Todd, everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but it is inappropriate to use terms such as “liars”, "stealing" and “fraud” in a forum where accuracy and impartial observation is encouraged. Your review is biased and premeditated, and offensive of course, and there are other aspects to it which I will take up directly with TA offline.
But for the sake of the other readers of TA, I must comment on each of the points in the review to allow them to decide which version of reality is more likely to be accurate.
The first point is a telling one. You are annoyed that we did not contact you to inform you of “loss of services”. As you stated, you arrived the day after a typhoon had ripped through the area. I can agree with that comment (but little else in your review) and I will further volunteer the information that the typhoon was a strong one and hit us hard. The strongest typhoon in recent years was Yolanda, which slightly missed us. This one caught us right down the middle and wreaked havoc. It probably did not make the international news because there were remarkably few deaths, but the central government immediately declared our island of Mindoro to be a state of calamity. The area was without power for almost 3 weeks. Roads were blocked by fallen trees. So many family homes lost their roof, at least half our staff among that number; several resorts were also rendered roofless. The water supply was compromised. The sea was too wild for even the largest ferries for 2 days afterward. And worst of all, at least in the eyes of this reviewer, the local cable TV connection was lost, and is still down, as I write this more than a month afterwards (although today we spotted their engineers nearby so maybe this ordeal is drawing to a close).
Lalaguna Villas is a solidly built resort, utilizing high quality building components and techniques, in order to survive the constant attack of the salty atmosphere and a brutally hot son. We have applied advanced technology in leading edge ways and we have backups for almost every crucial part of our infrastructure. Our sliding doors, windows and glass fences are all tempered or laminated glass (which I hope goes some way to refute the outrageous allegation that we have little regard for guest safety). As a result, our buildings were relatively unscathed, with the only loss of roofing being from the temporary roof over our poolside cafe. We had no broken windows or doors, although a lot of scratches and scrapes from flying debris and some localized flooding when gutters become clogged with leaves and trees which had traveled some miles seemingly for this very purpose. This battering might account for the wear and tear our keen-eyed reviewer noted.
We prepared for the typhoon by having on hand a second backup generator in addition to our state of the art battery farm which stores 280 KW of power. Alone on this island, our lights were never out, a beacon to remind the 300km/h winds that the human race would survive all this and more. Well, to be honest, we did have a power outage. It lasted less than 5 minutes and was caused by the fact that two of our nine (yes, nine) inverters overloaded at the same time. Such things always seem to occur at the most inconvenient time, but it took less than 5 minutes to rebalance the load on our three-phase power grid and restore power.
Apart from these minutes, whereas every other resort and commercial operation had to turn their backup generators off to rest for a few hours in every 24, we simply swapped unnoticed between battery and generator, for day after day after day, without a moment’s interruption for 3 weeks until power was restored. The ONLY compromise we asked of our guests was a request to not waste power, but this is a standard plea we make for environmental reasons. Aside from that, we provided our customary 24/7 operation, including room service, despite a reduced staff roster, as many of our team understandably searched for their roof or a temporary substitute.
From the guest perspective, lights, entertainment systems, and of course air conditioners were not compromised in any way. While some people traveled far to our resort simply to charge their phones, our guests merely plugged into the convenient USB ports beside the bed in most rooms, or at the bar and cafe in the public areas. Many people praised our performance during the post-typhoon period, this review being the sole exception.
On the subject of air conditioners, we did not lie, as you so extravagantly declare, Todd. We have 40+ aircon units in operation. Most of them are Samsung digital inverter models. All except one are split systems; the sole exception happened to be the one in your room. But this wasn’t intended to be your room, as you know. You booked the cheapest available room through an agent online, and failed to respond to our pre-arrival email providing details about your arrangements and inviting any special requests. Therefore it was completely unexpected when you revealed you had a knee problem preventing you from climbing stairs. It is the sort of thing worth mentioning, I suggest, which would have avoided the need to reshuffle our fully booked resort to find you a room just above ground level. Only by this combination of circumstances did you find a window aircon system, the last room so equipped, a room which you would not have encountered in the normal course of events. To put it into context also, compared to the resorts without power, and especially those without roofs, the extra noise from this unit is surely a minor inconvenience, one which will be addressed long before you return next Xmas, and hardly evidence of a premeditated campaign to mislead the public.
Circling back to where we started, your review begins by stating that we should have informed guests before arrival about the loss of services. Apart from the cable TV network being down, which is of course beyond our control, there were no other reductions in service, and in fact our service levels were even further than usual above the standard possible at other resorts in the region, restricted as they are by infrastructural issues. So then it must be the TV service to which you refer.
You arrived on the 27th, on that we can agree. So to be of any use to you, our alert that the TV cable operator was off the air would need to be sent to you the day before, on the 26th. On Xmas day the typhoon hit, so the 26th was recovery and cleanup day. Moreover, all sea traffic was cancelled, so we had to contact all incoming guests to explain the situation and arrange rescheduled transfers for them; in addition to the in-house guests who were scheduled to leave but could not, who also needed their transportation and other arrangements to be rescheduled.
In the middle of these genuinely urgent and important tasks, nobody thought to check if the cable TV service was working. Even had we done so, I am fairly sure nobody would have thought to contact incoming guests to say “FYI. The cable TV is out. Maybe it will be fixed by the time you arrive, we don’t really know and there is no way to find out right now. Our satellite service still works, but only premium rooms have that option. Thank you and have a nice day.” No, I don’t see that happening. Not by us, not by any resort. Nor do I see the point. How could we know for how long the service would be down? How could we know that this service was essential to your happiness during your two day visit. And really, Todd, knowing that a typhoon preceded your arrival, you could have requested information on any specific concerns and received a prompt reply.
After arrival, had you informed us you were miserable without TV, we would have offered you our Cignal satellite TV package, for P100/day, and mentioned the free access available in the clubhouse and at the pool bar.
There are several other points made in this review, shorter rehearsals of which appeared weeks earlier in every possible forum. I will attempt to address them all, albeit briefly.
We have searched throughout the resort and cannot find a staircase with a several meter drop on the side, or any drop at all, not protected by a handrail. I can confirm that our main staircase has handrails on both sides all the way up except for the first flight where it is only on one side. I agree with you that the Xmas decorations on the handrail of the stairs to the pool deck, which rise only 1.4 meters, were not a good idea, although they did look nice.
The “owner” does not not choose to store malodorous garbage beside the pool. You can readily verify my implausible explanation if necessary, but one of the many hardships imposed upon the entire province during the official state of calamity that existed during and long after your fleeting visit was that there was no garbage collection, because there was simply no accessible place to take it. This applied to every resort and business in the region. We had very few responsible options in this respect and chose to store it in a room where we store building materials.
It is true that some of our 2 bedroom accommodation is comprised of two suites side by side, with a common foyer and adjoining terraces, with individual inner front doors. You will find this to be a very common practice in the lodging business. We also have several traditional two bedroom villas, which have a kitchen and a common living area, for those that need that style of accommodation. Again, if specific features are important to you, a click on the link in your pre-arrival email would reveal such details about your allocated room. This alleged shortcoming did not seem to disappoint your friends staying in our beautiful premium rooms anywhere near as much as it did you (staying in our cheapest room), if at all.
You claim the resort has “no access to town”. This is nonsense. It is usually an easy stroll along the beach to the center of the town, less than a kilometer away. However, it is true that our neighbor, in an outrageous breach of local laws and the rules of common courtesy everywhere, stored construction materials on the beach such that, during high tide, this left no clear path without wading through an inch of water. This did affect our guests, and the guests of every resort West of ours. We kindly offered to store these materials on our own property, but the Chinese owners declined without explanation. Perhaps they thought we would steal their garbage. We were ultimately forced to complain to the local authorities, who compelled the neighboring property to clear the beach, which has resolved the problem permanently, I am pleased to say.
We also offer a water taxi service between the resort and the town and other places of interest. I don’t know why you would describe this as requiring you to walk through water. Most guests board the boats by walking up a plank assisted, where necessary, by our staff on either side. I am sure you know of this service because you ordered our boat to collect you from Sabang on one occasion. When you were informed there would be a slight delay as the boat was engaged in dropping off other guests elsewhere, you gave us the benefit of the advice that we should have a spare boat at all times (which would require us to have more boats than rooms, whereas all other resorts have no boats or dive boats, which are used for diving). To rescue you from spending a few extra minutes at the pier, where our sign displaying the water taxi schedule had remarkably survived the tempest and proudly continued its thankless task, our staff ran down the beach to find a boat willing to accept the assignment, paid the boatman in cash, and sent him on a mercy mission to collect your party. Perhaps this boat did not have a long enough plank to reach dry land, unlike our little speedboat. Could this explain why you could not avoid getting your feet wet during your adventurous journey into town?
Nonetheless, it must have been apparent to you that the situation was a temporary problem, and not of our own making, and certainly did not warrant your astounding assertion that there is no access to town, falsely portraying this and other temporary situations as if they are ongoing.
With regard to the credit card surcharge, it is incorrect to say it is never allowed. In enlightened and deregulated countries, the vendor may pass on to the consumer the credit card charges partially or in full. We are one of a relatively few resorts to accept credit cards, as a service to our guests. We advise of this surcharge well in advance, in the pre-arrival email which you appear not to have bothered reading, neither before your arrival, nor as part of your research before writing this ill-informed and vindictive review. I, on the other hand, did take the time to research this and certain other issues before responding. Other resorts in the area, if they accept credit cards at all, do charge a fee, up to 7.5% in some cases. (Ours is only 4%.) Incidentally, while other resorts charge 10% or even more as a service charge, our is a modest 3%.
These rates do not seem to justify your outrageous accusation of “... stealing with credit card fraud ...”.
On the contrary, it seems completely unreasonable to me that a guest could command our staff to charter a boat for him, to pay that boatman in cash, and then be repaid by credit card for that cash advance and lose 4% for our trouble.
Another thing that strikes me as curious is that you would come to settle your account, at the office and buy two XXXXL souvenir t-shirts as a memento of your stoic holiday in the post-typhoon chaos, for a price of P1200, call it $24, for which you paid cash. But when presented with the account for your room charges which amounted to less than the price of the shirts, you insisted upon using a credit card and were even more insistent that the card transaction must not incur a fee. The fee involved was P45. This is less than a dollar.
Ah but it is the principle that counts, I am sure you will say. And so it is. And the principle here is that you had taken a cash advance and not only did we have every right to charge a fee, contrary to your ill-informed statements, we were entitled to a fee twice as much as we humbly requested. Instead we settled for zero.
I should mention that our service charge also is optional. If you feel the service was inadequate, we you merely have to say so and this amount will be removed from your account.
You mention that the resort was not good value for money. It should not be necessary to point out that booking for the period between Xmas and New Year would certainly be considered as peak season. Our rates at that time are probably 75% higher than at the lowest point in the low season. But this is not a point I care to debate, because you have made such outrageous remarks based on such flimsy basis, that it is clear your assessment was predetermined.
The reason we sent you many emails while you were staying with us, Todd, in case you didn’t read them, is because we have a feature in our system whereby we send an email describing the full details of any expenditure charged to your room. This enables a guest to catch any errors immediately, instead of grappling with a pile of charge slips at checkout time. Guests who find this intrusive can opt out. It is another eco-friendly initiative which also benefits guests and reduces the possibility of errors made at our guests’ expense. So far, after a couple of months in live usage, all guests but you have been able to recognize the benefits.
Your closing remark, Todd, implies that we should have sent you an email before you arrived, advising you not to come. I sincerely regret that we did not do that.