Liz Y.
Yelp
As a tradition, my friends have started doing a sleepover - in a hotel every time one of us has a birthday. This year it was my turn and my best friend booked The Sofitel. Bit fancy pants i'm sure, and fancy pants I thought it would be.
The newly refurbished hotel, boasted new carpets and newly refurbished rooms starting from floor 16 i'm assuming because that was the floor our room was on, and it just opened the day we were staying there. Feeling a bit spesh being the first ones to stay and experience the new beds and room, we were in for a bit of a surprise.
The beds were very comfortable, and to our surprise we saw a pillow menu. Bit posh! So we decided we would order a therapeutic pillow and a foam latex one as well as 2 V-Shaped pillows for watching TV in comfort.
1. Our phone had no dial tone. I had to use my mobile to ring the front desk to ask for the pillows. They sent a tech up to fix the phone and he informed us after trying 2 separate sockets that the refurbishment may have refurbished over the phone connection because it wasn't working anymore... upon further investigation and trying a new phone and cable, it seemed like the case.
2. The fridge was hot. Upon trying to see what our mini bar had to offer, we opened the small fridge to feel the warmth of a fridge that hasn't been turned on flutter over our faces. Awwww!
3. The guy who tried to fix our phone had to turn our fridge on.
4. The pillows never arrived, but then someone from housekeeping came to our room with pillows we didn't order, who then went to get us pillows we did order... who then never came back.
5. We had waited about 1-2 hours since check in by now so it was time for us to go out for dinner as we had a reservation... as we went downstairs, we went to the front desk and no one even knew we had a phone problem, or that we wanted pillows, or that someone told us earlier we may have to move rooms... that never got back to us. No apology was made, no compensation was given, we were pretty unhappy.
6. We got back just before 12 midnight and told the front desk, different person again who was also unaware of our situation that it was late, and we just didn't want to move rooms anymore.
The next morning the charade continued, our requested newspaper never arrived and someone from housekeeping woke us up in the morning with a trundle bed we had never ordered from the phone we never had. He even told us 'it says room 16**' to which my friend replied... 'well, it's not us.'
We checked out around 10:30am the next morning having talked to at least 8 people in the hotel about our situation, and although the pillows eventually did come, none seemed to know anything of the situation or communicated anything to anyone... the assistant manager on the front desk did apologize finally though and only after we asked, gave us free parking and offered to give us a free room upgrade the next time we were there. Bit of an ordeal, don't get me started on the demister in the bathroom that didn't work and the stained bathtub in the 'newly refurbished' room.