BEWARE - Valentin Imperial Riviera Maya
My wife and I got back from the Valentin Imperial Riviera Maya a few weeks ago, having gone for a few days for my birthday. The resort itself was beautiful, a lot of activities, well maintained grounds, etc.
We really had a great time on the trip… until the last morning.
Unfortunately, as we were packing to leave, I discovered that my gold necklace was missing. After deductive reasoning (and going over the timeline of when the last time I saw it was), I discovered that it must have been taken by the cleaning staff while we were out of the room.
It was buried in the bottom of my backpack under a pile of other stuff, which means in order to have taken it, they went through all of my stuff and rummaged through my bag. Yes I know, there’s a safe in the room. But I’ve heard many stories of things being stolen from the in-room safes, so I figured it would be safer to hide it buried in the bottom of my bag.
After discovering it was missing, I immediately notified the front desk, who told Concierge & Security, who met me at the room about an hour later. I filled out an Incident Report and was told their “investigation” would take about 72 hours.
I didn’t hear anything from them for over a week, and they only responded to my email after reaching out several times past the 72 hour window. No surprise, but they said they didn’t discover the necklace, and the staff who had access to the room the day it was taken didn’t admit to anything (obviously).
After a few emails back & forth (with extremely delayed responses on their end), they considered the matter closed and weren’t willing to do absolutely anything to rectify the situation. Also, they wouldn’t even send me a copy of the Incident Report after requesting it several times (I need it in order to file an insurance claim). So all in all, there’s no resolution, I’m out a gold necklace worth several thousand dollars that I received as a gift for my 13th birthday, and the resort mgmt hasn’t done anything to make things right.
TLDR: Be very very careful with your belongings at the VIM resort. I had a gold necklace stolen by the cleaning staff, and the resort mgmt didn’t do absolutely anything to rectify the situation (in fact, actively working against things by not even sending me a copy of the Incident Report to file an insurance claim).
For what it’s worth, this all happened only about a week after someone went viral on TikTok for having $900 stolen by the cleaning staff at this resort. So there seems to be a recurring theme.