The Merribee — Hotel in Numbaa

Don’t waste your money: far better to go to Shoalhaven Zoo or any of the lovely public parks. We were billed $15 per person including for our toddler even though children under 5 are stated to be free. $45 to walk around a fly infested average garden which the owners use at every turn to extract money - don’t even try to bring in a bottle of water as they insist you buy anything and everything from their cafe. When we checked our bill afterwards and realised we’d been overcharged we called them to verify we hadn’t made a mistake. Sure enough, they confirmed their prices and then when we told them they’d billed our toddler as an adult they tried to claim a “mistake” - totally dishonest given the owner asked the age of our child before he took payment so not a mistake. Then asked for our bank account details - why you’d give shonky people like this your account details is beyond us: clearly they could have simply credited the overpayment to our card without our bank account details but have not done so. This really is a place run by people who, for the sake of $15, have shown themselves to be dishonest, mean-spirited and totally unsuited to any hospitality venture. Avoid.

(EDIT IN RESPONSE TO OWNER) The aggressive and defensive response posted by the owner says it all. Attacking a reviewer rather than addressing the conduct which caused the negative review is a poor way to respond.

Everything in our review is 100% factual and correct. That includes the patent dishonesty in billing us $15 for a child AFTER checking their age and who is advertised as free admission. And the failure to refund the overpayment to our card. They ignore those matters in their response, preferring to devolve to personal attacks. The owners also make further liars of themselves in their response: the "pricing" they now come up with at $20 per person directly contradicts their own website which clearly stated $15 per adult with kids under 5 free, so this is a pretty sleazy attempt to make the overcharge look like $5 rather than $15. By the way, the "lavender festival" is a joke at one patch of lavender - hardly a 'festival'. Have a look at the review from the person who bought tickets to end up working to process the owners' lavender so they could sell it in their shop. It reads like a 'lavender sweatshop' - hilarious. These owners don't seem to understand the point, which is that for the sake of $15 they've shown themselves to be dishonest and they only worsen that by now posting a reply which personally attacks the reviewer rather than owning it.

Clearly looking at other reviews we are not alone, e.g.: "Stayed at the silo overnight and the owners do not clean the accomodations. For the large amount of money per night this place is definitely not worth it! Could not sleep due to the itchiness of the beddings and the hovering mosquito net full of dead insects right above your head. From accomodation to food, it was just low quality. The other guests literally went to coles to buy breakfast. The silo smelt like fresh manure even with the windows closed. Also, very defensive and unprofessional responses from the owners under negative reviews. They do not take feedback well, as they do not care about your experience and your perception of quality does not matter to them. They also take retaliating action against you for voicing your concerns, from personal experience and evident through the disgusting attitudes of their review responses." The photos attached to that review are as disgusting as the reviewer indicates. And clearly they also got it right about the owners' response to criticism judging by their ill-considered and inappropriate response to this review.

It would have been better to apologise and refund the overpayment, which of course they still have not done. We don't want to support owners who behave this way and defraud their customers or who respond as they have. We don't intend to dignify their aggressive and untrue response further as it's nothing more than a personal attack designed to deflect from...

Had our wedding mid-Aug, sharing our experiences and the pros/cons for future couples considering/organising wedding here, unfortunately our overall experience was not the “luxury” standard like it is advertised.

The good: -Staff are very friendly and try to accommodate your needs when you ask -Food is great (had the 3 course meal, afternoon graze, breakfast x2), although afternoon graze lacks on good amounts of cheese considering the price of $3000 (2 plates…) -The garden and overall site is well maintained and beautiful, photos came out great -The venue has multiple ceremony spots and they quickly assessed/offered a different spot as it rained the day before our wedding day -We arranged our own pre-dinner as we had a small group, the venue still assisted setting up tables, heaters and a speaker -Found yoga actually relaxing after a big night -A lot of styling items and they bring whatever you request from the list. This will save you some money (candle holders, vase, wishing well etc)

The not-so-good : -We had specific requests for Merribee's action detailed in the run sheet (submitted 6 weeks prior) and they also confirmed during the meeting one day prior but was not delivered -Coffee tab was requested for x amount of hours but went over the requested hours until the tab ran out, the bar tab also overlapped with the drinks package hours which is different to what we instructed -No answer/return call/reply to the groom, MOH and family when there were issues on the wedding day -Coffee/tea was never served during reception as per the catering menu -Catering: They don't make ANY extra food for contingency. They mistakenly overserved the first table and ran out towards the end which led to a guest missing out on an entrée. When escalated, the guest was given an empty plate to share with others as they didn't have any spares. -Maintenance issue: The spotlight for our reception table went out the morning of the wedding, venue said they will fix it but closer to the reception time (5pm) advised that they can't get a lightbulb! -They stripped the reception table as soon as we were outside for our first dance. By the time the first dance was done, the ‘non-dancing’ guests had nowhere to go/sit apart from some balcony chairs outside (in winter). Although guests could sit back at the reception table, the staff were busy clearing tables, they felt almost unwelcoming to sit back at their seats. I’ve never seen this before, I always went back to my seat to rest/drink and everything was there until the night is actually over at other weddings -Unpunctual breakfast delivery. Morning of wedding, breakfast was delayed by 2h (requested breakfast 8am, delivered at 9.40am, took our coffee orders from 10am). Recovery breakfast (requested 9am, could eat from 9.40am, coffee van operated from 10am) So if you want punctual mornings, suggest you discuss your expectation.

Other factors to consider: -The accommodation looks nice in photos but lacks practicality, two of the houses only have a bathtub to shower in which means sitting down in the tub and, holding onto the showerhead. I had a cold shower on my wedding night (in winter), it was past midnight so couldn't get a reply back for help and was not warned that we may need to switch the knob back on outside if hot water stops working -The $40 vendor meal will get you chicken nuggets and a meat pie (gourmet quoting them), was not taken well by my vendor -The $3000 bond refund takes about 3.5 weeks

I really wish I could write more positives about the place we got married… It’s very hard to raise these concerns during your wedding day as you don’t want to waste time discussing what went wrong. I tried to raise at the lower level by emailing my feedback but have not received a response so just sharing our experience so other couples can avoid disappointments on their big day!

Sharing photos of the food as I couldn’t find many food photos...

Read carefully before booking Merribee as your wedding venue.

I really wish I could give a different review for Merribee. The venue and grounds are lovely, the staff work hard to keep them beautiful. We ultimately had a great time.

But for as long as the operations are handled by the current venue manager Emma, I would be very, very cautious about having your wedding here.

Emma will try to privately upsell you on her own wedding planning services - by lying about what the venue does and doesn’t support. It is very difficult to get a clear answer on what is or isn’t covered by the venue fee from someone who is trying to make money on the side for her own business.

We didn’t engage her services, and felt punished as a consequence. Emails would go unanswered for months. She didn’t show up to our site inspection 3 days before our wedding due to a “clash” despite it being booked months in advance. Calls would get screened and not returned. We asked for an alternate point of contact and none was provided. We actually had very little need to get in touch, but the things we required were really important in terms of organising vendors and suppliers - and not being able to get anyone from Merribee to answer an email or take a call was incredibly frustrating given you’re paying ~$20,000.

After the wedding we were accused of stealing a pair of sunglasses. These had been found the day before by the celebrant, which we passed around our guests and handed in to staff once we couldn’t find the owner. Emma put these in the kitchen, misplaced them, and then told us someone had taken them and we needed to return them.

Merribee is supposed to return your bond in full within 4 weeks. We have had it confirmed multiple times that our bond will be returned in full - but are still waiting after months of follow up, multiple emails, calls etc. No communication about thousands of dollars that they owe us and Emma can’t be found. Again, it is a bizarre system - with a single point of failure in someone who simply does not do the bare minimum when it comes to responding to enquiries or requests.

Weddings are a lot of work, and a lot of money. Merribee is a beautiful venue that is being let down by the unprofessionalism of it’s venue manager. It either needs to hire more customer support staff, change management, or prevent it’s staff from trying to operate side businesses by scaring guests into paying more for the exact services they’ve already...