Review of City Seasons Suites 4*

Stay away! Check in was a disaster. So already off to a bad start. We arrived at around 6:30pm and the room they said was still being cleaned. The lady at the Reception asked us to sit down and wait until the room opens up. Magically within 3 minutes the room was ready and we were checked in. Had booked a 2 bedroom suite with a kitchen as there were 4 of us. That is what we were assigned. We get to the room and find that the kitchen area is inadequately stocked. There was just 2 coffee cups and 2 bowls. Even what they had were not part of a set but random sized cups or bowls thrown together. Again rather strange. Was not expecting posh crockery, but is it so hard to find a set of 4 or 6 of the same kind? Most importantly, there was a big gaping hole where the fridge was supposed to be. We had planned on doing some grocery shopping and stocking the fridge. I went down to the reception and complained that there was no fridge in the kitchen. The lady at Reception just shrugs her shoulders and suggests that the fridge may be out for maintenance. I ask her why did she assign us a room without a fridge and got no reasonable answer to that. By this time not even 20 minutes had passed since we checked in. The front desk had made 6 attempts to charge my credit card the entire amount for the 5 nights we were going to stay. My credit card company ended up blocking my card as they suspected unusual activity. Obviously this was a huge nuisance and irritation. I did not have a local phone number in Dubai, so I complain to the Hotel Manager about this. Most hotels that I have been in wait to charge you until you check out. Not so at the Pearl City Suites. They tried to charge my card (6 times) a few minutes after I checked in for the entire stay. Such a dodgy outfit. I wanted to call my credit card company in the US to sort out the matter. I could make a collect call and I ask the Hotel Manager (Ali) to make a call from the hotel phone. His response is he is not authorized to make international calls from the hotel. I tell him that he has caused me a major inconvenience by having my card blocked and I needed to get it sorted out. He offers me his personal mobile phone to make the call. I try calling the US phone number to my credit card company and there is insufficient balance on the phone of the hotel manager to make the call. So essentially within 20 minutes of checking in to the hotel they managed to give me a room without a fridge and block my credit card and left me with no option to fix these issues. I had to find an internet connection, log into my Credit card account online and sort out the matter with my card being blocked. We spoke to a Maintenance man who said that he will look in storage to see if he can give us a replacement fridge. This arrived in about an hour. The fridge that was brought in was not clean. Moreover the freezer door was falling apart and I had to find some special ways to keep it from staying open. We had to wait around for the fridge before we could go Grocery shopping to buy some supplies for our stay. The room was not cleaned properly and there were many marks on the floor where it had not been swept. The electrical outlets (too few) were in awkward places mostly and not convenient. Bathrooms were somewhat clean. The light switches in the room were rather strange. Hard to figure out what operated what. The elevator doors always seemed to close too soon. The only music we heard for the entire 5 days that we stayed at the hotel in the elevator was one particular song of Kenny G. Atleast on a couple of days we had to wait until 6pm and a couple of reminders before the room was cleaned. Overall Pearl City Suites is a hotel you should give a miss. They are completely clueless on how to run a hotel. The staff is completely incompetent and incapable of keeping customers happy.