Drama at Swissostal Huanchaco

We've been having some trouble with our hotel. The hosts were starting try to nickel and dime us in really weird ways and accused of of lying and stealing from them. We decided to put a stop to that early and sat down with them to talk it out. Fortunately, we got out relatively unscathed. This blog actually ranks pretty highly in searches for Swissostal Huanchaco, so I'll stick to the facts and hopefully no one else makes the mistake of staying there.

Just to be clear here's the address:
Ricardo Palma 308
Huanchaco, Peru

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Here's the whole story:
After some searching, we finally found a hotel that would offer us a cheaper monthly rate. We paid up front for the month and settled in. It was a little weird that the hosts made us keep our room keys at the front desk, and would never leave the front door unlocked, making us wake them up at all hours of the night to get in. We realized that the room is way too hot, and asked the owner for a fan. He didn't have one, so we told him we were going to go buy one. When we came in with the fan, he approached us and said that he was going to charge us 90 soles extra per month to have a fan because it uses more electricity and he had given us too low of a price. We were stunned, exchanged some weirded out looks, and said we guess we'd have to pay it. We started to realize why not one other person was staying at this hotel.

The whole thing made me really nervous. They didn't seem picky when we were looking at the room. They never said "No fans," and they didn't make sure they'd seen all our luggage before we checked in or anything. I even asked him to show me somewhere he'd written down rules that we'd missed, but he couldn't. What would they spring on us next? I decided we needed to have a talk. I gave them 3 options:

1.  We would pay the 90 extra soles, but at the end of the month. Also, since they were making us nervous by changing the price on us, we wanted to put a small amount of money down up front, and pay the balance at the end of the month.
2. They can stick with the original deal of getting the whole month up front, but not get any extra money.
3. They can ask us to leave and refund our money.

We had a long conversation about this during which they repeatedly suggested that we just give them all of the money now. At one point they accused us of never telling them that we were going to be using computers and hacking into their wireless network, which was a total lie. I was very up front about the fact that I need it for work when we were negotiating for the place. And right after we checked in he brought the wireless password up to us. It was really weird.

He also thought it was implied when we got a lower rate that the services we would receive were scaled back accordingly. He said that he'd given us such a good rate because we weren't going to use much water or electricity and they would only clean the room and bathroom once a week. They gave conflicting accounts of how often they would provide toilet paper. The one time we actually asked for some, they wouldn't give it to us. I have never stayed at a hotel where the whole room was a minibar. It sucks.

Finally they agreed to refund some of our money, but only after charging us a nightly rate for the time we stayed there that was 50% higher than the going rate in the area. Eh, better than nothing. And we don't want to stay with people who accuse us of being criminals.

Swissostal Huanchaco's final score:
Weirdness               ★★★★★
Relaxaliciousness   ★