Check in was really bad. I got to the hotel at about 3pm and thought I had been scammed because there was no sign outside at all and I knocked on a door but had no reply. I phoned them and someone shouted at me and hung up. I emailed them and waited outside for about 30 minutes, not sure what to do and worried I was completely screwed for the next few nights.
Eventually a random neighbour happened by, they let me in and phoned the hotel owners and passed on the information that my key would be hanging in the room door.
Then for the rest of the afternoon and the next morning they sent me lots of emails saying I needed to forward them a photograph of my passport. I had done this already but hotels.com had removed the attachment. They sent me an email address to send it to but this of course also got removed (replaced by asterisks in the email I received) so there wasn't much I could do.
The next day there was finally someone on reception who was very rude. There was no apology for leaving me stranded outside the hotel when I arrived. Even as I was looking for the email on my phone so I could show him the issue and my passport image, he was aggressively repeating, "we need to see your passport, every hotel needs to see your passport, it's normal" - I was not disputing that.
Surely, I am not the first person to stay there. How do they not have this process sorted out better? Just a really shoddy experience.