Bed Bugs Bed Bugs Bed Bugs!
The worst hotel decision of my life was selecting this Best Western hotel, staying in room 232. I flew into Phoenix on 6/9/16, Thursday evening, for a friend's birthday party which was going to be hosted at a the W Hotel pool party on Saturday. However, I woke up Saturday morning to find bites all over my body. I pulled back the sheets of my bed and saw bed bugs running around. I captured a couple of them and called the front desk, they sent someone to confirm, which was confirmed. They were very apologetic.
The desk manager Kimberly asked if I wanted to go to urgent care, which I did, so she kindly arranged for it. When the car service arrived, I was transported to urgent care and dropped off at the facility. However, the urgent care was closed, clearly she did not call ahead. I immediately called the car service to come get me. However, the driver told me I would be next in line and have to wait there for about 20 minutes. What? I was just dropped off a minute ago?
Having bed bugs bites exposed to the Phoenix 103 degree heat was not something I was about to do. I called the hotel back and complained that I have bed bug bites all over my body and I just got transported to nowhere and now I have to wait here for no reason. Suddenly her tone changed and told me I would just have to wait and told me I may have brought the bed bugs with me. This really pissed me off, since I had never even seen a bed bug or even known anyone who had ever dealt with them before. I was clearly sleeping in an infestation since I was able to capture multiple bed bugs and put them into a plastic bag, and in just two short nights in the bed where I slept about 5 hours a night I had accumulated around 300 bites. Hopefully that is the final count as they can take several days for new bites to show up. For me it has been taking about a day for the bite to show, hoping I don't get anymore. I ended up paying for my own ride to an open urgent care facility.
Anyway, I could not enjoy the pool party, which was the whole point of my trip. How could I walk around at a pool party with bite marks all over my body? The bites are huge blisters, that are in clusters and in lines and hurt and itch bad. The ones on my hand are unbearable, there are like 10 bites on each knuckle, when I move my fingers it puts pressure on them which causes them to activate the pain and itching, which is pretty much all the time. I have a few on my face, which don't hurt much, but am very concerned about scaring. The ones on my neck are bad, when I twist my neck of course it hurts, probably about 60 or 70 just on my neck. When I sleep the neck blisters rub on my pillow so I am constantly waking up with pain. This reminds me of chicken pocks, which I had when I was 12, but the blisters are way worse and hurt way more. I must be very allergic.
On checkout day I asked the desk manager Kimberly for a copy of the incident report and she refused, stating that it was for the insurance companies only. I argued with her telling her I have a right to see it. She finally agreed to show it to me, but not to give me a copy. On the report it said I had 30+ bites. I told her that is BS, I currently have over a 180 bites and they are still coming. She said, "well it says 30+, so that also covers 180." I refused and said, "you better change that to accurately reflect the number of bites and if you want to count them together, I am fine with that." She reluctantly then changed it to 180+. At this point I took the document and snapped a picture with my phone.
Now that I am home, I will just stay home and try to work half days for the next few days as there are things I just have to do, but I am reading bed bug bites can take up to 3 weeks to go away. I really hope it does not take that long for me, but am concerned due to how allergic I was and how many I accumulated.
Although the hotel did not charge me for the room, my whole trip was ruined. They did not offer to even pay for my medical expenses or anything else. I basically paid to take a flight out to a bed bug invested room, stay there for a couple of days, and then fly home. Who wants to pay a few hundred dollars to do that? Now I am just sitting home, in agony, waiting to resume my life.