Anonymous

BED BUGS Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis-Southeast I had reservations for the Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis-Southeast on Sat, May 16th 2015. We arrived in the late afternoon, checked in, and went for a swim. We had a busy day planned for the next morning so my husband and children went to bed. I am a night owl, so I stayed awake. When I went to bed (around 2 am), I pulled back the covers and found bed bugs. There were bugs crawling on our pillows and my family. These bugs ranged in size from about the head of a pin to the size of a grain of rice. I was hysterical. I cried. I screamed. I shook uncontrollably. I immediately took the pillows to the front desk and gave them to the night manager. He informed me that there were no other available rooms, so I would have to stay in the bug infested room. Even his young daughter, who had come there to play, saw the insects. That Monday the customer service representative called me to talk to me about what had happened. At first, he was kind. He apologized a hundred times. They told me that the room had been closed and sanitized. I even wrote “bugs’ in giant letters at the bottom of my check out form so they couldn’t deny that there were bed bugs. I went through Expedia and got a refund for the night’s stay. That’s how the nightmare began. My husband had bites all over his body so severe that he had to get a steroid shot as well as antibiotics to fight them. I also had bites on my feet and ankles. I called the hotel to request reimbursement for the medical bills. They ignored my calls. They ignored my emails. I lived in a state of perpetual terror, afraid that we might bring the bed bugs into our home. I threw out our luggage from that night, clothing items, even souvenirs from our trip in an attempt to keep my home from becoming invested. When I contacted the hotel about covering some of the costs, I was ignored. The unthinkable happened. We brought the bed bugs from the hotel into our home as a direct result of their failure to maintain basic standards of habitability. In the weeks that followed, I slept one or two hours a night if I could. The constant stress of knowing they were there drove me insane. I found myself checking, double check, triple checking on my children all night. I couldn’t leave the house for fear of taking the bedbugs with me, but I hated being in that space with the crawling vermin. It drove me to the point I considered suicide to make that crawling feeling on my skin go away. I sought professional help for my anxiety. More weeks passed. All of my calls and emails were ignored. I tried to appeal to the corporate level. They told me that because Holiday Inn is a franchise, that they had no power to help me. They would not force the owner to talk to me. They would not investigate. I had an exterminator out to my home. The company heat treated everything, yet still I didn’t feel safe. I was a prisoner of my own fear. Still, the company completely shut me out. They hoped that if they made the jump through enough hoops, and waste enough time, that I would break and fade away. I tried going through the insurance company. Liberty Mutual drug their feet. I went above their head to get them to finally admit that my claim had been denied. The reason? They didn’t close the room. They now claimed there were no bed bugs. They claimed they didn’t see anything despite the witnesses. They rented that same bug invested room the very next night and every night after. Even though they had seen the bugs with their own eyes, they still knowingly endangered other people and other families just so they wouldn’t have a record of a professional extermination. That’s called negligence. If you or someone you know stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis-Southeast in the month of May, I urge you to reach out to me. Maybe my testimonial can help you in your legal proceedings. If nothing else, PLEASE, protect your family. NEVER stay at Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis-Southeast. Don’t stay at ANY Holiday Inn. They are committed to their own bottom line, and they will endanger your loved ones by ignoring blatant health problems. I have to come to terms with the fact that they will probably get away with this because they are a large company, and I am just one traumatized woman. All I ask is that you share this message, and help me save other people from cruelty and torment that was inflicted upon me. And again, please, for the love of God, don’t stay here.

• Bedbugs Found
• Requested Refund