Review of Sanctuary Beach Resort 4*

My husband and I booked our room in advance for the weekend of September 12, 13, 14, 2014. We arrived at 4:00 for check-in, which was very pleasant. The girl at the front desk, the bellman and the young man that drove us to our room were great. Very friendly. They took our credit card info to have on file. We reserved a beach front room. It was absolutely beautiful. The room was clean and nicely decorated. The view was amazing. The weather was great. No complaints, so far, so good. Then we went to the Kula Restaurant for happy hour. Waited for 45 minutes for someone to wait on us. Waitress took our drink order and never came back! We left. I would not recommend the restaurant. The service was horrible. Other folks were leaving as well. I don't think the Resort is affiliated with the Restaurant but I just wanted to mention our experience. Saturday morning I received a call from my 85 year old mom that she had fallen and was in the emergency room with a broken hip. Needless to say our little mini vacation was cut short! I explained to the girl at the desk why we were checking out early and she stated that there was nothing they could do to compensate for the $350.00 (approx. ) we had paid for, for Saturday night due to booking with a 3rd party. I didn't have time to ask for a manager — we needed to get going to the hospital which was 4 hours away. It is now Monday and I checked my online banking and there were two charges I didn't know about — I checked with my bank and they stated that it was with a resort in Marina. Ok. So I called the Resort. The first charge $100.00 was "in case there was any damage to the room" and the second charge $77.00 was for EARLY checkout. Are you kidding me? After discussing it with the man on the phone he said that the $77.00 would be removed (it was charged in error) and that the $100.00 will fall off the statement sometime this week. Meanwhile I'm out $177.00 on my ATM card plus $350.00 for a night I didn't get to use. The explanation for no refund or partial refund of the one night stay is because I booked with a third party (Expedia) not direct with them. Keep that in mind folks when booking — I've never heard of that before nor did anyone tell me they were going to charge my card $100.00 upfront. Although the place was really nice, my husband and I work really hard for our money and we splurged to stay there and it would have been nice if they would have had a little compassion for our situation and gave us some sort of credit back for the night not used. Even a voucher for 1/2 off next stay or something. Oh, we did get our breakfast of $21.00 waived because of the inconvenience of the charges on my card. All in all, the place is nice but displeased with how our situation was handled. Customer Service is key to success. I'm sorry to say we are very disappointed with our outcome.