Grand Metropark Yuantong Hotel Beijing

This hotel rates itself a 5 star hotel... I hate to say this but not a chance... The 3.5 rating users have given it is more accurate. Where to begin. Day one: room is dark, even with all of the lights on! I tend to question dark rooms because it usually means they are trying to hide something. True to the dark room theroy... dust on shelves, build up of dirt all along the walls, like they have never had a vacuum that will reach it. Window sills weren't just dirty, they were streaked with a black grit that honestly just wiped off... The bed was good but on an 8 day stay we had to ask them to CHANGE the sheets, not just make the bed. Basically, there did not have the "Clean every inch, all the time" that 5 Star hotels are known for. The shower had 2 heads, one rain head and one hand held... This was good, but the rain head was broken it was spraying water out the top of the shower head... We didn't use it for the whole trip. On top of that the door on the shower didn't seal correctly so every shower resulted in a lake of water on the floor of the bathroom WE cleaned up. I do not even want to think about what the floor under that bathroom looks like from a mold standpoint. As for the free breakfast bar on the 3rd floor... Bacon good. Hasbrowns, not sure they were even pototoes. Scrambled eggs, tasted like plastic. Fruit, skip it. Rolls... Tasted oily. Ate here one the time and went elsewhere the rest of the trip. This said, the Restaurant on the 4th floor was phenomenal... Even had Puffer fish, if you are into risking the Chef's skill over your life... After the rest of the hotel, I was not. But, the rest of the meal was top notch! And my final complaint, exchange of US dollars. In a country where you have all kinds of issues with either use of Credit Cards (I'll get to that) or pulling out additional money, due to China's closed banking system, you would expect a "5 Star" International Hotel to have good exchange volumes on hand... Nope $200 a day... We finally got the manager to give us $300 a day but that was it. But if you do not have Cash, no way to get more unless you go to Bank of China on the same block. This brings me to a problem I had with the hotel that seems to not just be a hotel problem... When we checked in they charged my Credit card for the room cost for the whole time we were there... No problem, until I looked at the receipt... Full credit card number showing with expiration... I almost died. In the modern day problems of credit fraud. This should never happen anywhere. On our trip we saw this in 2 locations. While others at least blanked out the center 8. This is a general banking problem with China but a hotel more than anywhere else should know better. If you do not have physical Yuan you risk exposing your credit card, big time. This the problem with a "5 star" hotel only exchanging only $200 a day. If you can afford a "5 star" now a days you spend more than $200 a day just doing things and shopping. So after all of that, the Grand Metropark Yuantong calling themselves a "5 Star" is not even close.