ranma500

I booked three nights at the Bella Villa Prima in Pattaya. I had read the positive reports. I booked with Ratestogo.com which seemed to give me a good rate. I paid a deposit with my credit card and received confirmation. When I arrived at Bella Villa Prima, I was told that ratestogo had moved me to Bella Villa Metro, another property. I later found out that this was not true. Bella Villa had moved me and informed ratestogo afterwards. This was not a satisfactory move. Bella Villa Metro is much further away from the centre. It is at the end of a long dark soi. There is a tuk-tuk to shuttle guests to the end of the soi, but obviously that means having to wait for someone to drive it. The hot water did not work the first night. A team of maintenance men came and fiddled for a couple of hours without success, and did not have it mended till the second night. The hotel and room itself was basic but clean. Not luxurious, but okay. But the biggest problem was the construction work in the hotel grounds. The noise was quite incredible during the day, and the concept of sitting by the small pool was quite out of the question. One would have been deafened. I checked out after two days. There was a big argument about me not wanting to pay for three nights. But I simply refused. Another note: ratestogo had booked my room at a dollar rate. The hotel could not make a charge in dollars, so converted to Baht at a rate of 40 Baht to the dollar. I pointed out that the current rate is around 36 or 37, but they said that their rate was 40. I contacted ratestogo and asked for a refund of my deposit, but they sent me an email saying that my problems were the fault of the hotel, and they could not oblige. I suspect that this group is having a lot of troubles with Bella Villa Metro. I witnessed two very similar arguments occuring at reception. One might even suspect that they are knowingly accepting bookings for the Prima location when it is in fact fully booked, so that they can bump the unsuspecting guests to the Metro building site. Very poor.