Wow. A number of people have been in touch with us since we published The Rant about our awful experience at Sir Sam's Inn last month!
(Just to avoid confusion or cross-contamination, I wish to point out that Sir Sam's Inn is a totally separate entity from Sir Sam's Ski & Bike – that Sir Sam's is run by a wonderful family, who founded both establishments 50 years ago, but then sold the Inn part to James Orr 37 years ago, who in turn sold it to Ryan two years ago. The other Sir Sam's is still doing great and is very customer-friendly and family oriented and apparently much appreciated by locals).
Former guests, present and former staff members, and Haliburton locals have been sharing their stories of what's been going on at the Inn, and it's breaking our hearts. I will not share anything that is single-source, or which could identify any of the people sharing with us, because... well, keep reading for that one. But friends of ours who had visited last year (on our recommendation) lamented watching two occasions in which Ryan was screaming at staff members while they tried to quietly enjoy their breakfast. Other guests we don't know have said they've had similar disappointments in the past year, and are pooling resources to find our next "home away from home" with all that we loved about Sir Sam's before. We've heard of staff being terminated without warning, abusive treatment of staff, and one former worker who described in detail the after-effects of working there, which read like a case study in post-traumatic stress (and we're well-acquainted with the effects of trauma, as anyone who knows us is already aware). It's devastating. Our troubles last month seem to be the very least of it all.
So... at least we know we weren't over-reacting.
We have also had a number of offers from other establishments in the area, inviting us to come for complimentary visits, so they can prove to us that there are still good Hospitality folks in the Haliburton area. Total strangers are offering to provide us with free awesome customer service, while the KaCHING boys do... what...?!?
Ha ha, let me tell you what. (If I hadn't experienced this first-hand, I would think I was making this all up, but this is just TOO CRAZY to actually make up.)
The day after The Rant was posted, we got a phone call from Ryan. Now, those of you still giving him the benefit of the doubt are probably thinking he was calling to apologize for his rude behaviour, and/or our horrible day at his Inn, and to try and make things right, aren't you?
Ahem: have you not learned anything about this man?!?
Nope. No apology, no trying to fix things, no remorse, no contrition, no humility (although he did tell us "I am a humble man, I am a very humble man" a few times... methinks he needeth a dictionary).
Why did he call us, then?
BECAUSE HE WANTED TO GIVE US "HIS SIDE OF THE STORY".
Yes, apparently in his mind there is a "side" to being rude and disrespectful to your paying customers. A "SIDE". He didn't give an iota of a crap about the comfort or well-being of his providers-of-KaCHING, he wanted to argue "his side of the story." ARE YOU F&#*ING KIDDING ME?!?!?
Yeah, that really convinced us that customer service and hospitality are alive and well at Sir Sam's Inn and Water Spa, yessirreee.
Ahh-May-ZING
Total strangers who had nothing to do with the KaCHING incident are apologizing and bending over backwards to make it up to us, while one of the two perpetrators is AWOL and the other is trying to justify the whole situation.
Sweet mother of milky-white pearl.
Never fear, my darlings, he got an earful. Here's the bulk of it:
*****
So after that response, you'd think "the team" might have learned something. You'd really think that after being faced with the natural consequences of their atrocious behaviour, they would sit back and contemplate where things might have gone wrong, in order to show us and themselves and the world that Sir Sam's was better than all that. That they were capable of learning and growing and applying life's lessons to make the world a better place. But...
OK, even the Pollyannas among you probably see that this is not going to go well. But even the most jaded and cynical among you are probably not going to expect just HOW unwell it went.
The next day, we received an email from Sir Sam's Inn. We knew by now not to expect an apology for the KaCHING incident, but... WOW.
First, it tried to shame us for writing a bad review, since Ryan and Kyle have wives and children. Because apparently that has something to do with anything. (As I replied, I shall have to go and acquire myself some wives and children, so that I can finally disrespect my clients with impunity!)
And we had said bad things about them without hearing "the other side" (THAT AGAIN?!?). It was absolutely shameful that we would say bad things about them. Because "there are two sides to every story". Every story. (Cha-Chung...)
And later in the shaming department, we were going to be responsible for Sir Sam's not doing well, and maybe the whole area too, since they depend so heavily on tourism. Yes, the shame doesn't belong on the people who created the KaCHING situation, it belongs to the people who were upset by it. And now the ENTIRE REGION will go bankrupt because we were upset with two rude and incompetent individuals at one resort. Mmm-hmmm. Never mind the fact that the entire region was already abuzz with the problems at Sir Sam's long before we bore witness to them, nor the fact that their guest list had already declined significantly by our first day there, nor the fact that several other establishments in the area demonstrated AWESOME customer service in their stead (I'm not going to name those names for the moment, until I know that they are safe from retaliation – see below) after they heard of our ordeal. The KaCHING boys (and the entire region) are victims of us.
But wait, there's more!!!
Our horrible experience at Sir Sam's was NOT the fault of Kyle and Ryan. No, not at all. It's those horrible other staff members, past and present. It's everybody else who's incompetent and responsible for our bad day. EVERYBODY ELSE. And also the "Informants" who "gave us the story" are all liars.
Informants who gave us the story?!?!? Jayzus's donkey on a stick... What informants did we need to witness the shit-storm of KaCHING's going on before our very eyes?!? WE SAW THIS ALL FIRST-HAND. Nobody had to tell us about the dead bug in the dining room screen – we ate beside it four days in a row. Nobody had to tell me the mattress caused me intense back pain, I felt it. Nobody had to tell me that Kyle and Ryan are completely incompetent, they showed us themselves, beyond the shadow of a doubt. No "informants" necessary.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!!!
In writing. IN WRITING. A not-even-remotely-veiled threat of "vindictive" action. Whether it was towards us or our imagined "informants" (or who they imagined those informants to be) was not clear. But yes, they could retaliate and humiliate vindictively if they so chose.
Now, I do understand that calling someone stupid is perhaps not the nicest thing to say, but... HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO THREATEN YOUR CUSTOMER ***IN*** ***WRITING*** ?!?!?!?!? I can't think of an answer to that, which doesn't begin with: PRETTY FLIPPIN' STUPID.
And yes, I am keeping records of all their correspondence and collecting it, and will one day wrap it all up in a pretty pink bow and send a nice juicy present to the various powers that be who regulate the hospitality industry. And I won't even have to give "my side" because everything they've said and done on their very own will dig themselves further and further into that deep dark pit of doom. And there will be rejoicing.
In the meantime, I was pretty darned proud of my response, so shall share it here:
*********************
Now, I should explain at this point the wording of that second-last paragraph: the Sir Sam's email was signed from Deb (the manager of the dining room) – and it very well could have been from her, however... it came from a generic yahoo address, it slipped into first person plural at many points when describing Ryan and Kyle, and it repeated many of Ryan's previous talking points almost verbatim, including multiple mentions of his "the other side". So... not 100% convinced either way, but we're either dealing with someone who hides behind another persona to defend himself, or there is a third person on board at Sir Sam's who doesn't have the first clue about customer service or hospitality. Either way, not a terribly glorious reflection on the current management team.
And, just in case you thought I was finished, there is another reason while I suspect that these people are no strangers to hiding behind other personas. Because after my initial review got published on TripAdvisor (it has since been taken down so I can use language that is consistent with community standards – fair enough – in my rewrite, which is now pending approval, I leave it up to the reader to decide whether certain people are of a certain intelligence level), there has been a flurry of 5-star review activity. Two posts from "people" who had just joined TripAdvisor that week, and only posted glowing reviews about Sir Sam's that, between the two of them, refuted all the points I had made in mine. The titles of these reviews, and the language therein, are practically identical. And a third reviewer, who joined a while ago, but had only posted one 5-star review last year, came back to post another 5-star review now. Suspicious? Or what?!?
Suspicious enough that one friend of mine started digging further into the reviews on-site, and came up with several using the same voice and language, all by first-time reviewers who had never reviewed anything since, and most of which were posted after someone else posted a less-than positive review. Another friend – an editor, of course – independently sent me the same assessment. So I looked at the reviews they were specifying and... yeah... looks pretty darned suspicious to me.
Can't say anything for sure, but... go to their page on the TripAdvisor site and judge for yourselves. (I have had more than one report from staff and former staff that they've heard Ryan actually talk about making up fake emails to post good reviews, and was warned once my first one got published that it would happen – I didn't think anyone would be that brazen, considering TripAdvisor's firm policy on fake reviews, but... well, go and judge for yourselves.) [Edit: As of August 17, four of the eight highly-suspicious reviews have been taken down, yay to truth and justice!] [Edit #2: As of August 23, after two new negative reviews showed up, hmmm... a person who just joined TripAdvisor just posted a glowing review – brazen personified!]
Encroyable.
Just when you think it can't get any more unprofessional... I almost can't wait to see what they do next. And I must go shopping for one or more pretty pink bows with which to tie all the correspondence received.
In the meantime, I have received some lovely correspondence, and spoken to some very wonderful people on the phone. I've "met" a lot of new folks these last two weeks, all from the comfort of my own living room. And, at some point, I look forward to meeting them all in person, and enjoying the beauty that is Haliburton, in the land of Hospitality and amazing Customer Service.
(To be clear: We have no intention of taking these establishments up on their freebies, as it's not their place to pay for others' sins, but we would love to meet these folks who obviously know how to treat guests, even before they're guests!)
And we continue to hope and pray that someone is able to rescue Sir Sam's Inn before it is truly too late.
In the meantime, I'll let you know if any of us find "the one" that makes us fall in love again.
(Just to avoid confusion or cross-contamination, I wish to point out that Sir Sam's Inn is a totally separate entity from Sir Sam's Ski & Bike – that Sir Sam's is run by a wonderful family, who founded both establishments 50 years ago, but then sold the Inn part to James Orr 37 years ago, who in turn sold it to Ryan two years ago. The other Sir Sam's is still doing great and is very customer-friendly and family oriented and apparently much appreciated by locals).
Former guests, present and former staff members, and Haliburton locals have been sharing their stories of what's been going on at the Inn, and it's breaking our hearts. I will not share anything that is single-source, or which could identify any of the people sharing with us, because... well, keep reading for that one. But friends of ours who had visited last year (on our recommendation) lamented watching two occasions in which Ryan was screaming at staff members while they tried to quietly enjoy their breakfast. Other guests we don't know have said they've had similar disappointments in the past year, and are pooling resources to find our next "home away from home" with all that we loved about Sir Sam's before. We've heard of staff being terminated without warning, abusive treatment of staff, and one former worker who described in detail the after-effects of working there, which read like a case study in post-traumatic stress (and we're well-acquainted with the effects of trauma, as anyone who knows us is already aware). It's devastating. Our troubles last month seem to be the very least of it all.
So... at least we know we weren't over-reacting.
We have also had a number of offers from other establishments in the area, inviting us to come for complimentary visits, so they can prove to us that there are still good Hospitality folks in the Haliburton area. Total strangers are offering to provide us with free awesome customer service, while the KaCHING boys do... what...?!?
Ha ha, let me tell you what. (If I hadn't experienced this first-hand, I would think I was making this all up, but this is just TOO CRAZY to actually make up.)
The day after The Rant was posted, we got a phone call from Ryan. Now, those of you still giving him the benefit of the doubt are probably thinking he was calling to apologize for his rude behaviour, and/or our horrible day at his Inn, and to try and make things right, aren't you?
Ahem: have you not learned anything about this man?!?
Nope. No apology, no trying to fix things, no remorse, no contrition, no humility (although he did tell us "I am a humble man, I am a very humble man" a few times... methinks he needeth a dictionary).
Why did he call us, then?
BECAUSE HE WANTED TO GIVE US "HIS SIDE OF THE STORY".
Yes, apparently in his mind there is a "side" to being rude and disrespectful to your paying customers. A "SIDE". He didn't give an iota of a crap about the comfort or well-being of his providers-of-KaCHING, he wanted to argue "his side of the story." ARE YOU F&#*ING KIDDING ME?!?!?
Yeah, that really convinced us that customer service and hospitality are alive and well at Sir Sam's Inn and Water Spa, yessirreee.
Ahh-May-ZING
Total strangers who had nothing to do with the KaCHING incident are apologizing and bending over backwards to make it up to us, while one of the two perpetrators is AWOL and the other is trying to justify the whole situation.
Sweet mother of milky-white pearl.
Never fear, my darlings, he got an earful. Here's the bulk of it:
My understanding of Hospitality and Customer Service is this: When a guest has had a negative experience at your establishment, a responsible innkeeper who cares about his customers and his Inn would be calling said guest to apologize profusely, and find a way to make things right – NOT to argue his "side of the story".
What possible side of the story is there to your behaviour and attitude? Do you actually think there is a way to explain away “KaCHING!” that somehow makes it justified?!?
Once again: when you get caught behaving badly in front of your paying guests, YOU APOLOGIZE AND TRY TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT. You don’t try to prove you were right (do you truly not understand just how wrong that behaviour was?!?), you try to make things right. You might have had a sliver of a chance, with an appropriate response, but… you’ve dug yourself even further into your own grave with the most inappropriate response.
Since posting that blog entry, we have had your fellow innkeepers contact us, offering us visits at their inn in order to prove that there are still good places left – total strangers are trying to make things right for us, while you are trying to prove your side of the story (while essentially proving ours). Meanwhile, your very phone message solidifies everything we found disagreeable about the two of you in the first place. You and Kyle apparently make the perfect partners, but we’re not going to be the only customers you’ve lost (and I know we aren’t already, based on other former guests who have contacted us) as long as you insist it’s all about you, and not your guests or your inn.
Once again: being in Hospitality means it’s not all about you, it’s about the people paying you to provide them with… HOSPITALITY.
[few more paragraphs outlining further bad behaviour we'd heard about and are disgusted by...]
We are absolutely infuriated at how the people we’ve grown to care about over the past six years have been treated, and how our “home-away-from-home” (as we called it when we first arrived last week) has become such a tragic disaster.
We’ve witnessed “your side” first hand, never fear. And we are heartbroken to hear of all the others who have as well. Sir Sam’s Inn was a true gem, and we will not be returning until we have reason to believe that the Inn, its guests and staff are all treated with the respect we all deserve. We pray that James Orr’s legacy has not been buried forever.
I repeat: we have no desire to provide you with any more “KaCHING!” We grieve what you have destroyed, but know we will find both the people and the service we’ve previously enjoyed at Sir Sam’s elsewhere. As we also had to endure you declaring on Saturday evening: ChaCHUNG.
*****
So after that response, you'd think "the team" might have learned something. You'd really think that after being faced with the natural consequences of their atrocious behaviour, they would sit back and contemplate where things might have gone wrong, in order to show us and themselves and the world that Sir Sam's was better than all that. That they were capable of learning and growing and applying life's lessons to make the world a better place. But...
OK, even the Pollyannas among you probably see that this is not going to go well. But even the most jaded and cynical among you are probably not going to expect just HOW unwell it went.
The next day, we received an email from Sir Sam's Inn. We knew by now not to expect an apology for the KaCHING incident, but... WOW.
First, it tried to shame us for writing a bad review, since Ryan and Kyle have wives and children. Because apparently that has something to do with anything. (As I replied, I shall have to go and acquire myself some wives and children, so that I can finally disrespect my clients with impunity!)
And we had said bad things about them without hearing "the other side" (THAT AGAIN?!?). It was absolutely shameful that we would say bad things about them. Because "there are two sides to every story". Every story. (Cha-Chung...)
And later in the shaming department, we were going to be responsible for Sir Sam's not doing well, and maybe the whole area too, since they depend so heavily on tourism. Yes, the shame doesn't belong on the people who created the KaCHING situation, it belongs to the people who were upset by it. And now the ENTIRE REGION will go bankrupt because we were upset with two rude and incompetent individuals at one resort. Mmm-hmmm. Never mind the fact that the entire region was already abuzz with the problems at Sir Sam's long before we bore witness to them, nor the fact that their guest list had already declined significantly by our first day there, nor the fact that several other establishments in the area demonstrated AWESOME customer service in their stead (I'm not going to name those names for the moment, until I know that they are safe from retaliation – see below) after they heard of our ordeal. The KaCHING boys (and the entire region) are victims of us.
But wait, there's more!!!
Our horrible experience at Sir Sam's was NOT the fault of Kyle and Ryan. No, not at all. It's those horrible other staff members, past and present. It's everybody else who's incompetent and responsible for our bad day. EVERYBODY ELSE. And also the "Informants" who "gave us the story" are all liars.
Informants who gave us the story?!?!? Jayzus's donkey on a stick... What informants did we need to witness the shit-storm of KaCHING's going on before our very eyes?!? WE SAW THIS ALL FIRST-HAND. Nobody had to tell us about the dead bug in the dining room screen – we ate beside it four days in a row. Nobody had to tell me the mattress caused me intense back pain, I felt it. Nobody had to tell me that Kyle and Ryan are completely incompetent, they showed us themselves, beyond the shadow of a doubt. No "informants" necessary.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!!!!
In writing. IN WRITING. A not-even-remotely-veiled threat of "vindictive" action. Whether it was towards us or our imagined "informants" (or who they imagined those informants to be) was not clear. But yes, they could retaliate and humiliate vindictively if they so chose.
Now, I do understand that calling someone stupid is perhaps not the nicest thing to say, but... HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO THREATEN YOUR CUSTOMER ***IN*** ***WRITING*** ?!?!?!?!? I can't think of an answer to that, which doesn't begin with: PRETTY FLIPPIN' STUPID.
And yes, I am keeping records of all their correspondence and collecting it, and will one day wrap it all up in a pretty pink bow and send a nice juicy present to the various powers that be who regulate the hospitality industry. And I won't even have to give "my side" because everything they've said and done on their very own will dig themselves further and further into that deep dark pit of doom. And there will be rejoicing.
In the meantime, I was pretty darned proud of my response, so shall share it here:
I had no idea that having wives and children gave one a free pass for despicable behaviour, or from having to deal with the natural consequences of such behaviour. I will have to acquire some of my own, for the next time I wish to disrespect my clients.
We needed no “informants” to tell us what we witnessed, first hand. Nobody “gave us the story” of Ryan and Kyle’s disrespectful and obnoxious behaviour – we were, unfortunately, directly subjected to that by no-one other than Ryan and Kyle. And if Ryan and Kyle did not wish for their words and behaviour to be made public in a travel review, they should not have publicly spoken or behaved like that with their customers. There is no-one to blame for our disgust but themselves.
Ryan and Kyle’s rude behaviour and chorus of “KaCHING!”-s were what sent us to our room trying to not be sick at our stomachs. Ryan and Kyle’s words and actions are why we will never return – we don’t want to be anywhere near that kind of behaviour, and we certainly don’t wish to provide them with any more “KaCHING”.
The Innkeeper and his Vice President ruining your vacation is exactly the type of things that fellow travellers want to know about. I have, in fact, had a friend get in touch who told me he’d spent the last few months wanting to warn us to switch our anniversary vacation elsewhere, but didn’t know how to do it – it would be nice if he had, so we could have left with good memories of Sir Sam's, and not the infuriating finale of Ryan and Kyle.
There is no “other side” to guests being so disgusted by the owner’s behaviour that they never wish to return. Being utterly disrespectful to your paying customers is not something that can be explained away, or blamed on others.
We’ve been blogging about our visits to Sir Sam’s every visit for the last six years, and our friends have enjoyed living vicariously through them – many, in fact, have visited the inn because of them (although we have had reports of similar impressions of Ryan, and of him publicly abusing staff in front of them). When these friends heard our “KaCHING” story, they were just as horrified as we were, and insisted that they and fellow travellers would want to be warned about such an attitude and behaviour (as we would have, as well).
A review is a tool, both for the people deciding where to spend their money, but also for the people or establishments being reviewed. As musicians, we are well acquainted with using reviews to learn how to improve ourselves within our profession. When you get a review you don’t like, you pull up your socks and do a better job so you don’t get a second one – you do NOT fire off a letter filled with semi-veiled threats of vindictive action.
Your letter does absolutely nothing to convince us we were wrong in our assessment of the decline of Hospitality and Customer Service at Sir Sam’s Inn, and I am now further disappointed the decay has not been limited to the two who originally upset us. This treatment of your paying guests is unbelievable. (But now on record.)
Thank you, however, for making sure we have no shadow of a doubt remaining over our decisions.
*********************
Now, I should explain at this point the wording of that second-last paragraph: the Sir Sam's email was signed from Deb (the manager of the dining room) – and it very well could have been from her, however... it came from a generic yahoo address, it slipped into first person plural at many points when describing Ryan and Kyle, and it repeated many of Ryan's previous talking points almost verbatim, including multiple mentions of his "the other side". So... not 100% convinced either way, but we're either dealing with someone who hides behind another persona to defend himself, or there is a third person on board at Sir Sam's who doesn't have the first clue about customer service or hospitality. Either way, not a terribly glorious reflection on the current management team.
And, just in case you thought I was finished, there is another reason while I suspect that these people are no strangers to hiding behind other personas. Because after my initial review got published on TripAdvisor (it has since been taken down so I can use language that is consistent with community standards – fair enough – in my rewrite, which is now pending approval, I leave it up to the reader to decide whether certain people are of a certain intelligence level), there has been a flurry of 5-star review activity. Two posts from "people" who had just joined TripAdvisor that week, and only posted glowing reviews about Sir Sam's that, between the two of them, refuted all the points I had made in mine. The titles of these reviews, and the language therein, are practically identical. And a third reviewer, who joined a while ago, but had only posted one 5-star review last year, came back to post another 5-star review now. Suspicious? Or what?!?
Suspicious enough that one friend of mine started digging further into the reviews on-site, and came up with several using the same voice and language, all by first-time reviewers who had never reviewed anything since, and most of which were posted after someone else posted a less-than positive review. Another friend – an editor, of course – independently sent me the same assessment. So I looked at the reviews they were specifying and... yeah... looks pretty darned suspicious to me.
Can't say anything for sure, but... go to their page on the TripAdvisor site and judge for yourselves. (I have had more than one report from staff and former staff that they've heard Ryan actually talk about making up fake emails to post good reviews, and was warned once my first one got published that it would happen – I didn't think anyone would be that brazen, considering TripAdvisor's firm policy on fake reviews, but... well, go and judge for yourselves.) [Edit: As of August 17, four of the eight highly-suspicious reviews have been taken down, yay to truth and justice!] [Edit #2: As of August 23, after two new negative reviews showed up, hmmm... a person who just joined TripAdvisor just posted a glowing review – brazen personified!]
Encroyable.
Just when you think it can't get any more unprofessional... I almost can't wait to see what they do next. And I must go shopping for one or more pretty pink bows with which to tie all the correspondence received.
In the meantime, I have received some lovely correspondence, and spoken to some very wonderful people on the phone. I've "met" a lot of new folks these last two weeks, all from the comfort of my own living room. And, at some point, I look forward to meeting them all in person, and enjoying the beauty that is Haliburton, in the land of Hospitality and amazing Customer Service.
(To be clear: We have no intention of taking these establishments up on their freebies, as it's not their place to pay for others' sins, but we would love to meet these folks who obviously know how to treat guests, even before they're guests!)
And we continue to hope and pray that someone is able to rescue Sir Sam's Inn before it is truly too late.
In the meantime, I'll let you know if any of us find "the one" that makes us fall in love again.