Review: Quality Inn in Vernon, CT

During a recent business trip, I stayed at the Quality Inn Conference Center in Vernon, Connecticut. Through priceline.com's online bidding system, I was able to reserve a room for $27 per night. However, rooms are usually around $80 per night, which I feel is quite a bit for the quality and location of the motel.

The room was nicely decorated and fairly clean when I arrived. A great feature of this motel is that there is a small refrigerator and microwave in each room which is great if you need to make some simple meals while you stay there. The bed and pillows were very comfortable to sleep on which surprised me. The free wireless internet worked well and my laptop connected easily. Also, the included continental breakfast each morning was tasty and included coffee, juice, fruit, cereal, bagels, muffins, and hard boiled eggs.

Overall, the stay was fine but there were also many negative aspects that were more annoying than anything. The woman at the front desk when I checked in was unprofessional and was speaking on the phone the entire time. She didn't even tell me my room number or which direction to go to find it. While the room was clean at the beginning of the week when I arrived, it was not cleaned at all during my week-long stay. The floor was not vacuumed and the sheets were not changed. On one day, I threw my bar of soap away hoping that they would leave me a new one and returned to my room to find that bar of soap back on the shelf in the shower. Gross.

The shower curtain bar was broken, so the bathroom got soaked every time I showered. The remote control to the TV did not work. The TV was very snowy when I arrived and I had to adjust the cables in the back to make it work properly. The lamp on the nightstand wouldn't turn on. The digital clock was off by about an hour and a half.

The Quality Inn is rather hard to find. As you are driving along the Hartford Turnpike, you will see a sign for it but not be able to see the building. Turn down the road by the sign and it is the large brown building directly in front of you.

Overall, I definitely got what I expected when I paid $27 per night for the room. If the staff was better, this motel would be a nice place to stay. However, no one seems to care about anything and nothing ever gets fixed. If you can get a room here for a cheap price, the Quality Inn will do as long as you are not expecting very high quality.