Saturday 23 June 2012

A Rat in my Hotel Room


After a lovely weekend at Britmums Live laura (lifeandtimesoftheworkingmum) and I arrived back at our hotel ready for a quiet night and a chat. Little did we expect a third room guest.  A long tailed brown haired furry kind of room mate. Laura had naively booked a hotel room on late rooms without reading too many reviews and the Kings Cross Hotel seemed a reasonable price, a nice distance from train station and venue and adequate for resting our tired heads after a long day.  Communal bathrooms and showers could be overlooked if it meant more money to spend on wine.


On arrival I was a little confused to find a tin of peas included in our coffee tray and a dirty plate on the floor but ignored these as the bed had clean sheets and I was eager to get to the conference.  Fast forward to the second night, we are sitting on the beds, chatting away when we notice the rat crawl out from behind the sink.
  Jumping on the bed, I let Laura go on a hunt and it seemed the large hole in the carpet might be a hiding place for the furry friend.  I went down to reception immediately to inform them and the little laugh from the man implied I was being a silly girl. I brought him up and he suggested that covering the hole with sellotape would fix the problem and we had nothing to worry about.


Not sure about you, but I was not filled with confidence! Worried I would arrive home to find a stowaway I insisted we would find somewhere else to stay despite it being eleven pm.  The man (kindly?) arranged to cancel another booking and move us to a 'bigger' room, which situated just behind reception allowed us to easily eavesdrop on all their conversations. You may be sat there thinking a large glass of wine is in order to calm the nerves however the new room does not come with a key!


We tweeted our experience and whilst online noticed a certain employee had used our personal details to find us on our private facebooks and there sat a couple of friend requests.  Really?! He then went on to send us private messages telling us the rat likes sweet smart girls and that it was not his fault.  So what would you do?



UPDATE

Arriving home, I sent a strongly worded email, hoping we may be taken more seriously through that medium as we were clearly not being in person.  A short phone call from the hotel manager informed me that higher management (whose details he refused to give me) would not authorise a refund but we could have 50% off a future stay.  The phone call ended with me telling him that this was not good enough and that we intended to take this furthur and he promptly hung up on me!

UPDATE

After furthur consultations via email and phone I am assured that they have called in pest control and taken measures about the member of staff and breach of data protection.  We have also received a cheque refunding us for the second night in the hotel.  Very glad this is all over!


25 comments:

  1. Get on Trip Advisor now woman! Bloody hell, I was feeling annoyed about my 'quiet room' being under the laundry...

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    1. I think we are helping everyone else appreciate their hotels!

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  2. Holy moly! That's dreadful! Are you ok?! (stupid question!)

    Take photos and let us all know the name of the hotel so we can tweet about it!

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  3. Ohh my goodness, that is outrageous. Definately make sure you get a decent written complaint in to them, get your money back and report them to environmental health too, let would get closed down for rats in rooms!

    Mich x

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  4. Yuck that sounds awful- hope you are all ok. I work for a hotel company- demand a refund and stick to your guns.

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  5. Oh my goodness. I sure hope you are getting a refund!

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  6. Christ, everything that everyone else has said! How awful. I wrote about rats last year. Don't read it. Seriously. It'll just make it worse :)

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  7. AAAAAGHHHHHHH!

    That is all.

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  8. Bloody hell! And you should name and shame them!

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  9. Oh my god! Hate rats and mice! They give me the creeps! Some bad publicity for that hotel is in order I think! Omar bigger , greater scale! Hugs and happy you got away now! X

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  10. Oh My God, I would have run so fast I would have been in Scotland in 10 minutes.
    Yuk Yuk Yuk,
    Liska xxx

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  11. I think that they should probably be reported to the relevant authority.

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  12. that is awful...and there was people telling me that the Travelodge was bad! yuk...hope you get it sorted x

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  13. That's disgusting. Make sure you save all written conversation and make screen shots of the Facebook requests and comments. That's an absolute disgrace and you should really report them to all authorities that might be even remotely interested in this. Oh yeah, a refund is the least I'd expect. How cheeky to offer you 50% off another stay - there's no chance I would ever enter that hotel again and I'm not even afraid of rats...

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    1. I'm with Carolin. OMG, the cheek of them, trying to schmooze their way out of a blatant health regs violation in that slick, patronizing way!

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    2. They are really good at avoiding things, which is only making me more determined to persevere! Will keep you all updated!

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  14. That's horrible. What a creepy man :( Get your bum on Trip adviser for a big ZERO star review ! X

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  15. That's horrendous! You should contact Environmental Health!!! Hope you are o.k. x

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  16. Ugh, just revolting and the facebook requests and messages are a HUGE violation of your privacy. Keep us posted x

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  17. Eew! That is not what you want to see in your hotel!
    I needed a cheap bed for the two nights I stayed over too so I used the YHA (Youth Hostels). It was a bit like sleeping in hospital after you have your baby- there are people coming and going all hours of the night so you can't get a great night's sleep but at least it was clean!! (and it only cost me £25 per night for a bed in a shared dorm)
    I hope the manager takes your email more seriously. Trying to friend you on FB is just creepy.

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  18. Eww indeed!

    I used to work in the tourist office in Cambridge so know a bit about these kinds of things. Give Visit London a call (08701 566 366 or http://www.visitlondon.com/contact_us/) and ask to speak to whoever deals with accommodation there. In Cambridge any member of staff could book accommodation for tourists but there were two accommodation officers who dealt more closely with the accommodation providers and authorities governing them. There should be someone similar at Visit London who will be able to contact the right authorities on your behalf, as well as giving you the contact details of these authorities if you want to contact them yourself as well!

    Even if this particular hotel is not on Visit London's books (the tourist office only advertise and work with some, not all, the accommodation in any given area) they will still take it very seriously and will help you get it sorted. This kind of thing is not on and there are authorities who are there to deal with things like this. If you don't get anywhere, let me know, I can always find out more for you if needs be, but I'm sure Visit London will be able to help you.

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  19. Um, sorry if this is a repeat... I did something and the page reloaded before I saw whether I'd actually posted my comment or not!

    Give Visit London a call (08701 566 366 or http://www.visitlondon.com/contact_us/) and ask to speak to whoever deals with accommodation there. I used to work in the tourist office in Cambridge and if anything like this ever came up (which was rare, I must add!) the accommodation officers were able to provide the contact details of the authorities you'd need to contact and would also offer to contact the authorities on your behalf. If the hotel is on their books they will obviously look into it themselves as well, but even if not they should take it seriously and ensure that the relevant authority/authorities are made aware of this as there are several major legal issues by what you've told us that need to be looked into by the people who can make a difference (and ensure you get your refund!)

    Hope that helps. Let me know if you need any more help.

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