Sonder the Congress

The Congress, Unit 2A I could not believe that Sonder would send us to this Dump. Our experience did not start well. The street address of our unit was 226 West Broughton Street, in Savannah, GA. That exact address is an optical shop. After half hour of walking around looking for the unit, inquiring at the optical shop, and freezing in the cold weather, I called Sonder. I was told to walk around the back and the door to our unit would be found in the alley. So, I walked into a sketchy, dirty, dark, garbage strewn alley and found the door to Sonder located between a Portable Toilet and some open garbage cans (see photos). Vagrants sat in the alley, and the smell of **** was in the air. The unit itself was large and dimly lit. The poor lighting hid the mis-matched furnishings that looked sourced from a second hand store. The task lights over the cabinets both malfunctioned. The bathrooms, on the other hand, were acceptable. The beds were comfortable. I spoke with the Sonder call center, who declined to put me in contact with a supervisor to address the problems there. The following day, I received a text message that there were no other units available. No other contact came from Sonder corporate. This was the fourth Sonder that we have used in the past couple of years. All of the others were clean, modern and a pleasure to use. This Savannah unit is an embarrassment to the Sonder and Marriott Bonvoy brand. I am still shocked that I have to write this review and will have to reconsider using Sonder in the future. It was that bad.

We stayed at the Sonder on W. Broughton St. as a family of 4 during our first trip to Savannah and were very happy with our stay! The biggest selling point for us was the walkable location to lots of shops and activities and spaciousness in having 2 separate bedrooms and baths for us and our kids. The size of the apt. was amazing (so nice to have a living room and table for 4 so we didn’t have to sit on our beds and eat as we do in a hotel room!) and having a full kitchen was an added bonus for takeout and leftovers we came home with. We definitely needed to use the white noise machines that came with the apt. though because the noise from the restaurant / bar across the alley was playing music for awhile every night. The walls were thin and we did hear noise from the other apt at night. The toiletries and linens were well-stocked; the furniture wasn’t the most comfortable — the couch had no pillows on it and the side chairs weren’t very comfortable. We did take advantage of the luggage storage when we first arrived and that was easy and nice to have since our check-in was 3:30pm. The biggest issue we had with the apartment was the access being off of the back service alley. We had no idea there was no direct access from Broughton St. and while we didn’t return super late at night, the alley was still stinky and a less than desirable way to enter.