Expect to share your room with a mouse, then be ch...

Expect to share your room with a mouse, then be charged for it. Do not stay at The Marcel at Gramercy unless you want to pay $200/night for the following to happen to you:

1. find a mouse in your room
2. find front desk staff reluctant to dispose of the mouse you caught in your room so that you have to dispose of it yourself
3. ask for two pre-dawn wake up calls so that you can catch your early morning flight, but receive neither these calls nor a knock on your room's door so that you end up missing your flight
4. be checked out by a front desk person who does not ask how your stay was or make eye contact with you but instead rudely dismisses you as soon as she sees that your stay was already paid for
5. be charged $47 on your credit card after you've checked out (for for an umbrella you never borrowed from the front desk and for the "complimentary" beer the front desk gave you as an apology for the mouse)
6. be promised a call back from a manager by a certain time to address your complaint about the incorrect charges, then not receive that call until half an hour after the promised time, only to discover that she is the weekend manager and has no authority to address all of your complaints
7. schedule a specific time to speak to a higher-up manager, then discover that this manager, too, fails to call you back at the promised time because he did not receive your clear note that you live in a different time zone
8. have that second manager transfer you to the general manager, who then tells you that "Being in New York City, it does happen. Mice do end up in hotels. I don't know what to tell you," that "I'm not calling you a liar, but it is possible that you never placed the wake up calls," and that he's ending the call because "you're very combative"

The above list hopefully reflects an unusual stay at The Marcel at Gramercy. The following list is what you can expect from a typical stay:

CON
1. an upgraded superior room with a short full-sized bed so that you cannot sleep comfortably if you are over 5' 6"
2. wifi is $10/day, which we did not purchase because, according to many other reviewers, it provides a very weak connection
3. an old iHome clock radio whose radio function plays mostly static and whose buttons are so worn that it is impossible to set an alarm or turn the static noise off without pressing on the buttons for more than 3 minutes
4. $7 bottled water
5. a loud air-conditioner that kicks on automatically and needs to be shut off every time you enter the room
6. loud elevator and outside noises
7. a sink that does not drain properly
8. terrible self-service coffee and cheap tea bags in the guest lounge, which are only available until 10:00 a.m. (there is no hot water boiler, instant coffee, or tea bags in the room)
9. no toothbrush, toothpaste, q-tips, cotton pads, disposable razor, shaving cream, and other toiletries that are commonly provided in hotels of comparable pricing (there is only shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, bar soap, and lotion)
10. very weak overhead light (about as dim as a candle) such that it is difficult to see in the room at night even with all of the lights and the TV on

PRO
1. some staff members the cleaning staff, door man, and the late-night front desk person who checked us in are very friendly
2. in order to reduce the hotel's own costs, your bedding and towels will not be changed unless you remember to place a card on your pillow and throw your towels on the on the floor so you get to feel green, if that makes you happy
3. if you spend hours and hours playing phone tag to address incorrect charges, eventually they'll say that they'll correct them

I would never stay there ever again, nor should anybody who expects acceptable service.