Hotel Scams In Washington D.C? Look Before You Leap

Tourists who visited Washington recently and were booked into the President’s Inn on New York Avenue are posting complaints on Web sites.

They were looking for an alternative to the high priced hotels in downtown Washington. What they found, they say, was a motel with rats, bed bugs, stained carpet and sheets.

The tourists complained to 9NEWS NOW. We were turned away at the front desk and told there would be no comment and no tour of the building.

The next day we sent a cameraman to the President Inn where he checked in and was given a room on the second floor. Once inside he was able to document on videotape a lot of the tourists concerns.

There were bars on the window and cigarette burns in the carpet, on a chair and dresser. A bathroom door had been kicked in. Fires had been set. Human hair was found on the bed and hanging from a head piece in the bathroom. There was graffiti on the wall and some other substance smeared on a bathroom wall.

At least one of the tourists, a woman from Oregon says she became ill with scabies after staying at the President Inn.

Another posted the comment "This place is absolutely terrible." And a third person wrote, "I’ve never been so disgusted."

A spokesperson with the city’s Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Office told 9NEWS NOW by phone that Inspectors will be sent to the motel as complaints have been lodged with the Consumer Protection Division.

It should also be pointed out that the DC government has done business with the President Inn as recently as this past April. The City helped relocate several displaced families to the Inn with the government paying for their emergency stay.

**Link From USA9NEW.COM