My spring break trip to New Orleans would have been much better had hotels.com not screwed things up. I went there with Matt, so look for a similar story on his blog.

First of all, we booked a hotel that was five miles and a ten minute drive from anything we would ever want to see, in scenic Gretna, Louisiana. This was our fault for not researching the hotel's location (although the hotel claims to be in "New Orleans," Gretna is a different city altogether).

The Econo-Lodge in Gretna is immediately next door to a freeway and in a neighborhood that has seen better days. Much better days. Windows in two separate rooms had bullet holes in them. Additionally, this was a motel-style hotel, with rooms that opened immediately to the outside. I hate these kinds of hotels.

The Indian man at the counter (that's Gandhi, not Sitting Bull) spoke little English and, I think, couldn't read English. He told me to find my name on the check-in roster and point it out. He asked if I had booked my reservation through hotels.com or expedia.com. Certainly no one in his right mind would book that hotel after having seen it, so his only hope now is to rely on poor schmucks like Matt and me who haven't seen the hotel before.

My room was okay. A little smokey, though. I had forgotten to request a non-smoking room. I asked the Indian man at the counter, and he told me that all the rooms were full. He said he had 59 guests booked in 51 rooms and that he couldn't help me. He told me to come back tomorrow. The funny thing is, I took a walk around the hotel and there were probably at least a dozen empty rooms in various parts of the hotel.

Matt arrived several hours later and showed me his room. He was somewhat jolly about the fact that his room's lights didn't work. He was less jolly about smell in there. It smelled like someone had been cleaning fish in there. When he finally did get one of the lights working, he found . . . termites! Yes, folks, there were termites in the room. Matt went down to the Indian man and explained to him that there were bugs in the room, but he again reiterated that he had no room. Matt's girlfriend Nicole was with us, and she emphasized that she wasn't going to stay there. We agreed and fled the hotel just like the last scene of Poltergeist, except the hotel didn't implode in a ball of light.

The next day, safe within the arms of a Best Western, we called hotels.com to get some sort of restitution. Hotels.com advertises that there are no refunds, but they can't seriously consider that in the wake of the following facts:

• The bugs, of course.
• Matt reports that the hotel owner told him that "the property changed hands in December" and since then, it's been hard to keep things up to code, "but what can you do?" Some facts suggest that this place is not an Econo-Lodge. The gold-painted "Econo-Lodge" sign behind the check-in counter was just "Lodge," as the "Econo" had been removed. The listing for this hotel at hotels.com says it is called "Economy Inn," and the keycards said "Best Value Inn." Clearly, we had been lied to.
• And speaking of lies, the hotels.com listing says that "the hotel features an outdoor swimming pool and a full service restaurant." It features neither of these things.

We registered our complaints with hotels.com, but they maintained that they had to give the owner of the alleged Econo-Lodge 72 hours to decide to refund our money or not.

My message for cyberspace is this: Stay away from hotels.com!