Guest User
October 31, 2023
If you are looking for a place to stay in Chicago, I would highly reconsider before booking with Sonder. I stayed at The Opal by Sonder in Chicago, and I have never had such poor customer service, especially when it comes to the safety of their customers. On our last day in Chicago as we went to leave our room to head to the airport, we found ourselves unable to open our front door. The door handle would turn but somehow either the latch wouldn’t open or there must have been something locking us in from the outside. Frantically we called Sonder customer service. They said they would “contact the higher ups” to figure out a solution. They said there was no one nearby The Opal that could come help us, even though it was during regular business hours. We gave them our cell numbers, hung up, and waited for a call back for rescue. Nothing happened. We called back again. They said they put in a ticket number for us but they still were not sure how they were going to get us out. They asked us if there were any knives in the unit that we could use to jimmy the door open. We desperately tried to use a knife and a credit card to pry open the door latch but nothing would work. After almost an hour trapped in our room, about to miss our flight, the Sonder employee on the line could not offer any concrete answers to how they were going to get us out. She said that they would consider calling the customers staying in the unit next door if we couldn’t get the door open with a knife. After over an hour we finally freed ourselves with a credit card jammed into the latch. When we contacted Sonder immediately afterwards and waited for our uber outside, there still was no one on their way to help us, almost 1.5 hours after this all began. I cannot comprehend how a company could so blatantly ignore the safety of their own customers. If there had been a medical emergency or a fire, we would have had no way out. Their only reconciliation was giving us “$30 for the inconvenience.” This was more than an inconvenience; this was an inappropriately handled safety issue. After spending the next several days of our vacation on the phone with Sonder asking them to at least go fix the door so that the next customer did not have to suffer the same experience we had, Sonder failed to call us back multiple times. I could not recommend against staying at Sonder more. Please listen to our experience with Sonder and think twice before booking with them.