The New County Hotel — Hotel in Gloucester

A truly horrendous experience from start to finish. How can a hotel like this claim to have 3 stars ?? Driving into car park at rear was greeted by a drunken man urinating against cars in the car park . Staff seemed to find this funny and said it sometimes is worse at night. We had paid in full online and were asked for a room security deposit by the person on reception. She said we needed to pay as it was company policy. So another £100 later we got to our room. The hotel looked shabby & in need of repairs , our room confirmed this when we got into the room you could see that it had not been painted for a long time. The bed felt saggy and on inspecting we found an ancient mattress . I dread to think of how old it was . The shower dripped constantly so my parter went to reception to complain. He was gone about 20 minutes . He returned to say that the receptionist had finished her shift & another person was there booking in some other guests. ||As he waited he could hear the conversation followed ours almost word for word with the exception of the security deposit which was double what we had paid. ||He spoke to reception after these new guests had booked in and gone off to find their room. He reported the shower issue & reception said she would let maintenance know . There was no detail given on when it would be looked at but we would be notified. After retuning to the room we left to take in the sights of Gloucester. Some hours later we returned to find a tool box propping open our hotel room door and no one present !! My partner went to reception where they advised maintenance had been up there for 30 or so minutes and may have popped out for “something” we were horrified as we had left valuables in our room as well as car keys. We waited in the room and 20 or so minutes later the “ maintenance man “ returned, no apology or introductions he carried on oblivious to us being in the room. He can out of the bathroom after a few minutes and said he had tried something to stop the dripping but couldn’t fix it as he needed to swop the shower for another. We were left with this constant dripping shower for the remainder of our stay. This made us laugh initially but later that evening we would not be laughing. ||At about 2 in the morning the shower decided to star making a whine and even more water came out this time it was scolding hot… this continued for over an hour. With my partner eventually going to reception to complain. The night staff were less than helpful , merely saying take the handset off and put hose in shower tray . We tried this but nothing stopped the noise or continual stream of hot water. I’m guessing the night staff called some one in charge as 15 minutes later we were given another room. With 2 single beds , at least we were away from the noisey shower !!! ||On leaving the following morning we asked for at least a partial refund and were told we could have a discount on our next booking only as we had moved rooms . Hopeless customer service I think . Quite a old hotel obvious from the style decor and carpets , mix that with lack of and poor maintenance… recipie...

PLEASE BEWARE. The prices seem reasonable when you book, But they insist on freezing your bank account with a holding fee of £100. Initially they say its for 'extra services', but being as there is no restaurant, kitchen, or other services, this is to pay for possible damage to rooms. I have since found out that they take homeless people. Therefore they are ear marking money off people that aren't to compensate. Even if you pay for the room in advance, they want more and this sits in limbo for days. So, if you want to spend money elsewhere you find yourself 100 short. When I queried I was asked, quote, ' have you never paid a deposit in your life?'!!!!!!! If you have paid for a room in advance then the concept of a deposit is irrelevant unless you are paying for other hospitality which this hotel does not include. I was argued with, called spiteful and then the receptionist tried to throw me out saying I was a covid risk. There was nobody else in the lobby and when I arrived there had been a gentleman talking to her for what appeared to be a long time. I eventually managed to have a conversation with the manager, that the other two had tried to prevent. She had the decency to waive the 100 pound holding fee, but had been informed that my behaviour was bad and I had been accused of calling the guy I spoke to useless. When I tried to set this straight as I had merely asked to speak to someone who could authorise what he couldn't, he said that was what I meant!!! Really?? This was not the case at all. I only arranged a very quick stop over for convenience and this was hugely traumatic. I was given an upgrade which was kind. In all honesty, I would have been happy to pay more for the room than to go through this. I'm always happy to leave card details, but having to be 125 pounds short instead of 25 beggars belief. In any event, who is to say that this hotel doesn't break things themselves or makes things up to keep these so called deposits. Hotels are insured for damage, surely??? 🤔🤔😏😏 I was ganged up on and blamed. Regardless of the outcome I felt traumatised and in spite of the room being good, did not sleep at all well, like a fish out of water. Sensible advice would be to up your clientele, regardless of what walk of life and stop criminalising decent people who are using your services to try and...

We were visiting for a family event and it was very expensive for the shabby room we had (we paid an additional amount for parking and also check out after 10am - all this with no breakfast option so we had to go elsewhere for something to eat). On arrival, it wasn't clear where the car park was as the instructions are not clear on the website. Eventually found it and managed to get booked in. The booking in process was quite strange in that they pre-authorised my card in case I caused any damage, which made me feel that they were expecting trouble that night. They also took details of my driving licence, which made me feel vulnerable to some kind of fraud with so much of my personal information. Moving on to the room using the staircase the receptionist pointed out, we walked along some very tired looking corridors with lots of small sets of stairs on the way. We only found out later that there was a far more convenient staircase which would have saved us lugging our belongings such a long way! Walking into the room was like walking into a timewarp as all the furniture, furnishings and bathroom were clearly very old. Although relatively clean, the room had holes in the walls, lots of filthy marks on all the walls and mould smeared all over the bathroom ceiling above the bath (I think someone may have tried to clean it off at some stage). The windows were absolutely filthy (on the outside) and had a very strange opaque covering on them, which made the room itself feel like a prison cell. In the bathroom over the bath there was a shower dial on the wall, and I couldn't make the shower work at all, only to find out after 10 minutes that the original pipework didn't work - the "new" shower was just a bath mixer tap shower which took forever to get the temperature right. The water pressure was so low, I had to run around in the bath to get wet! Staff-wise, the initial receptionist was quite friendly, but the one in the morning looked extremely unhappy and didn't even acknowledge us. The cleaning staff may just want to start saying "good morning" if they bump into a guest as it would make a better impression. That said, we were happy with the cleanliness of the room. All in all, very overpriced for a very old and...