We arrived friday and checked into our hotel. First impressions weren't that good as when I opened the door to our roon two beetles scurried from under the door and several woodlice were crawling around. Quick glance around the room and saw many spiders, dead spiders and cobwebs. We were in a rush to meet some local friends so we dumped our bags leaving us with little time to inspect more. No one was complaining to each other in the group because we didn't want to put negative feeling around.
We arrived back from a meal late friday night and let ourselves in the rooms. Again another few beetles and woodlice ran from underneath the door. As my girlfriend is petrified of spiders i spent 30mins rounding up as many as I could and putting them out of the window. We managed to get to bed on a very uncomfortable bed where the matress offered no support and felt like we were sleeping on the slats all night.
My friends has issues with their room. The shower was mounted about 4ft up the wall due to low ceiling. Their third bed was what looked like garden chair foam on the floor. Although their room had recently been decorated it was still covered in spiders and cobwebs. I honestly believe the hoover and duster had never seen these rooms. We are young (25ish) and therefore not that fussy.
We've stayed in hostels and student digs but do expect a standard for £85 and £75 nightWoke up next morning, went to breakfast. Found we were the only guests staying in the hotel. Ate the breakfast and fished around the dirt and cobweb in the sugar bowl. Got back to the rooms and under the light of day we were able to see how dirty the room was. Flaking paint, mould around the bathroom and windows, dirty carpet, makeup stained towels, stain on the bed sheets, cracked light fitting and hundreds of cobwebs showing the room had not been cleaned in a long time. We then tried to have a shower which was broken. We asked for another room but was told by the manager he'd fix the shower. He didn't and couldn't. He just replaced the shower head which didn't fix the problem. He said the head was blocked due to hard water in the area so could not offer a solution to the problem. That was the straw the broke the camel's back. The group got together and decided to check out straight away. With all the shower problems etc we had admittedly gone past the 11am check out time. It was now 12 midday. We went to reception where we asked to check out. The manager said yes but he'd charge us for both nights. My friends and I stayed very calm all throughout but the manager and his wife were screaming at us in front of customers and accussing us of dirtying the towels and that providing a shower was not in the contract. We were also told to count ourselves lucky as the rooms should have been £95 a night and not £85 and £75 they had quoted us. We were told we were the only ones to have complained in 6years but as the conversation went on the manager admitted complaints of the same nature as ours (why hadn't they done anything about it?!). The manager was about to strike a deal until his wife got heated again. The conversation was going no where. They wanted their money, we weren't paying for two nights. We wanted to pay for the 1 night we used. It all came to a head when the wife of the manager started pointing at my partner dismissing us all as kids. She then got abusive accusing my partner of putting make-up on the towels. My partner asked the woman not to speak to her in that way. Then the woman squared up to her to hit her but I got between them. We were promptly kick out of the pub/hotel minus our room keys.
We then sat outside calling people for advice and calling other hotels. Advice was varied and left us with the decission to either drive off with out paying, or to re-enter the pub/hotel we had just been banned from and cough up in full regardless of us staying a second night, which we were now not welcome to. We decided to wait and see if we were approached for the money. After an hour nothing happened so we drove off. They ONLY details they have of us is our car registration numbers. Just for the record we were not shown and contract, not told of any cancellation policy or fees, didn't sign anything, didn't see any papers at all.
This experience has left us with little trust in British hotels. We are british ourselves
but our hotels/customer service doesn't seem to be a patch on experiences we've all had in America, Canada and most or Europe.
If you want to send a PM we can recommend plenty!
