Sandals Resorts
Reviews and Complaints

After requesting a ground floor room we were assigned a second floor room. My wife suffers from a lung condition that makes stairs nearly impossible.I offered to pay for an upgrade, nothing was done during a week stay.
This was our third trip to a Sandals resort Signature guest number [protected], they said there was no record of our previous stays.
I listed these concerns on their site but to no surprise, there was no response.
Not the best way to spend $6, 500.00 on a vacation.

Good day. My name is Joseph Velez I'm here trying to contact someone of importance related to Sandals particularly Grand Antigua. Im very disappointed to say my 1st ever vacation in life and with my long term girl friend now fiancé was completely ruined. I booked my trip and departed to the resort checking in on Feb 11th till to the 16th. As this was the trip I set to purpose to my fiancé it was considered very special. But it was not what I expected, the moment I arrived I immediately was turned off by the disgusting champagne glasses I was given with hot champagne the had rum in it. (later on witnessing them actually pour alcohol in the champagne knew it to be true) My nights where not at all any better, I woke up one night wit my hand completely swollen by an insect bite and the next night my right eye swollen closed. when I arrived to the (nurses station) I was simply told ''go buy antihistamine we cant do not thing for u'', when I went to the front desk I was told ''they are spraying for bugs things happen''. Needless to say I woke up itching every night. On my second to last night there I book at zip lining trip wit my fiancé threw Sandals. While trying to be extremely care full with the employees that worked there (very reckless behavior and no consideration for tourist) my fiancé was injured because of an employees incompetence, while zip lining we were suppose to be attached to one another in a seat beat position hug, the employee merely sent us back to back causing here to crash full speed in to me mid air cause me to bruise my ribs and her banging her foot on to the wooden platform give here and tremendous bruise and laceration. After a fake incident report was filed that completely avoided blame to the employee we were sent back to the hotel where we waited 45 min for the nurse and as told we will be going to get x rays in town. when asked about payment for the x rays were told simply bring back all paper work and it will be settled. upon arriving at the clinic after a 45 min drive we were told we must pay 295 and the hotel only covers cab fair, needless to say I was not prepared for that so my fiancé and I had to go back and spend our last day and night mending our wounds, after speaking to a supervisor she discount the $250 off my bill. But that is simply not enough I want someone of real authority to know I am 100% disappointed and my trip wit our kids this summer for our family vacation will not be to any sandals resort what so ever..

We have been loyal customers of Sandals and Beaches and have appreciated the excellent customer service provided and have never complained until our second visit to “Sandals Ochi”. Yet a resort unpleasant experience at “Sandals Ochi” has shaken our belief in Sandal’s ability to provide top notch customer service at all times. We never got to experience the “Sandals” experienced. I will also be reaching out to the corporate office regarding the experience. This is not acceptable for any guest even as returning guests. The type of service need to be known and is still pending resolution. We traveled four times for the year and have never written a bad review but this experience could not be ignored. Our stay at Sandals Ochi from December 25th, 2015 through January 1st, 2016 was the worst experience we have ever experienced and wasted money. This is our second time returning to this resort and we were amazed how the service has declined. Throughout our stay, the service was mediocre at the restaurants and bars. It was a shocked to hear other guest complaining about the service and the same issues we experienced. What was even more surprising was visiting Beaches Ocho Rios and Sandals Montego Bay after leaving this resort and hearing other returning guests complaining about the same issues and voicing their concerns about the same we had and how the service has declined. Beaches Ochi and Sandals Montego Bay lived up to the “Sandals experience” and reviews are posted. After complaining twice, the first after four days of having enough and the sixth day and the service did not improve. We finally decided to stay indoors and had our butlers ordered room service the final two days to avoid the treatment. We finally decided to put in some of the concerns through the “LOOP” which the cases were closed and still no follow up. We spoke with the manager on duty and voice our concerns and recommendations for improving service after being tired of four days of the torture and worst customer service we ever experience. Maxine seemed very concern, listened and apologized and said she will discussed with other managers and in staff shift line – up. She had dinner with us that same night, which we appreciated. The mediocre service still continue which as guests we do not ask for much, but the customer service issues were blatant and was unbelievable. We continue putting us with the service until we reached saturation point when we visited the “Grill Hut” and sat awaiting service and was totally ignored by Crystal which was not the first time, three other couples came after us and were served as we sat there were not even offered water for over 30 minutes. We finally decided to get up and ask the worker behind the counter if there was a problem with us that we were totally ignored and not served. This experience was the worst and we had it at this point, it cost a lot to visit SANDALS AND THE TREATMENT really made us feel like we did not pay for the service like any other guests. This was not the first incident we waited for over fifteen minutes and was not acknowledged. We decided at this point to speak with one of the manager by the name of Andrew, on December 30th and asked that we be transferred to the “Beaches Ochi” property before our scheduled arrival on January 1st. We again complained about the service and our experiences and offer recommendation and solutions, which he seemed concerned, listened and again apologized, He advised us that Beaches was full to capacity so we could not leave. During the conversation the “Director of Guest Service” intervened during the conversation and wanted us to discuss our experiences, concerns and vowed that she will make this right and speaks to the staff and this is not what “Sandals experience” is about. She vowed to follow up with us and offered us two nights free for all the problems. She advised us that we should pick up the voucher at the front desk when we check out on January 1st, 2016. We do not mind paying for the service, but I could have gone to a cheaper hotel chain and maybe experience the same level of service or even better service. We paid for the “Sandals experience”. We checked the voicemail message on our phone daily until we checked out and there were no messages following – up by any of the staff. When we checked out on January 1st, we asked during our check out about the 2 free night’s voucher that we should pick up. The front desk clerk called the “Director of Guest services” and she advised the agent that we should receive an email within 7-10 business days. It would have been nice to be told that during our discussion. At this point it showed the lack of service in leadership, which seems apparent in the staff. It would have been nice for someone to at least follow up and resolved the issue before the two “LOOP” concerns were closed yet not resolved. When we left at that point it was apparent that no one cared. Luckily for us we had butlers which make our stay a little better, unfortunately they do not control the service at the restaurants and bars. I did not pay for butlers to be at my side at all times. It now January 14th, 2016, 13 days since we checked out of “Sandals Ochi” and we are still awaiting an email, follow-up, a phone This is our first Sandals trip that the service was so atrocious that we did not attend the “returning guest” dinner and the Butler party which there was no regret after hearing from other Sandals select members. Our final two days we had enough and in order to make use of our vacation that we paid for, we decided to stay indoors and order room service in order to avoid any more aggravation. This is not what we envisioned for our vacation. There were several issues that we encountered: 1. Being constantly ignored when visiting the restaurants, which took fifteen minutes, thirty minutes and one incident over forty five minutes at the Grill/ Hut to even be acknowledged. 2. Visiting the bars for frozen drinks and being told there was no blender to get a frozen drink, we needed to return at a specific times. 3. Visiting the restaurants and not having the items listed on the menus for several days and the staff not even extended an offer to assist. 4. The food served at the restaurant was served constantly cold and we walked out due to the poor service and no follow up by the waiter and waitress staff. 5. The lack of service by staff to assist when visiting even the restaurants and grill. Had to constantly get us and asked for service, even being constantly ignored or overlooked by staff and other guests were served that arrived after us. 6. Visiting the “Le Gourmand” restaurant for breakfast and waited over two hours for breakfast due to insinuating circumstance with the chef, which I understood. What was very disappointing is the lack of customer service and the manager’s failure to seize this moment by coming out into the dining room and apologizing to the guests. What was disappointing is that we were told everyone would be contacted by a manager regarding the situation. We did not get a call apologizing until 48 hours after which occurred due to my husband mentioning to one of the manager that we did not get a call regarding the incident. We finally decided to give them a second chance and the service was poor, slow, items not on menu and it was disappointing again. 7. The restaurants constantly had a wait list for dinner, which is acceptable but every night this is a problem. Recommendations 1. The staff needs to be constantly trained on “diversity and inclusion” and understand that we treat all customer exactly the same regardless of the religion, culture, color etc. 2. The staff needs to aspire and understand that customer service is essential in this business and despite how they feel, a smile goes a long way and treating all guest with a certain level of respect is vital for guests to continue to return. 3. The Butlers need to stop and offer not just their guests a ride when the golf cart is empty. I understand there are for their guest but just being considerate of other guests. 4. There is a need for at least one restaurant each night to offer “buffet service” to avoid the long wait for dinner. There is some staff that deserved recognition and a big thank you for making our vacation much better. Our “Butlers” Jeremy and Richard. You guys can only control the things you control; you cannot control the other staff members. Richard thank you for all your assistance, it was sad we didn’t get to spend too much time with you. Jeremy you are the greatest, you understand what customer service is about and your personality is amazing. Thank you so much for going above and beyond. Keep on shining! You made an impact. Your pursuit of excellence is apparent. Martina in Landscaping. You were impressive and awesome. Your understanding and commitment of what customer service is was breathtaking. You were a breath of fresh air and just your attention to details. You are heading for greatest! You will be an amazing teacher one day, which is your dream. Katleight in dining. Your attention to detail, following – up and providing the best customer service experience is memorable and should be commended. It was a pleasure having you serve us on two occasions and it takes a special individual like you to put sunshine in a bad day. You are heading for greatness! Thank you so much. I am writing to encourage you to improve and elevate your customer service as I don’t want this experience to continue to ruin impressions of “Sandals”. These concerns will also be to send to corporate office. If this is kind of service that loyal customer received, I can only imagine how worst it can get in the case of others. P. S I am still awaiting an email regarding the voucher for 2 free nights we were promised. I understand the team might be overwhelmed with all the resort issues, but following-up with customers is imperative in any organization and keeping promises made. Thank you

Most disappointing trip we have ever been on and it was my honeymoon. I went to Sandals Emerald Bay from September 28-October 5..I never complain on vacations because I'm usually so happy to just be on a trip and relaxing but this was a nightmare that left me crying. I had been planning my wedding and stressing over that for the last year and all I wanted to do was enjoy my vacation with my husband. But, $200 was stolen out of my purse in our room when I was forced to move my luggage into a different room. Butler service was a total waste of money and I saw my butler maybe twice the entire trip. Other couples butlers ended up bringing us drinks when they were bringing theirs.We were moved out of our room because of the storm (which was totally understandable) into a downgraded room then found out anther couple was staying in our ocean front room that we were paying for. We upgraded this entire trip because it was our honeymoon and spent way more than we ever have which makes my stomach hurt at how much money was wasted. So I paid thousands of dollars for someone else to enjoy the ocean front room while I was moved to a room with a view of the bar only. Tried to talked to management, would never get back to me until after 3 days I went to the front desk and refused to leave until a manager spoke with me. They had no explanation of why someone else was getting to stay in the room I was paying for. I was told and given a note from the manager at the resort that stated that when I got home all I would need to do was e-mail customer service and I would get a refund of the price difference of the rooms. It's almost been a month and I have emailed and called Sandals over 30 times and they tell me I'm a liar and will not refund me. I'm in talks with lawyers at this point to see what I have to do to get my money back.

This is a copy of a letter I sent to Sandals Resorts. Be forewarned if you ever have a problem with a sandals resort they will never assist you so be prepared to kiss your $6000.00 of vacation dollars for one week goodbye

To Customer Service at Sandal's Resorts:
I am writing to you today to provide some feedback but also to share an unfortunate experience I had on my recent vacation with Sandals’ Resort. The Director of Guest Services at Sandal's Montego Bay was the person who suggested that I get in touch with you directly. I believe she agreed with my complaint but was unable to resolve the issue herself.
Allow me to briefly explain. I am a loyal customer with Sandals. During my visit in April 2013 to the Ocho Rios location to celebrate my engagement, there was a chronic problem with the air conditioning unit in our room which malfunctioned for 4 days and nights. The unit beeped constantly all night. My fiancé and I did not get any sleep for 4 nights out of our 6 night vacation. Rather than adjust the cost of my stay I was offered, and accepted a 2 day voucher for use at a future date. However the voucher apparently had a 12-month expiration date. During the subsequent months I suffered the loss of my mother and postponed any vacations for obvious reasons. When my year of mourning was up, I called to book a stay and mentioned my voucher and I was assured by my travel agent, who had spoken directly with the Quebec representative of Sandals, that Montego Bay will do “something” for us. My agent hinted at an extension of the voucher, (if not for this vacation, for use on a future vacation) a room upgrade, or perhaps a 2nd voucher for the spa treatment. I was assured that the staff at Montego Bay will be aware of this. As well, this was a celebration of my fiancé’s birthday, and I was promised that she would receive special treatment on her birthday. I had to call the manager to tell her it was my fiancé’s birthday, and my fiancé later received a phone call wishing her a Happy Birthday. I was not impressed with the special treatment which was documented in my reservation.
Upon my arrival to the Montego Bay location, no other accommodation (upgrade, spa credit or anything) was offered in its stead. I have to share with you both my disappointment and the feeling like this was a bit of a bait and switch, since the representative had assured me that Sandal’s would take care of the situation.
When we arrived at the resort the file had most certainly not been notated and there was no request for any type of extension or upgrade. I spoke to Client care specialist Duncan at check in and though she agreed that the voucher should be honored under the circumstances, she had no authority to comp the two nights stay. Duncan involved the Director of Guest Services, Miss xxxx xxx and while Ms. xxxxx could not help me, she suggested that I contact you directly after someone in the head office reviewed the file and refused to grant the promised extension. My original voucher had expired by a mere 3 months when I made the reservations for Montego Bay. To say I was disappointed would be a gross understatement. I felt especially disappointed that the reasons for the delay were for very legitimate.
This added insult to injury as I have been raving about the quality of service at Sandal’s Resorts when my sister has been encouraging me to try other properties. In particular she recommends the Palace Resorts chain in Mexico.
I sincerely hope that this letter will serve both as an opportunity for me to share with you the feedback about what is clearly a disconnect between booking vacations and information given to the actual resorts, but also to let you know how very disappointed I am. Especially since I am a loyal customer to Sandal’s and remained a loyal customer despite a disastrous stay at Ocho Rios because of a poorly serviced infrastructure (which is something Sandal’s should be taking care of.)
I absolutely love the Sandal's concept. Despite the warnings of family and friends, I feel well cared for and safe when I stay at a Sandal's resort. I had an amazing time at Montego Bay, and would be willing to return to this location (where I had no problems with malfunctioning air conditioning). I would request that Sandal’s please reissue the 2 day voucher so that I might return to a Sandal’s resort in the future. I would also encourage your customer service dept. to better train the reservation agents to be a bit more transparent and honest with customers so as not to create unrealistic expectations they never had any intention of honoring, and certainly they should not make promises that they cannot keep.

Many thanks for taking the time to read my letter and for consideraton of my request

Yours very sincerely,
Mr. XXXXX
P.S. Their response was to flatly deny any extension of the voucher, as well, they claimed my fiancé and I were treated to a breakfast in bed with flowers and champagne for her birthday. Again we never received a thing.

P.P.S. I posted a negative review on TripAdvisor and after receiving 10 helpful votes, TripAdvisor decided to yank my ad, claiming I commented about the food and rooms but never slept there or ate there, and despite several letters explaining that sandals is an all exclusive resort, and everyone who stays there eats and sleeps there, they refused to respond to me. TripAdvisor is controlled by companies like sandals to try and bury all the damaging reviews. Thank goodness for sites like this!

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We went to Sandals Montego Bay, along with 43 of our friends and family to be married there. We had a great time with our family and friends, however, several issues due to Sandals.
1). It rained on our wedding day. We actually had more fun with this. However, Sandals was extremely ill-prepared for back up plans. They missed key items that were necessary as part of our ceremony. All they did was apologize and state the rain messed them up.
2). The butler service was a joke. Our butler messed us up constantly. We finally stopped using her. She prepared a bath with champagne for us with fresh picked, bug-filled flowers on the same evening that she knew we had an excursion booked followed by a nice dinner reservation. So, we returned after our excursion, dirty, ending to shower - in our cold, bug-filled bath tub. We had to drain it, clean it, shower, and get ready for dinner in thirty minutes. When preparing for another excursion, we asked for towels. She said she was on the way with them. Fifteen minutes later, I called her again. This time she said she was by the pool - less than five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, we left and walked passed the pool to the main meeting area. She was there, towels in hand, chatting away with a friend. Another instance was constantly messed up dinner and breakfast reservations.
3). They were completely unaccomodating to large parties. We tried to book reservations for four, six, or eight on various occasions, to be constantly turned down. Of the nine days we were there, we were only able to have dinner (other than the wedding dinner) on one day, as a party of 12.
4). We had the Prime Minister suite. The most expensive suite on the resort. The awning covering the balcony was falling apart. It collected water in spots that would begin to smell. We found ourselves constantly pushing the water out with umbrella handles to avoid the water pooling.
5). Three of us (that I am aware of. I have not asked), caught Scabies - for the first time in our 40+ years alive. Scabies is most commonly transferred through improperly washed sheets. It is now six weeks later, and the scabies is almost gone for me, still recurring for both of the other two folks.
6). Several rooms (at least five rooms in our party) were moved to other rooms after being placed in their rooms due to various issues: plumbing, bugs, electrical...

The worst part is that I tried to reach out to Sandals to inform them of the issues while on site. The Managers would not come speak to us. I then tried to send a preliminary letter to a Manager via email. The response I received was dismissive to say the least. He blamed the scabies on a tropical climate and said that they have a pest control service. I responded saying that he clearly did not investigate anything as he said he did, for he would have learned that scabies is most commonly transmitted from touch or improperly cleaned sheets. He did not care, which greatly concerns me for the next guests. He also asked why we didn't report this while on-site. I reminded him that I had already said that two of the three of us went to the nurses station while on site, and were dismissed with hydrocortisone, told it was a bug bite. It wasn't until returning home and seeing doctors did we learn what it was. All with a common first question from the physician: "Have you stayed In a hotel recently?"

We are disgusted by the lack of cleanliness, the mediocre food, the bad service, and even worse management. We even visited the sandals Royal Caribbean in Montego Bay. Although they had better food, they, too, messed up our dinner reservation and were completely unwilling to accommodate.

We would have expected slightly more attention given that we spent over $40, 000 booking 23 rooms and having a wedding there. We did not even get reimbursed for the items that were paid for in advance as part of the wedding - that did not occur (but could have - regardless of weather).

I will never go back. And am fearful for others that spend their hard-earned money and sparse vacation time at Sandals.

My Wife and I booked our honeymoon with Sandals at the Halcyon in St.Lucia. Our trip was nothing like we expected it was horrible we spent so much time dealing with the management staff. I felt like we paid over 4 thousand dollars to go and work at the resort in getting our issues resolved. It was plainly obvious that they are not putting their high priced profits back into their resort. what an outdated dump. Im going to leave it at there and am going to post my letter of complaint to Sandals after our trip. Their response only justifies what awful service we got and what they couldn't justify they just didn't acknowledge. And they did offer us something they offered us a chance to comeback again at our own expense and give them another shot. HAHAHAHA so If I do something wrong at my job and Im a contractor I guess I can just tell the customer that it's ok I still need to be paid and that they should hire me again to see if maybe I can get it right the second time huh? That sounds like a legit business model way to go Sandals that's how you've gotten so big taking advantage of people good job now I know your business model and I plan on letting everyone else know. I apologize now for its a long read but thats how many things went wrong on our so called luxurious honeymoon. I also attached the pics of our sheets with dirt in the bed after they had just cleaned and changed the linens and when we turned down the comforter there was a chunks of dirt and one big stain on our sheets. What a romantic honeymoon experience makes you want to jump right into this bed and at a place that we were paying about $700 bucks a night absolutely unacceptable but here it is Enjoy.
Sandals Halcyon in St. Lucia
Arrived on Nov 5th 2014
Kristen and Adam
Fishkill, NY

Sandals Customer Service,

To Whom It May Concern,

Hello, I’m writing you to tell you about the experience my wife and I had on our honeymoon, at the Sandals Halcyon resort in St. Lucia. This was our first stay at a Sandals resort and Im pretty sure it’s going to be our last, theres not a lot of good things I have to say about our stay. I can’t get over how many issues we had. We dealt with so many things that a couple should not have to deal with on their honeymoon. All I keep thinking about is the amount of money we spent to go away to this luxurious all-inclusive resort getaway and all the problems that we had with our room and service, it’s unbelievable.

To start it off, we arrived on the 5th of November to start our honeymoon, upon reaching our room we found there was no honeymoon package that we signed up for. OK no problem there was some mix-up and they said it didn’t say anything about our honeymoon package in our paperwork, but they would take care of it. I have the online transcript from when I booked the trip where we set up the honeymoon package and also when we sent our wedding invitation to your company by email as requested so, I don’t know why the package wasn’t listed. But, they said they would take care of it. Well that was just the start.

So, after unpacking and settling in we took a brief walk around and sat at the bistro for a few minutes to relax after the long day of travel. As we sat there watching the sun go down and the ocean a gentleman walking along the beach 15ft from us proceeded to scream and yell at us about something, whether he was trying to sell us something or he had a problem with us I couldn’t tell you he was obnoxious and sounded angry, it was quite unpleasent. He didn’t appear to friendly with his tone and continued to yell for about 10mins straight completely ruining the romantic mood. We were told these people who walk the beach are locals who are allowed by the resort on the beach to help their local economy. Ok find I get it it is their Island but they should have guidelines or just plain sales etiquette taught to them because we literately avoided the beach at the halcyon our entire stay because every time you were on the side walk or even looked towards the beach there were groups of locals standing there yelling to you with absolutely no respect or regard to your privacy, one guy made some comment about my wife after I told him no thanks while we were trying to take a romantic walk along the beach. But once again we didn’t make it out to the sand I can honestly say I did’t set one foot on the beach at the Halcyon, not one. Thats incredible to me because I love the beach and would have loved to relax in the beautiful sand and water. But, Im getting off topic after our “lovely” time at the bistro where we got yelled at. We went back to our room to shower before dinner. Unfortunately our shower was broken we enjoyed a shower that went from hot to cold to scalding all throughout our showers. I told the front desk about it the next morning where they sent a maintenance worker to fix it. I told him the mixing valve was bad and after 30mins he agreed removed it and came back with another one that looked used probably from another room and installed it. I find it hard to believe that a resort of your caliber doesn’t have parts like that for repairs that they used another used valve instead of solving the problem once and for all with a new one. I work in construction in NY and have worked for large apartment complexes and replacement parts like mixing valves are always on hand because they break from time to time and need to be replaced which is fine but it needs to be fixed correctly with the correct parts. Well we had one shower where it worked and then the rest of our trip was the same HOT, COLD, SCALDING cycle. It was absolutely ridiculous to me that we couldn’t take a hot shower the rest of our trip at such a luxurious resort.

Then, after we got out of our shower we noticed that bugs were all over our walls, some type of ant or something I actually have video of the bugs marching across our walls and ceiling. Really this is not a good start. So, we called the front desk and informed them of this issue too. They sent some women down with a can of bug killer, and they told asked us to step outside so they could spray the room, and that we might want to wait a while before coming back so the smell subsides. I said absolutely not, all our clothes were out and hung our personal belongings were out and I really didn’t like the idea of sleeping on a bed that has a layer of bug spray on it. Would you like that on your first night of your honeymoon? I’m sorry but this was NOT what we were expecting when we booked our honeymoon at this luxurious all-inclusive resort. So like the broken shower we had all week we also had bugs staying with us all week. I know the Tuesday before we left they went around with the exterminators fogging the outsides of the buildings.

The first night we went to Kelly's Dockside restaurant and felt the staff tried to trick us into ordering bottles of wine never telling us they cost extra just that we could bring them back to room if we didn’t finish them, luckily while we were ordering them we questioned if there was an extra charge that’s when the waiter reluctantly told us well of course. Im sorry I thought this was all inclusive this is my first trip to an all inclusive resort I was completely unaware but apparently I should of know this. So I told him I would like to just have what was included so he took our drink order and that was the last we saw of him. No drinks were brought to us. about 10 mins later a different waiter approached and asked us what we would like to drink? Apparently if we weren’t spending extra money on alcohol he didn’t want to be bothered with us, so our drink order was never put in. Well that was the first time we were made to feel uncomfortable on our paradise getaway. Not to mention the quality of the food was not what we expected to be honest our salad was shredded lettuce and the steak seem like a cheap frozen steak. It wasn’t a great first meal. So at this point no honeymoon welcome package or outstanding romantic dinner.

Now we go back to our room after dinner and are getting ready for bed still with no honeymoon package on our first night of our honeymoon and find there is so much dirt ground into our carpet that I literally had to sit on the side of the bed and scrape the dirt off my feet before getting into it. I mean if thats not romantic I don’t know what is, right? I’m sorry but that is disgusting I’ve stayed at $89 a night hotels back at home that were cleaner then this. Not to mention the beautiful water stains that were all over our wall where our air conditioner drips down now that was classy. Im sorry I’m trying not to be sarcastic but we tried and tried to make the best of our stay on our honeymoon, and look past this stuff. But after the trip was over it just made me angry that why should I have to try and make the best of our honeymoon after paying over 4 thousand dollars to stay in such a luxurious all inclusive resort.? I should be able to take a hot shower, I shouldn’t have to clean my feet off before climbing into my bed at night I shouldn’t have bugs crawling all over my room. I shouldn’t have to look at big ugly water stains on my almost $600. a night resort hotel room. Should I? But that’s exactly what we did. But wait theres more.

The next day we had mentioned again at the front desk that we didn’t get our honeymoon package. Well, later that day it arrived in the form of a gentleman who knocked on our door and asked us for our ice bucket and scooped ice out of a little blue cooler into our ice bucket on our doorstep and handed it back to us with a bottle of champagne. Again I ask you isn’t that the most romantic honeymoon package you can imagine? That was it! So again we let it go and tied to make the best of it cause we didn't want to be mad and upset on my honeymoon.

Our second night we were going to Mario’s for dinner, we got showered up in that wonderful shower and headed over. We walked into the restaurant and stood there for a couple of minutes by the podium waiting to be seated. We observed 3 waitresses standing on the other side of the room just talking and looking over at us. I was wondering why nobody was coming to seat us. Eventually, one of the ladies came over to seat us and after asking us our room number which was room 304 just in case you want to verify any of our issues. She then proceeds to tell me I’m not appropriately dressed to dine at Mario's. She tells me a collard shirt is required. I explained to her in the dress attire guidelines in our daily newspaper it stated collar or no collar for Mario's restaurant. She said sorry but we cannot serve you unless you go change. Let me tell you how embarrassing it is to be rejected like that at the restaurant in-front of other tables dining right next to us watching as we were asked to leave. I was made to feel like I was a piece of garbage in-front of my wife and other guests at “your” resort. I say “your” resort because I found it funny how they said welcome home when we arrived but didn’t make us feel very welcome. This was the straw that broke the camels back. I was done with trying to make the best of my honeymoon something I should of never tried to do. I immediately went to the front desk to speak to a manager about all the issues we were having.

We waited in the lobby and two managers came to talk to us I let them know about the shower issue, the bugs, our honeymoon package and how it was presented to us a day late. How dirty our rug was and how it carries into our bed from our feet. How un-welcomed we felt at Mario’s. We were told that yes you do need a collar for Mario’s where I grabbed a paper right off the lobby counter and opened it up and read where it says collar or no collar. I was wearing nice jeans, dress shoes, and a solid black v-neck shirt. I felt pretty dressy for a hot humid tropical environment. I wasn’t wearing shorts or swim trunks or logo t-shirts nothing like that. But, the manager did say he would make an accommodation for us and have someone serve us at a table outside the restaurant. I declined. He said he would get someone to clean the room right away and change our bed sheets. We went back to the room all stressed out when a maid shows up at our door she acted as if she had no idea as to why she was there. We informed her that our bed needed to be changed. And asked her if she had a vacuum that the floor was filthy and needed to be cleaned also. We left the room and caught the first bus out of the halcyon we saw to La Toc. Still in the mood for Italian dinner we went to Armando's Italian Restaurant.

We arrived at Armando’s and to our surprise this place was beautiful, very nice, classy a lot nicer of an establishment then Mario’s and your not going to believe this. At this restaurant which was a lot nicer and had the same dress code as Mario’s there were people who were wearing logo - t-shirts, cargo shorts and sneakers even v-neck t-shirts and they were being treated with respect and served with class. They were not made to feel embarrassed or unwelcome. It was how someone should be treated after spending all this money to vacation somewhere. Not to mention the food at the Grand and La Toc are a night and day difference to the food that is served at the halcyon. I feel like the halcyon is an older resort that Sandals doesn’t put much money into, I found it funny that you would have to wait at the biggest bar in the halcyon resort for drinks because they only had one blender. Your telling me the rates you charge a night and you can’t get more the one blender at a bar? It’s obvious that the food suppliers and or chefs are of a different caliber at the Grand and La Toc. I challenge you to go to dinner or lunch at the halcyon and then go to The Grand or La Toc and compare the meals it’s a night and day difference of service and quality.

So after dinner at La Toc’s Armando’s Restaurant we caught the shuttle back to the Halcyon. We arrived at our room to see they changed our sheets and placed rose petals on the bed for our honeymoon package. As we were getting ready to get into bed we noticed with the first step on the carpet that it was still filthy. OK we will let that go AGAIN and try to enjoy our second night. As we pulled the covers down to get into bed there was dirt all over the sheets in our bed DIRT! Again how romantic and to top it off. There was a huge stain on the comforter that I’m not even going to try to guess what it was. And again I have pictures of all of these things if you’d like to see them. At this point again we called the front desk and asked them to send a manager to our room to show them these issues. The two managers we spoke with earlier came along with another gentlemen who said he was the night manager. He was very nice and he agreed with us that our complaints were valid as I showed him the bugs as they still were crawling all over our walls. I told him about our shower, I even showed them how dirty my feet were just from walking on the carpet in our room for a matter of minutes before they got there my feet were discolored from dirt and actually had dirt stuck all over them. Now I’m expected to get into my bed with that, I have to scrape the dirt off my feet every night before getting into bed. They never vacuum they just sweep around the rug and that’s it. I told him how our champagne was delivered and now we just got rose petals on a dirty bed. Also, another thing was we paid to get wifi in the room so we could make calls to our 8 year old daughter back home while we were away. We had to make several calls to tech support because we couldn’t get our phones to connect to wifi it would take about 30 mins every time we wanted to use it to connect and we were paying extra for this service. Not to mention knowing that starting dec 1st it was going to be offered free to all guests not just the higher class guests and it was less then a month away but we had to pay for it? And it didn’t work most of the time. But, back to the dirty bed the manager said he would have someone come down and change our bed sheets again right away. This was at 10:30 we sat there and waited until 11:30 before someone arrived to change our sheets. Needless to say this wasn’t a very romantic night either. But, to top it off the gentlemen that arrived to change our sheets an hour later pulled our old ones off put on a new fitted sheet and proceeded to put the quilt comforter on-top of the fitted sheet with no top sheet or blanket that we had previously. We had asked him if there was another sheet to put on before the quilt and he acted as if he didn’t understand what we were saying, as if he didn’t speak english? We asked him if he knew how to make a bed and to be clear it was not in a sarcastic or disrespectful way either. We asked if he normally does this type of work here and he kind of shook his head and said No, I guess thats the only person they had on site to send to our room. We actually felt bad for him cause he seemed to feel uncomfortable, which I can’t blame him because two people are sitting there staring at him exhausted waiting to get in bed. Ultimately we just took the sheets that he brought and made the bed ourselves. We actually made our own bed at 11:30 at night on our honeymoon at your luxurious resort. I feel like we paid over 4 thousand dollars to come and work for your resort for free… Can you believe after all this 11:30 at night your guests were making their own bed. I guess they mean it when they say welcome home.

Another issue we had was we were given a $300 red lane spa credit when we originally booked our trip and when we arrived we wanted to schedule that so we went to the front desk and they booked it for us and we asked if they could make sure of our credit, they called and confirmed there was a $300 credit. So we went to our appointment which was at1pm we arrived at 12:30 to utilize the sauna before our massages and they told us we were late that our appointment was for 12 but we had our reservation slip from Halcyon where they booked it, that confirmed it wasn’t our mistake it was their mistake, even though we were made to feel like we messed up at the desk at red lane, which was a real nice way to make your customers feel, I guess the customer is always right doesn’t apply in St. Lucia. So we had our massage everything was great, but then we had to go back to the front desk the afternoon before we left because we got our bill and guess what they billed us for our spa treatment, so again we had to go and deal with yet another issue that we had already dealt with they had to call again and verify that we had the credit which we did. I just can’t understand why this is so hard, why is there so many issues. Part of me wonders if this is done to see how many people don’t catch it and just pay the tab at the end. I don’t know I hope that’s not the case.

Im sorry, I apologize for being sarcastic, but I just can’t get over the fact that I feel like we booked a trip at one of your luxurious all-inclusive resorts and we had so many issues. I can’t get over it. In all fairness a manager by the name of Kurt Weeks contacted us the next day to follow up with our problems. He was very polite and understanding he agreed and sympathized with us and told us this is not how our trip should be going. He said he would comp our internet because the connection was so bad, which was nice of him, it was the least he could do. But we still had poor internet connection the rest of the week, but at least our hassle of connecting to the wifi was free. At this point I would like to tell you how the rest of our week went. We woke up took our hot, cold, scalding shower got dressed and waited for the bus to take us to the Grand hung out at the Grand during the day then took a bus back to they Halcyon did the shower thing again and went and waited for the bus to go to La Toc for dinner. Now I must say it was nice to have the option to go and visit the other resorts if we wanted to but it would of been nice to have felt like our resort was equally as nice to stay at but unfortunately going to the other resorts felt more like a necessity then an option to us. We felt like we were always rushing to catch a shuttle, not what we had in mind for our honeymoon rushing was not on our list of things to do when we booked this trip. We are so disappointed with our memories of our one and only honeymoon. I do have to say that the third or fourth night we finally got our honeymoon package and I know you probably think I’m just a complainer but I will give credit where credit is due and I’m pretty sure Kurt Weeks had something to do with it. We arrived home from the Grand and we were rushing to get showered and changed to get to the shuttle out of the halcyon and over to La Toc when we walked in our room there were rose petals everywhere they had candles burning everywhere music was playing there was a bubble bath drawn with more rose petals and candles. And I have to say it was very romantic and over the top and appreciated. And I personally thanked Kurt for that the next day., But it didn’t change the fact that we got that over-the-top honeymoon package because of all the other short comings of our trip. Also while Im giving compliments I would like to point out a woman that worked for the housekeeping department, I believe her name was Jean Marie I’m not sure if I’m spelling it right but I told Kurt and Ill tell you she had come up to me one day when we were waiting for the shuttle to go to the Grand or La Toc and I had only met her once or twice in passing and she remembered me and came to ask me how things were going that she heard we had some issues, and she was truly genuine and concerned for us and our stay which is how our treatment should be and although at that point the damage had been done it was truly appreciated she was very kind and genuine and should be commended for that.

And trust me I was very grateful for that one night because it’s the only time the whole trip that it actually felt like our honeymoon. Other then that we were so disappointed with Sandals and don’t think we will ever stay at another sandals resort again. Now for the rest of our lives together this experience is our memory of our honeymoon pretty pathetic especially when we paid so much for it, you spend that kind of money you almost think its full proof guaranteed great time we were wrong. We feel like we stayed at one of St. Lucia's older forgotten Sandals resorts that Sandals really doesn’t care about any more. We joked that the Halcyon was the resort where if a worker got in trouble at one of the other resorts they would get sent to the Halcyon for punishment. Im truly sorry our life as husband and wife started out like this. On the bright side it can only get better from here on out. Also we found it funny on our shuttle back to the airport to fly home another couple we were talking to had mentioned that they had some minor issue when they first got there and the resort had credited them back several hundred dollars for their trouble and all we got was comped internet. Unbelievable. We should have gotten a full refund for our trip if it wasn’t our honeymoon and I wasn’t trying to make the best of it I would have taken a taxi back to the airport and flew home early. It felt like our honeymoon was work, we had to deal with so many things that was your staffs job not ours. I feel like we got ripped off.Wasn’t worth the price of admission at all.

No beach cause locals harassed you if you went near it,
No pest free room
No properly working shower
No Honeymoon Package to start off our trip on the right foot.
No Respect given to the customer at the Halcyon Restaurants
No Good Wifi Connection
No vacuum cleaners to clean the rugs
No Respectable looking room that didn’t have water stains running down the wall
No Credits unless you ask for confirmation over and over and over
No Clean Sheets
I could go on but Im getting upset re-living our experience…..

Again Sorry to be a complainer not what I wanted to do, I wish I could of written you a letter telling how you guys showed us an amazing time. Treated us like valued guests, provided us with top of the line service we paid for but unfortunately I can’t. Thank you for hearing me out. If you would like the photos feel free to ask I will gladly send them to you. And I can be contacted by my email I know this is a customer service email, I would like it if you could provide me with a corporate email contact so i could express my concerns with them too please. Thank you again for your time. Have a great day..

Sincerely,
Adam, and Kristen

Well they never did give me a corporate contact and I also requested it after their response letter

Sandals Customer Service,

To Whom It May Concern,

Hello, I’m writing you to tell you about the experience my wife and I had on our honeymoon, at the Sandals Halcyon resort in St. Lucia. This was our first stay at a Sandals resort and Im pretty sure it’s going to be our last, theres not a lot of good things I have to say about our stay. I can’t get over how many issues we had. We dealt with so many things that a couple should not have to deal with on their honeymoon. All I keep thinking about is the amount of money we spent to go away to this luxurious all-inclusive resort getaway and all the problems that we had with our room and service, it’s unbelievable.

To start it off, we arrived on the 5th of November to start our honeymoon, upon reaching our room we found there was no honeymoon package that we signed up for. OK no problem there was some mix-up and they said it didn’t say anything about our honeymoon package in our paperwork, but they would take care of it. I have the online transcript from when I booked the trip where we set up the honeymoon package and also when we sent our wedding invitation to your company by email as requested so, I don’t know why the package wasn’t listed. But, they said they would take care of it. Well that was just the start.

So, after unpacking and settling in we took a brief walk around and sat at the bistro for a few minutes to relax after the long day of travel. As we sat there watching the sun go down and the ocean a gentleman walking along the beach 15ft from us proceeded to scream and yell at us about something, whether he was trying to sell us something or he had a problem with us I couldn’t tell you he was obnoxious and sounded angry, it was quite unpleasent. He didn’t appear to friendly with his tone and continued to yell for about 10mins straight completely ruining the romantic mood. We were told these people who walk the beach are locals who are allowed by the resort on the beach to help their local economy. Ok find I get it it is their Island but they should have guidelines or just plain sales etiquette taught to them because we literately avoided the beach at the halcyon our entire stay because every time you were on the side walk or even looked towards the beach there were groups of locals standing there yelling to you with absolutely no respect or regard to your privacy, one guy made some comment about my wife after I told him no thanks while we were trying to take a romantic walk along the beach. But once again we didn’t make it out to the sand I can honestly say I did’t set one foot on the beach at the Halcyon, not one. Thats incredible to me because I love the beach and would have loved to relax in the beautiful sand and water. But, Im getting off topic after our “lovely” time at the bistro where we got yelled at. We went back to our room to shower before dinner. Unfortunately our shower was broken we enjoyed a shower that went from hot to cold to scalding all throughout our showers. I told the front desk about it the next morning where they sent a maintenance worker to fix it. I told him the mixing valve was bad and after 30mins he agreed removed it and came back with another one that looked used probably from another room and installed it. I find it hard to believe that a resort of your caliber doesn’t have parts like that for repairs that they used another used valve instead of solving the problem once and for all with a new one. I work in construction in NY and have worked for large apartment complexes and replacement parts like mixing valves are always on hand because they break from time to time and need to be replaced which is fine but it needs to be fixed correctly with the correct parts. Well we had one shower where it worked and then the rest of our trip was the same HOT, COLD, SCALDING cycle. It was absolutely ridiculous to me that we couldn’t take a hot shower the rest of our trip at such a luxurious resort.

Then, after we got out of our shower we noticed that bugs were all over our walls, some type of ant or something I actually have video of the bugs marching across our walls and ceiling. Really this is not a good start. So, we called the front desk and informed them of this issue too. They sent some women down with a can of bug killer, and they told asked us to step outside so they could spray the room, and that we might want to wait a while before coming back so the smell subsides. I said absolutely not, all our clothes were out and hung our personal belongings were out and I really didn’t like the idea of sleeping on a bed that has a layer of bug spray on it. Would you like that on your first night of your honeymoon? I’m sorry but this was NOT what we were expecting when we booked our honeymoon at this luxurious all-inclusive resort. So like the broken shower we had all week we also had bugs staying with us all week. I know the Tuesday before we left they went around with the exterminators fogging the outsides of the buildings.

The first night we went to Kelly's Dockside restaurant and felt the staff tried to trick us into ordering bottles of wine never telling us they cost extra just that we could bring them back to room if we didn’t finish them, luckily while we were ordering them we questioned if there was an extra charge that’s when the waiter reluctantly told us well of course. Im sorry I thought this was all inclusive this is my first trip to an all inclusive resort I was completely unaware but apparently I should of know this. So I told him I would like to just have what was included so he took our drink order and that was the last we saw of him. No drinks were brought to us. about 10 mins later a different waiter approached and asked us what we would like to drink? Apparently if we weren’t spending extra money on alcohol he didn’t want to be bothered with us, so our drink order was never put in. Well that was the first time we were made to feel uncomfortable on our paradise getaway. Not to mention the quality of the food was not what we expected to be honest our salad was shredded lettuce and the steak seem like a cheap frozen steak. It wasn’t a great first meal. So at this point no honeymoon welcome package or outstanding romantic dinner.

Now we go back to our room after dinner and are getting ready for bed still with no honeymoon package on our first night of our honeymoon and find there is so much dirt ground into our carpet that I literally had to sit on the side of the bed and scrape the dirt off my feet before getting into it. I mean if thats not romantic I don’t know what is, right? I’m sorry but that is disgusting I’ve stayed at $89 a night hotels back at home that were cleaner then this. Not to mention the beautiful water stains that were all over our wall where our air conditioner drips down now that was classy. Im sorry I’m trying not to be sarcastic but we tried and tried to make the best of our stay on our honeymoon, and look past this stuff. But after the trip was over it just made me angry that why should I have to try and make the best of our honeymoon after paying over 4 thousand dollars to stay in such a luxurious all inclusive resort.? I should be able to take a hot shower, I shouldn’t have to clean my feet off before climbing into my bed at night I shouldn’t have bugs crawling all over my room. I shouldn’t have to look at big ugly water stains on my almost $600. a night resort hotel room. Should I? But that’s exactly what we did. But wait theres more.

The next day we had mentioned again at the front desk that we didn’t get our honeymoon package. Well, later that day it arrived in the form of a gentleman who knocked on our door and asked us for our ice bucket and scooped ice out of a little blue cooler into our ice bucket on our doorstep and handed it back to us with a bottle of champagne. Again I ask you isn’t that the most romantic honeymoon package you can imagine? That was it! So again we let it go and tied to make the best of it cause we didn't want to be mad and upset on my honeymoon.

Our second night we were going to Mario’s for dinner, we got showered up in that wonderful shower and headed over. We walked into the restaurant and stood there for a couple of minutes by the podium waiting to be seated. We observed 3 waitresses standing on the other side of the room just talking and looking over at us. I was wondering why nobody was coming to seat us. Eventually, one of the ladies came over to seat us and after asking us our room number which was room 304 just in case you want to verify any of our issues. She then proceeds to tell me I’m not appropriately dressed to dine at Mario's. She tells me a collard shirt is required. I explained to her in the dress attire guidelines in our daily newspaper it stated collar or no collar for Mario's restaurant. She said sorry but we cannot serve you unless you go change. Let me tell you how embarrassing it is to be rejected like that at the restaurant in-front of other tables dining right next to us watching as we were asked to leave. I was made to feel like I was a piece of garbage in-front of my wife and other guests at “your” resort. I say “your” resort because I found it funny how they said welcome home when we arrived but didn’t make us feel very welcome. This was the straw that broke the camels back. I was done with trying to make the best of my honeymoon something I should of never tried to do. I immediately went to the front desk to speak to a manager about all the issues we were having.

We waited in the lobby and two managers came to talk to us I let them know about the shower issue, the bugs, our honeymoon package and how it was presented to us a day late. How dirty our rug was and how it carries into our bed from our feet. How un-welcomed we felt at Mario’s. We were told that yes you do need a collar for Mario’s where I grabbed a paper right off the lobby counter and opened it up and read where it says collar or no collar. I was wearing nice jeans, dress shoes, and a solid black v-neck shirt. I felt pretty dressy for a hot humid tropical environment. I wasn’t wearing shorts or swim trunks or logo t-shirts nothing like that. But, the manager did say he would make an accommodation for us and have someone serve us at a table outside the restaurant. I declined. He said he would get someone to clean the room right away and change our bed sheets. We went back to the room all stressed out when a maid shows up at our door she acted as if she had no idea as to why she was there. We informed her that our bed needed to be changed. And asked her if she had a vacuum that the floor was filthy and needed to be cleaned also. We left the room and caught the first bus out of the halcyon we saw to La Toc. Still in the mood for Italian dinner we went to Armando's Italian Restaurant.

We arrived at Armando’s and to our surprise this place was beautiful, very nice, classy a lot nicer of an establishment then Mario’s and your not going to believe this. At this restaurant which was a lot nicer and had the same dress code as Mario’s there were people who were wearing logo - t-shirts, cargo shorts and sneakers even v-neck t-shirts and they were being treated with respect and served with class. They were not made to feel embarrassed or unwelcome. It was how someone should be treated after spending all this money to vacation somewhere. Not to mention the food at the Grand and La Toc are a night and day difference to the food that is served at the halcyon. I feel like the halcyon is an older resort that Sandals doesn’t put much money into, I found it funny that you would have to wait at the biggest bar in the halcyon resort for drinks because they only had one blender. Your telling me the rates you charge a night and you can’t get more the one blender at a bar? It’s obvious that the food suppliers and or chefs are of a different caliber at the Grand and La Toc. I challenge you to go to dinner or lunch at the halcyon and then go to The Grand or La Toc and compare the meals it’s a night and day difference of service and quality.

So after dinner at La Toc’s Armando’s Restaurant we caught the shuttle back to the Halcyon. We arrived at our room to see they changed our sheets and placed rose petals on the bed for our honeymoon package. As we were getting ready to get into bed we noticed with the first step on the carpet that it was still filthy. OK we will let that go AGAIN and try to enjoy our second night. As we pulled the covers down to get into bed there was dirt all over the sheets in our bed DIRT! Again how romantic and to top it off. There was a huge stain on the comforter that I’m not even going to try to guess what it was. And again I have pictures of all of these things if you’d like to see them. At this point again we called the front desk and asked them to send a manager to our room to show them these issues. The two managers we spoke with earlier came along with another gentlemen who said he was the night manager. He was very nice and he agreed with us that our complaints were valid as I showed him the bugs as they still were crawling all over our walls. I told him about our shower, I even showed them how dirty my feet were just from walking on the carpet in our room for a matter of minutes before they got there my feet were discolored from dirt and actually had dirt stuck all over them. Now I’m expected to get into my bed with that, I have to scrape the dirt off my feet every night before getting into bed. They never vacuum they just sweep around the rug and that’s it. I told him how our champagne was delivered and now we just got rose petals on a dirty bed. Also, another thing was we paid to get wifi in the room so we could make calls to our 8 year old daughter back home while we were away. We had to make several calls to tech support because we couldn’t get our phones to connect to wifi it would take about 30 mins every time we wanted to use it to connect and we were paying extra for this service. Not to mention knowing that starting dec 1st it was going to be offered free to all guests not just the higher class guests and it was less then a month away but we had to pay for it? And it didn’t work most of the time. But, back to the dirty bed the manager said he would have someone come down and change our bed sheets again right away. This was at 10:30 we sat there and waited until 11:30 before someone arrived to change our sheets. Needless to say this wasn’t a very romantic night either. But, to top it off the gentlemen that arrived to change our sheets an hour later pulled our old ones off put on a new fitted sheet and proceeded to put the quilt comforter on-top of the fitted sheet with no top sheet or blanket that we had previously. We had asked him if there was another sheet to put on before the quilt and he acted as if he didn’t understand what we were saying, as if he didn’t speak english? We asked him if he knew how to make a bed and to be clear it was not in a sarcastic or disrespectful way either. We asked if he normally does this type of work here and he kind of shook his head and said No, I guess thats the only person they had on site to send to our room. We actually felt bad for him cause he seemed to feel uncomfortable, which I can’t blame him because two people are sitting there staring at him exhausted waiting to get in bed. Ultimately we just took the sheets that he brought and made the bed ourselves. We actually made our own bed at 11:30 at night on our honeymoon at your luxurious resort. I feel like we paid over 4 thousand dollars to come and work for your resort for free… Can you believe after all this 11:30 at night your guests were making their own bed. I guess they mean it when they say welcome home.

Another issue we had was we were given a $300 red lane spa credit when we originally booked our trip and when we arrived we wanted to schedule that so we went to the front desk and they booked it for us and we asked if they could make sure of our credit, they called and confirmed there was a $300 credit. So we went to our appointment which was at1pm we arrived at 12:30 to utilize the sauna before our massages and they told us we were late that our appointment was for 12 but we had our reservation slip from Halcyon where they booked it, that confirmed it wasn’t our mistake it was their mistake, even though we were made to feel like we messed up at the desk at red lane, which was a real nice way to make your customers feel, I guess the customer is always right doesn’t apply in St. Lucia. So we had our massage everything was great, but then we had to go back to the front desk the afternoon before we left because we got our bill and guess what they billed us for our spa treatment, so again we had to go and deal with yet another issue that we had already dealt with they had to call again and verify that we had the credit which we did. I just can’t understand why this is so hard, why is there so many issues. Part of me wonders if this is done to see how many people don’t catch it and just pay the tab at the end. I don’t know I hope that’s not the case.

Im sorry, I apologize for being sarcastic, but I just can’t get over the fact that I feel like we booked a trip at one of your luxurious all-inclusive resorts and we had so many issues. I can’t get over it. In all fairness a manager by the name of Kurt Weeks contacted us the next day to follow up with our problems. He was very polite and understanding he agreed and sympathized with us and told us this is not how our trip should be going. He said he would comp our internet because the connection was so bad, which was nice of him, it was the least he could do. But we still had poor internet connection the rest of the week, but at least our hassle of connecting to the wifi was free. At this point I would like to tell you how the rest of our week went. We woke up took our hot, cold, scalding shower got dressed and waited for the bus to take us to the Grand hung out at the Grand during the day then took a bus back to they Halcyon did the shower thing again and went and waited for the bus to go to La Toc for dinner. Now I must say it was nice to have the option to go and visit the other resorts if we wanted to but it would of been nice to have felt like our resort was equally as nice to stay at but unfortunately going to the other resorts felt more like a necessity then an option to us. We felt like we were always rushing to catch a shuttle, not what we had in mind for our honeymoon rushing was not on our list of things to do when we booked this trip. We are so disappointed with our memories of our one and only honeymoon. I do have to say that the third or fourth night we finally got our honeymoon package and I know you probably think I’m just a complainer but I will give credit where credit is due and I’m pretty sure Kurt Weeks had something to do with it. We arrived home from the Grand and we were rushing to get showered and changed to get to the shuttle out of the halcyon and over to La Toc when we walked in our room there were rose petals everywhere they had candles burning everywhere music was playing there was a bubble bath drawn with more rose petals and candles. And I have to say it was very romantic and over the top and appreciated. And I personally thanked Kurt for that the next day., But it didn’t change the fact that we got that over-the-top honeymoon package because of all the other short comings of our trip. Also while Im giving compliments I would like to point out a woman that worked for the housekeeping department, I believe her name was Jean Marie I’m not sure if I’m spelling it right but I told Kurt and Ill tell you she had come up to me one day when we were waiting for the shuttle to go to the Grand or La Toc and I had only met her once or twice in passing and she remembered me and came to ask me how things were going that she heard we had some issues, and she was truly genuine and concerned for us and our stay which is how our treatment should be and although at that point the damage had been done it was truly appreciated she was very kind and genuine and should be commended for that.

And trust me I was very grateful for that one night because it’s the only time the whole trip that it actually felt like our honeymoon. Other then that we were so disappointed with Sandals and don’t think we will ever stay at another sandals resort again. Now for the rest of our lives together this experience is our memory of our honeymoon pretty pathetic especially when we paid so much for it, you spend that kind of money you almost think its full proof guaranteed great time we were wrong. We feel like we stayed at one of St. Lucia's older forgotten Sandals resorts that Sandals really doesn’t care about any more. We joked that the Halcyon was the resort where if a worker got in trouble at one of the other resorts they would get sent to the Halcyon for punishment. Im truly sorry our life as husband and wife started out like this. On the bright side it can only get better from here on out. Also we found it funny on our shuttle back to the airport to fly home another couple we were talking to had mentioned that they had some minor issue when they first got there and the resort had credited them back several hundred dollars for their trouble and all we got was comped internet. Unbelievable. We should have gotten a full refund for our trip if it wasn’t our honeymoon and I wasn’t trying to make the best of it I would have taken a taxi back to the airport and flew home early. It felt like our honeymoon was work, we had to deal with so many things that was your staffs job not ours. I feel like we got ripped off.Wasn’t worth the price of admission at all.

No beach cause locals harassed you if you went near it,
No pest free room
No properly working shower
No Honeymoon Package to start off our trip on the right foot.
No Respect given to the customer at the Halcyon Restaurants
No Good Wifi Connection
No vacuum cleaners to clean the rugs
No Respectable looking room that didn’t have water stains running down the wall
No Credits unless you ask for confirmation over and over and over
No Clean Sheets
I could go on but Im getting upset re-living our experience…..

Again Sorry to be a complainer not what I wanted to do, I wish I could of written you a letter telling how you guys showed us an amazing time. Treated us like valued guests, provided us with top of the line service we paid for but unfortunately I can’t. Thank you for hearing me out. If you would like the photos feel free to ask I will gladly send them to you. I know this is a customer service email, I would like it if you could provide me with a corporate email contact so i could express my concerns with them too please. Thank you again for your time. Have a great day..

And I can't get any type of corporate contact all I can deal with is the customer service reps that could care less heres their response letter to be fair where they just justify the issues make it sound like we had a blast because I thanked someone for doing what they should have done in the first place halfway through our stay unbelievable but here it is read for yourself and you can decide for yourself if you want to take this gamble.

We acknowledge receipt of your correspondence dated November 17, giving us feedback from your recent honeymoon at Sandals Halcyon.

It is regretful that we were not informed prior to your arrival that you were honeymooners; this resulted in the honeymoon package not being in your room on the day of your arrival. However when this was brought to our attention, an escapade was done in the room on November 7th.

We do regret any inconvenience you may have experienced as a result of the persistency of the local vendors. Even though these vendors are generally friendly and are not a threat to our guests’ safety, we must concede that they do interfere with their sense of privacy and peacefulness at times. All beaches in St. Lucia re public, therefore we have no legal jurisdiction over their free movement on our shores, however, every effort is made on our part to provide maximum security for our guests and to restrict their daily activities on the property. We have also posted Security personnel at strategic points along the beach and throughout the resort and Patrol Security are also on duty on a 24-hour basis, which we do hope will allay any fear our guests may have during their stay.

Although we have a preventative maintenance program in place, sometimes malfunction with toilets, showers, taps etc. may occur, at which point our maintenance department makes every effort to rectify the problem. If the problem cannot be rectified in timely manner, the clients are offered a room change. We can assure you that situations such as this one, is not typical of the high quality of service offered at Sandals and wishes to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Insects are indigenous to the Caribbean and the tropical climate makes us susceptible to their intrusion. One of the greatest challenges we face with maintaining an open-air resort is keeping insects at bay. With rooms opening into gardens, there will be insects in our tropical setting that find their way inside. Every effort is made to minimize their presence on property through a continuous pest control program.

In certain Restaurants, we do have a moderate dress code observed in order to preserve the ambiance of fine dining. This dress code is well documented and to avoid offence, all guests are encouraged to adhere to the dress code. For those guests preferring a more informal and relaxed dress code, our outdoor Restaurants adopt such a policy.

We have noted your comment as it relates to the wine waiter and beverage service. These points have been addressed with the Beverage Manager. Clients must be notified before offering the Managers Wine List that the managers wine list is not part of the all inclusive package

We were surprised to receive your letter of complaint as you had expressed your concerns to Kurt Weekes whilst you were on property at which time you brought to his attention all the issues you mentioned in your letter. Mr. Weekes apologised to you and he reassured you that he would take care of your concerns. As a goodwill gesture he extended to you complimentary internet service. On the evening of Monday 10th November 2014, Mr. Weekes was summoned to the front desk by one of the front office attendants who explained that you requested to speak to him. Mr. Weekes met you in the lobby where you expressed your gratitude for all that had been done. You informed Mr. Weekes that after you spoke with him everything, going forward, went smoothly; your room was cleaner, your honeymoon package was delivered, and the room was set up like a true honeymooners accommodation.

You also expressed your thanks to the housekeeper Anne Marie who had done a fantastic job and given you exceptional service. Mr. Weekes thanked you for sharing your review and reminded you that he was there to assist further till your departure. Mr. Weekes saw you again on the morning of your departure where you reassured me that everything was going good.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience you may have experienced during your stay with us, we hope you will give us another opportunity to host you again at this or any other Sandals or Beaches resort.

Thank you for choosing Sandals Halcyon as your honeymoon destination.

Yours sincerely,

_______________
Lennox Dupal
General Manager

In October of 2010, I vacationed to Sandals Antigua for my brother’s wedding. The resort was beautiful, the service was excellent and the experience was phenomenal. Recalling the wonderful experience that I had at a Sandals resort, when planning my own wedding, I was eager to schedule our own honeymoon at a Sandals resort as well. On June 25, 2013, I scheduled a honeymoon vacation at the Montego Bay Jamaica resort. Shortly before my wedding I fell ill and had a major surgery. The surgery prevented me from being able to travel outside of the US and I subsequently was forced to contact Sandals and reschedule our vacation.
The experience of dealing with the Sandals staff for this process was far less superior than the service I expected or recalled from Sandals. In fact, dealing with Sandals was incredibly stressful, frustration and upsetting, especially given the aforementioned circumstances. I spoke with several people, including a number of supervisors, all whom were incredibly unhelpful, rude, and incredibly unsympathetic. Ultimately, we ended up rescheduling the vacation for the following year for an additional fee.
Throughout the year I encountered numerous health issues as a result of the surgery and found out that I was going to be unavailable and unable to travel during the time we had reschedule our vacation for. Rather than continue to extend the date, with the possibility of not being able to travel at that time either, I requested to cancel the vacation and receive a refund for the resort portion of the funds we had paid. They profusely refused to do so.
On numerous occasions the Sandals representatives attempted to explain the cancellation policy, but the facts of it would frequently differ depending on who I spoke to. I am still unclear as to what the exact policy actually is. Regardless, because I was a previous customer and potentially a future customer, I was hopeful that Sandals would make an exception given the circumstances. Particularly, in this day in age where social media plays such a prevalent role in customer satisfaction and customer reviews. I was shocked to find that Sandals was unwilling to make any gesture to retain a customer. In short, I lost a total of $2, 871 and never was able to vacation at the resort.

Mid-April 2014 a friend and I went to Montego Bay for 10 days. I judge a venue's patron's successful experience not only by when things go right, but how they behave when things go very wrong. Montego Bay's new management failed and continues to fail (and avoid any communication) to even discuss: losing our bags for three weeks at Sandals (they never made to the airlines), the bags were ransacked, there was an actually falling injury due to heavy rain and an unlighted staircase. Then there's the, seemingly, universal complaints about an"All Inclusive" that isn't, the bait and switch with chef/gourmet level foods and their Caribbean food court equivalents, the opened, diluted premium liquor bottles in the "butlered" villas. There's that slackness that comes with island life/flow and you just have to accept it to a degree, but there were levels of lack of remotely timeliness in correcting or repairing failed electrical aspects of the villa. Then there's the dirty little secret you discover 30 to 40 times a day as departing jets are so low that their landing gear is still down. The complete avoidance and lack of communication made this a very unsatisfying experience is shocking from a brand that appears to be quality and customer service. This is a failure and the new management can't help but get found out very soon.

Following our 2 week vacation at The Sandals Grande Antigua Resort in April 2013, we wrote to the General Manager of the resort and followed up with their Customer Service Office in London - our original letter below: .

Over the past 7 years we have been to Beaches Turks & Caicos, The Royal Bahamian and now Grande Antigua which has cost us in total approximately £17, 000. I am sure you will agree that this is a considerable sum of money on 3 vacations especially in the current economic climate.

As Sandals Gold Membership customers, we were very much looking forward to returning to a Sandals Resort after 5 years for our 7th Wedding anniversary and 50th birthday celebrations. We saved hard to treat ourselves not only to a Sandals holiday but also to an Ocean view Suite as part of our celebration. Due to the cost of the holiday we carefully read the description in brochures and on your website before making our booking as we wanted this holiday to be a really special experience.

Unfortunately, the resort failed to deliver on many fronts particularly your message of “impeccable quality and superb service are standard” which greets customers when they telephone you.

In the whole 14 days that we spent in Antigua we did not have one meal that could be classed as “world class fayre” as described on your website. The food that we experienced was of average quality in all restaurants and certainly not the standard we have received in our previous visits to your resorts. There was little or no variety at lunch – we were expecting a choice of seafood and many of the meat dishes were dry and tasteless. The “sublime seafood” in Barefoot by the Sea was just edible and certainly not sublime. Hasten to say we only ate at this restaurant once. Your website boasts “gourmet dining” but the food is most definitely not gourmet quality. Having tasted the delights of Le Chateau, Turks & Caicos and Baccarat, Royal Bahamian we were looking forward to the same white glove dining experience.

As regards the service in the restaurants, this has to be the worst we have experienced in all of the Caribbean and Indian Ocean resorts we have visited. The staff were moody and miserable, making us feel unwelcome and almost an inconvenience to them. On more than one occasion we had to ask for crockery to be replaced as it was chipped and cutlery to be replaced as it was dirty. Whether your table was laid properly was very much hit and miss with many times the side plate and butter knife missing.

We ate in Eleanor’s for our Wedding Anniversary and had pre-requested a sea front table. On arrival the staff had not read the request and we had to wait 20 minutes to be seated. On top of that we had to ask for our drinks to be topped up during our meal, something we have never experienced before at Sandals. The same issue occurred at the OK Corral and The Bayside restaurant, where I had to leave the table to find a member of staff to top up our water and wine as no one was in attendance anywhere near our table. The same evening we waited 1 hour for our main meal even though the restaurant was almost empty. When our food was eventually served the waitress asked us if our food was warm which implied to us that our food had been left on the side and forgotten.

The impeccable white glove service promoted on your website simply does not exist in this resort. Restaurant staff at Eleanor’s wore white gloves but the quality of service was no different to that in the other “non-white glove” restaurants.

The main reason that we chose Sandals over other companies was that we wanted the quality dining experience that we have encountered on previous visits. This is what we paid our money for and it would have made our stay and celebrations special. Sandals prides itself with a team of master chefs to cater for endless culinary cravings, however, we could have received better quality food and service at half the price at other resorts.

The service in the bars was not much better. Often you would stand waiting at the bar and would not even be acknowledged by the staff – they seemed oblivious to people waiting for a drink even when the bars were not busy. There was no pride taken in service delivery with drinks being passed to you by hand or being put on the bar wherever it suited the staff rather than being placed in front of the customer.

Our housekeeping experience was also far from perfect. Due to being bitten by mosquitos in our room on the first 3 nights, we requested our room be sprayed every evening at 5pm. This did not happen for the first 4 days after our request and we had to constantly phone or go in person to the concierge desk for this to be done. One evening it took 4 calls and 1 hour before someone from housekeeping arrived which delayed us getting ready for dinner that we had booked. This was rectified for the final 7 days of our stay.

Not only do we feel that we did not receive anything near value for the money that we paid but actually feel that we were mis-sold this holiday through the incorrect and misleading description of the resort particularly food and restaurants.

We both work for large Corporate companies in the UK and as with all bad experiences not only are we reluctant to book with Sandals in the future but we would not recommend and indeed would dissuade our friends, family and work colleagues from doing so as well.

Whilst in resort we spoke with Matthew Cornell regarding service levels and quality of the food as we were so disappointed at what was being delivered. Matthew promised us an incentive to return to Sandals in the future. However, as you will see from his email below, there is no mention of an incentive just additional courtesies. We would appreciate if you could substantiate what courtesies would be offered and how we would be able to claim these. We were certainly given the impression by Matthew that something more substantial would be offered.

It is a real shame that we both feel this way as we couldn’t wait to return to a Sandals Resort.

My wife and I almost a year ago on June 12th, the day after our wedding, went to Sandals Latoc in St. Lucia for our Honeymoon. We will never go there again. We paid good money for an ALL INCLUSIVE Honeymoon which was not the case at all. We had been denied using any of the water activities equipment and were told that the waters were unsafe to use the equipment that was advertised on their site as part of the all inclusive deal. There were dozens of people swimming at the beach, snorkeling, using the resorts small sailboats that were offered having a great time. The staff responsible for overseeing the equipment had been severely prejudice against myself and my wife. They claimed that all 3 water bikes were broken even though just an hour before others had been using them and even worse yet after arguing with Management for 2 hrs over the lies and poor treatment of my wife and I nothing had been done to resolve the issue. We were charged fully for the all inclusive and were denied what was advertised.We ended up having to go to another Resort to use water bikes which took a lot of time from our day. This was extreme false advertising and prejudice. Almost a year later my wife and I decided for our 1 year anniversary that we would try a different Sandals Resort in Jamaica. We found a good deal for a private Butler Suite with airfare included and went to book it. The first time we tried to book it the flights we picked had been sold out and it even told us, nothing was charged to our card. The 2nd time after choosing different flights we made it thru the whole reservation process and even got a confirmation number and a flight schedule AND our card was charged but only for the hotel and NOT the airfare. A message came up after we were charged saying that we had to call the Sandals resort and that only the hotel portion was charged and not the airfare, This was sketchy right from the start. The Sandals agent said that the flight was all of a sudden "no longer available" and that we had to rebook the flight at a $400 higher rate. This was complete and total ###. They should have never charged our card for something that was not agreed upon. We had agreed upon the set price that had been displayed upon our computer for both the Hotel and the airfare. Sandals not only ruined our Honeymoon but also ruined our 1 Year Anniversary by charging our card for something that was not fully confirmed after we were told Hotel/Flight was confirmed and we have the papers to prove it was. The total amount for the hotel is now being held on our card without permission and won't be released for 4-6 weeks as the Sandals agent told us. Because of this we are unable to book elsewhere for our 1 Year Anniversary and cannot go anywhere. This seems like they were trying to scam another $400 out of us to rebook our flights and then pocket the money for themselves. Never again will my wife and I use Sandals or even consider them. If anything I implore any Billionaire to buy out that crooked company and then close them down. Destroy it and then rebuild it from the ground up into something better and more honorable.

Per a tape session with our travel agent - we were quoted $80 each to complete our scuba drive training, when we got there they charged us $300 each. We have tried to get a refund for the $440 they owe us, but to no avail. We have a copy of the tape session and are pursuing others avenues to get our money back. Not our fault your Sandals representative didn't know what they were talking about- quoted price is a quoted price. Sandals owes us a refund. If they screw up on charging you, good luck, their customer service is horrible!

I'm an intern from a america and you guys dont know the half of it. its criminal without a doubt. Im a chef that just started here . and the food is touched by hands that are constantly touched by both raw and uncooked meat/vegtable and then handles your ready to eat food. there are no first aid stations available for interns so many times i was forced to work with ready to eat or uncooked meat with open sores. Sometimes food is dropped on the floor and served t customers without your awareness. Most of the food is prepackaged food. I work at Bayside. They have pancake mix they do not make it from scratch. the bacon and pork come in frozen. the food is stored in a warm storage which is used and repurposed for the whole day. the milk and other dairy products are time temperture abused. the produce that comesnoff trucks are in poor quality and cant be getting inspected. the kitchen is infested with roaches and sand worms. the cooks constantly eat food as well as staff while your being served food or in the back kitchen. I've seen better food and quality service at waffle house. I'm a intern and know more than the chefs above me. It is a joke. Don't come here as a customer or a intern. Experience is horrid. Sandals whitehouse needs to be shutdown. srsly.

I booked an entire week at the SANDALS Resort in La TOC Saint Lucia ON LINE. I also purchased travel insurance on the vacation. My companion at
the time was interested in taking additional tours once we arrived at the resort...( an additional $1100.00)
On the Special at the time, Sept 1, 2011 thru Sept 8, 2011 companion airfare was to be "free"?
total $ removed from my checking account by Aug 24th was $ 8773.00
On Evening of August 23rd my companion and I had a argument over something stupid and the vacation was spoiled.
by late evening of August 24th I had already called SANDALS, [protected], ext 4008 to notify them of the cancellation.
I also wrote to their website with the notice but only got a "canned response" in return. ( stated to telephone Sandals) which had already been done.
submitted documents to insurance agency and have received a notice of "more information needed". initial forms submitted was 10 pages of documentation.
Although multiple E-mails, phone calles were exchanged NO REFUNDS is their POLICY... BUYER BEWARE SANDALS=DECEPTIVE BUSSINESS PRACTICES.

Sandals Royal Bahamian called one week before travel to ask if we wanted to "upgrade" for $350.00 to SIX room categories above what we had purchased...promising all kinds of perks and amenities, and "Honeymoon Suite".
NONE of what was promised did we get, our room (and the whole resort) was a DUMP, huge hair glob in my broken sink, black mold around entire bathtub, handles broken on tub and sink, room stunk, linens all worn out, view was of the rooftop of a restaurant...Of course when we asked about our "upgrade" no one knew anything about it, rude employees..etc etc. I wrote an email of complaint WITH pictures, and sent a letter to the CEO. My email response was, "so sorry, but no one else feels this way" I wanted my "upgrade" amount back, which I did not get! This was our second visit to a Sandals, so I am not just ragging on them, we will never go back! $5000.00 (plus "upgrade") for 6 days is a huge rip-off for what we got!

I purchased a trip for myself and a friend. I also purchased the trip insurance as my friend did not yet have a passport. I was ASSURED that the trip insurance (per the representative) "covered the entire cost of the trip and allows [me] to cancel the trip adn receive a full refund less the insurance cost if canceled 1 day before the date you are scheduled to leave." I called and cancelled the trip approx. 3 weeks before the trip. I was told to contact "Trip Mate" to get my refund.

1) Trip mate stated that I will not receive a full refund as I had to cancel 30 days prior to the trip (lie number 1)
2) Unique vacations (sandals) only refunded me $900+ on my credit card as they state I never contacted them to cancel the trip (I have a recording of the phone call with their rep - lie number 2).
3) Trip Mate (the insurance carrier) stated that they would "send [me] a check as a refund." They sent me a travel voucher in the amount of a little over $1000 which can only be used at sandals. (lie number three).

I was lied to, ripped off and then only given a voucher to go to the one single place on this planet where I would NEVER consider vacationing. Lesson learned. This is what you get when dealing with a third world country and a lot full of scam artists and thieves.

I will tell every person I can reach that Sandals is nothing but a rip off. They lie to you, do not stand behind their word and lie to keep your money. I have put my credit card company in charge of getting my money back as the fourth lie was that I only authorized the deposit of $400 to be charged to my card. They, instead, charged the full $3, 200 to the card. An unauthorized charge which I in no way, shape or form agreed to. STAY AWAY from these thieves and stick to valid and trusted resorts. Sandals is a joke and a rip off.

P.S. I sent back their ridiculous travel vouchers with some kind words written on each one of them.

A month ago we took at Royal Caribbean cruise including the port of Jamaica. My husband and I had heard that the Sandals all-inclusive resort was fabulous. We were able to obtain a day pass and enjoyed several hours of all the beach, pool food and drinks we could handle. After we left to go board our ship, I realized that I had left my cell phone between our two beach lounge chairs. When we returned home, I phoned the front office and was told that yes, they had found my phone. I was told to call Federal Express and arrange for pickup. FedX called me to get the price of the phone and assured me they would pick it up. Now, a month later, no cell phone. When I called my contact at the resort, I was put on hold and finally the manager picked up. He said he was sorry but someone else had shown him photos of them self on my phone so they gave it to them! I have no doubt that an employee decided to steal my phone and the manager did a poor job of trying to cover it up. We are so disappointed in Sandals. We will never recommend them to any of our traveling friends.

Re: Sandals Stay – Great Exuma, Bahamas

To Whom It May Concern:
I would like to start off this letter with how we “ended up” at the worst Sandals Experience Ever.

My husband and I were looking online to book a vacation to a Sandals Resort, we have been to the following Sandals Resorts :
1. Sandals Halcyon (two times – we were married here and renewed our vows 10 years later)
2. Sandals Negril
3. Sandals Dunns River
4. Sandals Royal Bahamian
We have had nothing but wonderful times at each of the above Sandals Resorts. While I was searching for our next unforgettable experience at a Sandals Resort, my husband and I decided on Antigua. While I was booking this trip, a Sandals Representative (live chat) popped up on my screen. I, of course told her everything was great and I was booking my trip to Antigua as we chatted back and forth. She informed me that we should try the “Brand New Sandals” in Great Exuma, Bahamas. She stated that they had all sorts of deals going on and we should try it.

Being an amateur photographer, I jumped at the chance of going to a “Brand New” Resort to indulge my passion for photography and Vacation at the same time. I couldn’t wait to get there and begin taking pictures! What a horrible mistake I made upon making the decision to switch Resorts from Sandals, Antigua to Sandals, Great Exuma.

Our flight was perfect, the airport in Great Exuma was very small, but they checked us through quickly and we got in our Sandals Taxi within 20 minutes of landing. The Bahamian People are friendly and ready to answer any questions or help in any way.

THE RESORT
We arrived at Sandals, Great Exuma and were greeted by the front desk personnel, informing us we needed to put our credit card on file before we would be taken to our room. After doing so, our butler, Donard (an excellent butler) showed us to our room. As we were walking to our room along the curvy sidewalk, I started to notice that this hotel sure didn’t look “Brand New”, as the “live chat” agent had informed me. As soon as we entered the elevator, I knew that this may be a “Brand New Sandals” but it is in an “Old Hotel”. (I guess we were fortunate that our elevator worked, a couple that we met had to walk up and down three flights of stairs each time they left or returned to their room). We get to our room after walking down a long (might I say dirty) hallway, with dead bugs outside our door (those bugs stayed there the entire 8 days we were there). Donard, our butler opens our door and lets us in, this is a standard room (advertised that all rooms are suites) with a bed, a table and a balcony. I went out on the balcony to enjoy the view while we waited for our luggage and sat at the table and got splinters in my arm. I am glad we were placed on the third floor, because if you were lower than that, you could not view the beautiful water that Great Exuma has to offer, due to the overgrown bushes and weeds that were overtaking this Resort. We waited for our luggage, unpacked and went to enjoy a nice ice cold beer and some food, we had been traveling all day and were hungry and thirsty.

THE RESTAURANTS
We arrived at the restaurant, only to find that they had already closed and that leads me to a whole different experience with the “Four Restaurants” that they had at this “All Inclusive” Resort.

Bahama Bay (which is also Dino’s Pizzeria) – Was supposedly a five star restaurant – which had pizza made to go and a small buffet. If you didn’t get there when it opened you were sure to not get any of the main courses offered. We sat in the Bar (it was the only place that had beer – which is another story). But the bartender, Sonia always made sure that we had our drinks and was very personable and helpful. The service was horrible in the restaurant part, the only way to get anything was to ask Sonia and she would make sure you would get your food and drinks. We were asked to leave the Bar at one time because 200 Travel Agents were coming through and they needed to accommodate them.

Barefoot By The Sea
Put your feet in the sand eat lunch and enjoy the sound of the ocean because you couldn’t see it over the overgrown brush unless you stood up. This was a great fast food place to eat (even though the service was slow). Hamburgers, salads and hot dogs, oh wait they were out of hot dogs and never got any delivered while we were there.

The Drunken Duck Pub
This pub was a life saver for food but way too loud inside. Whenever the other restaurants were closed, the Drunken Duck was the place to be. Portions of food were very small so we learned to order double every time we ordered. The music inside was way too loud and when you went outside the bugs attacked you, so if you wanted to talk to anyone you were yelling at them. We were sitting with some friends that we met and having a few drinks when my husband went up to get me a beer (their own island beer – Sands Light), he was informed they ran out, they then ran out of Sands Regular and then New Castle. We went to our rooms and grabbed beer and brought it back to the Pub so we had something to drink. I spoke with “Kerry” (I am assuming she was the manager) and she said “I don’t understand why we ran out I ordered three cases for the day”! Are you kidding me, three cases of beer for the whole resort? Thought this was an “All Inclusive Resort”.

El Cielo
This restaurant was the worst of all of them, your wait time for food was over an hour and that was for breakfast or lunch. We were there for seven days and knew the menu by heart – the same things were offered for breakfast and dinner each day on a very limited menu. The service was terrible and the food was not five star! A couple that we met, got married at the Resort, had the same horrible experiences but waited four hours for their meal to be served (and they had reservations).

The Pool Bar
Never had beer and the service was ridiculous! You would wait a good twenty minutes for someone to even look at you and then to be informed “sorry were out of beer”. The music that was played was the same CD that they made, Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, etc. over and over and over – Never was any island music played (with the exception of the Bahama Bay Bar), just the same old CD – it was horrible. We listened to that horrible music day in and day out 24 hours a day that CD played. We got to know which song was coming up next because we heard it so often. When we asked them to play Bahamian music they stated they only had one CD and that is the one we were listening too.

The Beach
The water was the prettiest I have ever seen, the colors gorgeous and the sands pure white. The drawback was the big tractor running up and down the beach trying to smooth out the sand and making more of a mess of the trash and kelp that had washed on shore. The huts had the same trash at them the entire time we were there, unless you cleaned up your own trash, it stayed right where it was. The few water sports they offered were only offered when the 200 travel agents came to view the property and that was twice in the eight days we were there. Otherwise the red flag was up so no water sports. We really missed the vendors on the beach, sometimes they can be overwhelming but always fun to talk to them about their home island and see what they have made. According to the Taxi driver – Sandals absolutely prohibits any Bahamian people on their beach, they only allow their people to come once a week to the pool deck and sell goods that are not made by the Bahamian people but bought somewhere else and resold for a ridiculous amount.

The Pools
The “new” Sandals Pool was not new, just redone but at least it was better than the quiet pool and spa. The big pool was always out of drinks and the quiet pool had no one there to help you. They had maybe six rafts(at the Big Pool) that we saw and they looked like they had been in a shark tank as bait and would sink if you laid on them for an extended period of time and none at the Quiet Pool. We sat in the spa and it was so rough it tore the bottom of our feet and the back of our legs. A Pipe was leaking right next to the spa with water shooting straight out of the ground. The pool itself had dead bug skeletons stuck all around the edges. I sat in one of the recliners and went to put my chair back, the arm broke off and I almost fell out of the chair. All the furniture was old and falling apart, but if you look at their photos of the resort they only have pictures of new furniture.

Excursions
Great Exuma is a small island with a population of around 4, 000 people. There was no excursions being offered through Sandals, (the water was too rough) but not rough enough for you to pay $750.00 for a day Excursion outside of Sandals. We ended up renting a car for $100.00 and driving the island to see different sites and to meet the Bahamian People (since Sandals did not employ any). We had a lovely time outside of Sandals and grew to appreciate Great Exuma through our eyes, not through Sandals.

Overall
It is very unfortunate that we had to experience this type of service at a Sandals Resort. At least we know that not all Sandals are like this, but my heart went out to the couples that experienced it for the first time. We were completely mislead not only by the “Live Chat Agent” (telling me it was a “Brand New Sandals”) but also by the photos that are posted for Sandals, Great Exuma.
SANDALS ALL INCLUSIVE RESORT IN GREAT EXUMA, BAHAMAS IS ONLY INCLUSIVE OF WHAT THEY HAVE ON HAND – IF YOU DECIDE TO GO HERE – PREPARE TO GO HUNGRY AND HAVE A LIMITED SUPPLY OF BEER AND DRINKS! I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS RESORT TO ANYONE!

We stayed at beaches Boscobel 7/12/10 - 7/18/10. I fell on the pool steps on 7/16/10 @ approx 10:30 am. If you get the report I submitted to the nurses station you will have the info you need. I am extremely upset as we were made to pay for everything out of our pockets! After the initial meeting at the nurses station not 1 employee or manager inquired as to how I was doing or offered any assistance of any kind. One gentleman rode with us to x - ray lab & a different one rode back to the resort. When we got back to resort Dr baker told me I had 3 fractures in it wrist & did I want surgery at the public or private hospital. Then she looked at a paper & told us the private orthopedic Dr was at the public hospital. We were also told we would have to pay the bill. I received an injection of Voltaren & Dr baker & nurse wrapped my wrist before I left for x - ray. Dr baker gave me an injection of Voltaren & 10 Voltaren pills for $150 & her bill which we also had to pay.

Now I am back home & i had surgery on 7/21/10. They had to pin a bone in my wrist because of a displaced fracture. Also had to have carpal tunnel release on same wrist because of trauma & swelling. I will be wearing a cast for 6 weeks & missing work. I have to endure the pain & aggravation from all this. My husband has had to go to work everyday, come home cook, clean up, shower me, wash & dry hair, he also has to dress me.

I feel beaches Boscobel or sandals is responsible for all my expenses incurred as it was due to negligence on their part. It had stormed the night before & they never cleaned up after or cleaned pool.In fact we never saw anyone cleaning the entire time we were there. It was extremely slippery in & out of pool areas due to this fact. My youngest grandson, "Kanin", fell on the steps getting out of the pool & skinned his knee & foot. My oldest grandson, "Devin", was in bed for most of the day with diarrhea & dehydration. They both were at the nurses station.

I also think we should be reimbursed for our vacation as it was completely ruined! The rest of the summer is also ruined! Besides all of this on the 13th I was getting ready to go down the slide @ the water park on a tube. The gentleman at the top was assisting me to sit in the tube, he says “are you ready”, I said “no” & he pushed me down anyway. As a result I fell off & banged my head & received a huge goose egg & a cut in the temple region of the left side of my head. I went & asked one of the life guards for ice to put on it, which he did. He then took my name & room # & said someone should be getting in touch with me but that didn’t happen.

We had to call for pillows & constantly had to call for towels as they were never left when the dirty ones were taken. On the Internet it is advertised if you have a luxury suite you get fully stocked bar in room, plush robes, champagne on arrival, up - graded amenity kit etc. Of course none of this happened, in fact, the amenity kit we did get had 2 bottles missing & were used! We were supposed to have a personalized welcome upon arrival & a video of Jamaica when leaving. We weren’t even greeted upon arrival, we went to front desk to inquire about room. We sat down then someone came & asked about how our trip was. We didn’t get anything let alone champagne! With all the money we paid for this trip & all the months looking forward to coming there, i have to say it was amazingly disappointing! You hear so much about beaches & sandals we really expected a whole lot more hospitality & caring! If this is luxury treatment I feel sorry for anyone who booked less.