Super 8 is usually our "home away from home" when we travel, but the Ponca City Super 8 will be forever marked off of our list.

When I checked in, I asked for a room with a bathtub. (We had stayed at this hotel before on many occasions and our room always had a tub. Last year when we visited, we got a room that only had a shower, so this time I was going to request a tub.) I was told by a very kind older woman that the owners now only let the "weeklies" have the rooms with bathtubs. I thought that sounded a bit odd since it never occured to me that the Super 8 chain was the type of hotel that allowed "weeklies". I was exhausted from a grueling cross country drive at the time of check in so I didn't complain. As we were driving around to our room, we noticed several "tweeker" looking individuals riding around the parking lot on their bicycles which started to explain to us what the "weeklies" actually were. As we were in town to make funeral arrangements for my husbands father, we had many other things on our minds besides trying to find a more suitable place to stay and hoped that as with past stays at this establishment, things would just go smoothly.

Friday night when we got back to our room, I found that someone had "stirred" the contents of our toiletry/medication suitcase. After a passing thought of how rude and invasive that was, I just attributed it to possibly a nosey maid. The next morning we locked that bag with a combination lock. On Sunday night when we arrived back in our room and went to open that bag, we found where someone had tried to break the lock off of the suitcase and were unsuccessful although they were successful at breaking the suitcase. At that point it was obvious that maybe what I had thought was just someone being "nosey" had actually been someone stealing from us. We got out two bottles of medication that we had just had filled before leaving home and found that both were half empty! Early Monday morning we went to speak with the owner at the front desk and explained the situation to him, showing him the broken pieces of our suitcase. I guess we were expecting him to offer to replace our bag or possibly give us a night at no charge for the invasion of our privacy, but all we got was a "I'm so sorry this happened. This has never happened here before." We have stayed at Super 8 hotels all over the U.S. and are members of Trip Rewards and have always felt safe until this visit. The only problem we have had at the Ponca City Super 8 was with them not knowing what our TripRewards card was for on our last visit in 2004 and so far, they have still not turned in our stay this time. Needless to say, we will never stay at this particular Super 8 again and will certainly think differently about future stays in other Super 8's.