r/SonofaBoyDad

TLDR at the bottom.

A few weeks ago I stayed at Hotel de la Poste French Quarter with my girlfriend. This was the hotel we stayed at on our first trip together several years ago and I was planning to propose so what better place than where our love started to take root. The hotel was great just like last time we stayed at the property aside from a broken window frame from moisture intrusion letting in more noise than we were expecting. The window was separated from the frame so even when it was shut there was a gap to the outside.

Now it’s the French quarter so of course we did not expect peace and quiet, but the open window frame made it sound like we were outside. We informed the front desk the next morning and asked if they had a different room or a white noise machine. They did not have a different room but were very happy to provide a white noise machine and said they would send it up shortly. A little later a gentleman knocks on the door and has a machine in his hands that is about 18 x 10 inches, a little big for a white noise machine I think but maybe it’s old. He explains there is a timer and that I should be able to figure out its operation and that he said the front desk said I “needed this machine”.

The gentleman leaves and I bring in the machine, sit down, plug it into an outlet, and start looking for how to turn it on. I press the on button and am blasted in the face with air that tastes like electricity. My throat immediately feels very dry and I am thinking “huh that’s very strange” when I see a red light has turned on labeled “ozone on”. Fortunately I have an idea of what ozone is and that it is toxic to all living creatures. I immediately turn it off when I realize what is going on after getting blasted in the face for 30 some odd seconds.

The hotel had given me a QT Thunder 24 machine (shown in the photo) with the intent of using it all night for white noise. When I looked at the user manual for this machine online it explicitly states to not turn the machine on without a respirator, to vacate the area immediately, and to not return until 8 hours of ventilation in the space. These machines take the 02 that we breathe and energize them with an extra oxygen molecule creating 03 (ozone). This toxic, non breathable 03 displaces all the breathable 02 in the area. My understanding is that it can be similar to carbon monoxide. It is used to kill odors most often in hotels but is also used to kill bugs. Thank goodness I am here on reddit and knew what an ozone machine was and had an idea it could kill us through direct exposure. If it had just been my fiancée she 100% would have turned it on all night and very possibly could have died. Even with that short exposure we both felt a bit light headed and my throat felt very sore. I read online that directly breathing ozone is like a “sunburn for your esophagus”.

I reported this to the front desk and they sent the gentleman back up to retrieve the machine. I then called the front desk again and they explicitly denied that it was a dangerous machine and rudely told me there was nothing wrong and kept asking “what do you want me to do”. I was a bit shook up by the whole thing and decided I would just escalate the matter the next day. I reported this to Marriott corporate and opened a case number. I have not heard from the hotel. I have followed up with Marriott corporate twice and they said this is a matter that needs to be handled by the hotel and would not tell me if they were doing anything at all. It has now been several weeks of radio silence and I am sitting here wondering when another mistake like this is going to severely injure or kill someone. My frustration initially was with the hotel itself but Marriott corporate has refused to do anything at all and becomes rude with me when I have called them. I did not know what to do until I saw a post here a little bit ago and decided to share this as a warning and to hopefully gain some exposure. That hotel is going to kill someone with their negligence and neither them nor Marriott Bonvoy seem to care at all.

If anyone has any advice on further avenues to get in contact with someone at Marriott that cares for the safety of their customers I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks everyone for reading.

TLDR - Asked for a white noise machine and was given an ozone generator to leave on all night while my fiancée and I were asleep. Ozone displaces oxygen and is toxic to life and could have killed us in our sleep. Now the hotel and Marriott are ignoring me.

On the right, his recent ex and maybe only girlfriend he ever had? Hope our boy learned some life lessons from it all. 🙏🏼 prayers he doesn’t shave his head again.

Rafted and Fly Fished about 100 miles down the Middle Fork last week. This podcast taught me everything I know about the outdoors. My guide Nate said I was a much better fly fisher than his buddy Harry.

As Rone would say: “So nice”