Visitors Discover Bed Bugs in Macon Motel; Health Department Confirms

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) — A hundred dollars for a 4 night stay at a motel seemed like a bargain to Keith Thomas, Jr.

“It’s right around Christmas time so money is not top notch, you don’t have a lot of money, you’ve got Christmas, we decided to stay over here.”

However, Thomas had no idea his room was already occupied.

“Little brown bugs; my son and I flipped the covers back and we seen a bunch of them in one room.”

The Thomas family drove to middle Georgia from North Carolina for a relative’s funeral. The Motel 6 on Riverside Drive advertised a special rate, but what the Thomas’ got was more than what they bargained for.

Keith’s father, Keith Thomas Sr. said, “In my room it was roaches.”

In another room it was bed bugs, according to the Thomas’.

The family booked a total of three rooms. After Keith Jr. complained about bed bugs in his room, hotel managers decided to move him down the hall to a room next door, but more problems with their stay and the complaints didn’t stop there.

“We switched rooms, we looked at 7 rooms, all of them nasty, all of them disgusting,” Keith Jr. said.

At first, Keith Sr. tried to exterminate the pests himself.

“I went and got roach spray and sprayed the room,” said Keith Sr.

When the issues got worse and the Thomas’ felt the motel wasn’t offering the best customer service, they took it a step further and called the North Central Health District.

Environmental Health Director Carla Coley said, “They were due at the end of the year but because of the complaint we went ahead and did a full inspection. In this particular case, there were bed bugs found in at least one room.”

The result: Motel 6 scored an 86.

“An 86 for a tourist accommodation would probably be considered below average,” Coley said.

A sub par number that not only impacted the motel’s image, but cast a shadow over an already sad family trip.

“It’s bad enough we’re here for my grandmother’s funeral, to go through what we went through at that hotel and the problems we had, just made everything a lot worse,” said Keith Jr.

After the health inspection, the Thomas family was asked to leave Motel 6. Assistant manager of the motel, Omar Patel declined to go on camera. However, he did confirm the Thomas’ were given a full refund for one room and partial refunds for the other two rooms.