The Windmill (Hotel) — Hotel in London

The Windmill have sent me an email asking me to do a review even if it is not positive. Sadly it is not positive, and it could have been so very different. I was going to stay at the Windmill on a Tuesday night with my two 10 year old sons after school and I had already completed pre arrival check in online. This was to be the first of 7 Tuesday nights, all booked in advance (thankfully on a fully cancellable basis) I arrived with them at reception at 5,12pm and asked to check in. There were two members of staff on reception at that time. One, who it transpired, was charming, well meaning and polite, and one who had zero idea about customer service, appeared entirely entitled, was surly and thought he was doing everyone a favour by working on reception of a pub hotel.

After I asked to check in and collect my key, the member of staff with zero concept of customer service commenced checking me in and then the phone rang and rather than put it on hold or finish checking me in (which would have taken 30 seconds) he answered the call and started chatting to the person on the other end and said that of course he could go through a whole booking on the phone and proceeded to start to take a new booking while I was standing there with two children going nowhere even though he could have finished checking us in over a matter of seconds. When I turned to his well meaning colleague and said this was incredibly unprofessional and one should not start dealing with one customer to only go ahead and take a phone call and take a whole new booking while we were waiting, the well meaning colleague apologised. The call continued for some time, and I became irritated by the lack of customer service from the member of staff, who I believe was called Luke. After I raised, once again with the well meaning staff member, that my children and I were just now waiting in limbo for the other member of staff to finish his booking phone call, the other member of staff put the call on hold and said to me "excuse me but we are doing training here, so I am now going to go back on this call and complete the booking". I said " I have 6 more bookings at this hotel for the next 6 Tuesdays and after this I am minded to cancel these bookings". He looked at me and said "thats fine go ahead and cancel them". so when he finally came of his call and we were able to get our room key, ten minutes after arriving, I asked him to cancel my 6 bookings which he duly did. When he gave us our key to room 11, he did not let us know where it was, so we had to ask other staff members we found around the pub to point us in the right direction. There was no apology from him, and he really did not strike me as someone who should be customer facing.

The room itself was ok. I had booked a double bed and a sofa bed - it was not a sofa bed, it was an armchair bed - so very thin and not wide enough to turn over during the night, but the room itself was pleasant enough.

The back door of the bathroom had a fair amount of paint peeling off, so it was a bit tired.

Room service arrived promptly with a smile, and was fine. This would have been a convenient weekly stay on a Tuesday, but Luke's behaviour sadly means we will not be going back, and not a great spend of nearly...

I don’t usually take the time to review places, but our “brunch” here for Father’s Day was just so shockingly awful, I feel if I don’t share my experience someone else will have to go through what we did!

In short: The Windmill is not for families.

Booked Sunday “Brunch” but when we arrived we were told they don’t serve brunch on Sundays, even though they specified it in their reservation confirmation. The young family seated next to us had even called that morning to confirm the brunch menu was available… and on arrival we all found out it wasn’t.

They wouldn’t seat us in a sunny booth in the area we’d specified in our booking 2 months ago (we’d seen it in reopening promo photos), as it’s an area “reserved for hotel guests only” so after saying the two low round tables they’d saved for us were unsuitable for small children, we had to sit in a dark curtained area at the back at 10.15am on a Sunday, even though it had been booked so long ago.

There was no children’s breakfast or brunch menu, or even hot chocolate on the menu, so we couldn’t order with their app, even after I’d been asked to download it.

Waited 45 minutes for the 2x hot chocolates and 50 minutes for 2 coffees.

Our food arrived after an HOUR of entertaining 2 small children in a dark room.

We ordered just one Eggs Florentine and two “dippy eggs and soldiers” for the children, so that’s all that took an HOUR to arrive. The adult main was cold and only one of the two poached eggs was runny, and the children were presented with one plate between them with two hard boiled eggs (no egg cups) and one piece of dry unbuttered toast cut into 5 pieces (to share between the two of them), followed a few minutes later by some butter which looked as if it were being reused having been taken off someone else’s table. Not dippy eggs - just useless, cold and tasteless. Not even any salt/pepper on the table, and no waiters buzzing around to ask, because…

As they use an app for all bookings there is no table service, so noone wandering around checking if people are happy. I had to keep going to the bar to speak to them. May as well have been in a cafe.

You have to pay straight after you order. This was actually a clever tactic from the restaurant, as we would probably have walked out after 10 minutes.

Absolutely rubbish, and phenomenally disappointing for...

My husband and I stayed at The Windmill for five nights. On the way up to our room, the peeling paint and water damage to the walls of the staircase already had me feeling apprehensive, and then once inside our room the sinking disappointment kicked in. The room was not clean; the shower (including the shower ceiling) was full of black mould - I went and bought something to clean the shower with so we could feel somewhat comfortable about showering in it. There was a used contact lens from a previous guest next to the sink (plenty of black mould there too), the towels had black marks all over them, as did some of the pillow cases. The carpet was covered in stains, the paint on the walls of the room and bathroom were cracked and beginning to peel in some spots, the wifi was weak and constantly dropping out. The next morning we brought these issues to the attention of reception who made a note for the cleaners to change the sheets and towels as well as vacuum the room. Regarding the mould in the shower I was told there was “nothing they could do about it”. The gentleman at reception mentioned something about a potential discount, however we checked out on a morning he wasn’t working and the person who checked us out said all he was able to offer was “an apology” about the state of the room. The photos online are most definitely of rooms that have been recently renovated - our room was not one of those rooms. The location is fine - not the most convenient as Clapham is not particularly central, but there’s quite a few nice restaurants and food options a short walk away. Overall, and mostly because of the poor hygiene of the room, it was extremely overpriced and we couldn’t...