we had Amazon packages delivered and they charged us $2 per box (Hilton was free).
How companies in the service industry still get it so wrong is beyond me. This is a classic case of a hotel with a good view from the bar thinking they don't need to do anything else to keep customers.