My husband and I just came back yesterday along with our 8 friends from Barcelo Capella in Juan Dolio. We paid for our vacation package - airline and hotel about 4 months ago. When we all checked in, we had no problems with the reservation or anything. The next day, we all went out on an excursion and returned to find that we were all locked out of our rooms.... we thought since the weather turned bad, maybe the electricity had reset our room keys. Turns out, the hotel claimed they never received payment for our rooms and they were kicking us out. After 4 hours of fighting back and forth, one of the managers said "oops, we made a mistake." We were furious, but also grateful that it was just a misunderstanding.

Fast forward 3 days to when we checked out.... we get the bill for our rooms and suddenly there's a charge for the actual room! We explained what had happened a few days prior and thought it was a glitch, maybe they reset our room keys and started a new charge for the rooms. They said no, that they never received payment from the company we booked our trip with but DIDN'T WANT TO BOTHER US while we were staying there!!! After arguing for an hour while our taxi was waiting for us to go to the airport, we tried to just walk out. Well, security stopped us and and our taxi was informed not to leave until we had paid again. We were trapped!! We were ultimately forced to pay again if we wanted to leave. If we had more time and our flight wasn't leaving we would have held out as long as we could, but we had no time.....which seemed like a good plan for the hotel to get more money out of us!

As soon as we got home, we tried to cancel the charges which you can't do apparently. You can dispute them though, which we are.

As for the hotel itself, 7 out of 10 of us came home with food poisoning. 3 of us have strep throat. I read reviews on travelocity.com and other websites and I wish I would have listened. The rooms we were given had damp, mildew smelling sheets that they didn't change once in 5 days - we made a pen mark on them to keep track. I've stayed at Barcelo Bavaro Caribe in Punta Cana and it was truly a pleasure staying there, which is why we thought if this was a "Barcelo" hotel that it might be good.

Lesson learned: Read traveler reviews - there will always be people that complain, just to complain, but if the majority of the reviews are bad there must be a reason. Finally, which ever company you book a trip with, confirm that you payment has been received and get written proof from the actual hotel so when you show up, they can't say they didn't get it.

Well, I've been to the Barcello Capella and it is quite poor compared to many other hotels in the DR. Even though it has 5 stars, I'd say the experience leaves it at 2-3 stars. But thats the problem in the DR, every hotel has 4-5 stars, regardless of the quality.

Have you discussed this issue with your travel agency/tour operator? That's the most effective way, since they sold you something that wasn't what was promised. If it really was the fault of the hotel, your best bet is to complain to the travel agency. They will call the hotel and tell them that they won't send any more guests.

Reviews on the internet can be confusing, but normally, when something has majorly bad reviews in more than one source/site, I'd rather stay away than risk it.