Kinabalu Backpackers Lodge - Review from Bob Rose

A word of warning… we have had some bad experiences with Kota Kinabalu Backpackers Lodge. We originally hired a tent from them which turned out to be broken. This was quite annoying as you can imagine, but they had borrowed the tent from someone else in turn and couldn’t get any refund from the original lenders. They had seemed like nice people nonetheless so we decided to stay with them for our second visit. All guest houses in Kota Kinabalu offer to pick people up from the airport for free, so we had arranged this in advance but we realised after some time at the airport that we had been forgotten about. When we made our own way by taxi to them, they claimed that they had not received the final email which had the flight details. I was successfully copied into the email which had been sent by my other half, it’s pretty rare for an email to just disappear and not reach it’s destination. Nonetheless, we said we would stay if they drove us to the airport on our way back out as the taxi fare is almost half the cost of the room. After a VERY long time talking, it was agreed that we would get a lift back to the airport and we would hold back the money we had spent on the taxi until we could be sure that we were being taken and they gave us a receipt which clearly said that we would pay the remainder later. It took a lot of persuading to get to this step, we were exhausted and using up vital time in our 2 day weekend break. We went out for a meal, when we got back we were told that there had been a misunderstanding and that we had to pay everything in full straight away. The girl who had promised us that everything was sorted out went back on her word and made out that we had misunderstood her (despite the receipt) because a family member was giving her a hard time for not taking all our money in one go. In the end, we had to leave and find another place to stay late at night. Basically, the people there are generally nice but completely useless if anything goes wrong, and have shown that they will go back on their word. Not impressed with a place that rents out broken tents, forgets to pick people up from the airport, and kicks people out late at night after going back on an agreement.