The Star & Garter — Hotel in Test Valley

My partner recently reviewed this hotel on the basis of their rooms & the experience with our stay, I am now leaving a further review following the most horrific, rude, discriminatory and damn right appalling dealings with management. I am now leaving this review as we have finally after weeks received the refund we had been waiting for but via Booking.com. ||||Following on from our complaint we received a very well written & dealt with response from the hotel which offered a 50% refund as gesture of goodwill & asked us to call for this. My partner & I called repeatedly, 4 times in fact because we kept being told I would need to speak to management to receive the refund but there never seemed to be management onsite… Seemed very odd to us! During these calls we kept being told ‘oh you are the person who has left a review’. We had zero clue why our review was being mentioned; yes we had left a review of our experience which was true, factual & fair. After going round & round we further spoke with Emma & later Jordon MorbyJames (who calls himself the ‘Operations Director’). During our conversations we were told a few things but I will outline some of them for context:||||We were told the review we left wasn’t fair & they were becoming unwilling to refund any money until the review was adjusted… The review was exactly our experience & It was not going to be changed but we were willing to make an adjustment to say the hotel had given a partial refund, Quid pro quo is illegal & it was becoming bribery! ||||My partner shared I had autism when the hotel questioned why we hadn’t dealt with the issues that evening. There were many reasons but one was because she was having a meltdown & just needed to get through the night so we could leave in the morning, it wasn’t in anyone’s benefit to be dealing with the matter whilst she was in this state & I spent the night calming her. She was told she had issues, the hotel acted highly discriminatory. Once she pulled them up on this she was told ‘you are putting words into my mouth’ and they tried to cover up what was said then they put the phone down on her! Just to add, the phone was slammed down on us on multiple occasions & we were told we were being aggressive also on multiple occasions, which we certainly weren’t! ||||When we got to the final stage with the hotel (we had spoken with them easily 10 times by this stage, I say spoken but the language was appalling!) I spoke to Jordon Morby to give them one last chance to issue the refund following on from the letter we received saying they would. I was called a liar & a chancer, he then told me they considered the matter closed & hung up! ||||The whole time we spoke with the hotel we were accused, questioned, quizzed, various words were said to us & we have never experienced anything quite like this||||In the end we went via our original booking with Booking.com who equally gave them ample opportunities to deal with the matter without success. They agreed the situation was appalling and were trying to resolve it. Like us, the hotel weren’t answering the phone, responding to any emails/correspondence or able to speak to a manager (history repeating itself!) We finally got our refund after battling. It was such an AWFUL experience from start to finish, which could have been dealt with far better by management following their great response to our complaint. The hotel is currently being investigated by as it would appear there are numerous issues. Please avoid, I really can’t express this anymore than I have. To add, due to the ongoing threats regarding our review, all the information contained within this are factual & correct. All calls were recorded & all statements are true either made via writing or...

My partner recently reviewed this hotel on the basis of their rooms & the experience with our stay, I am now leaving a further review following the most horrific, rude, discriminatory and damn right appalling dealings with management. I am now leaving this review as we have finally after weeks received the refund we had been waiting for but via Booking.com.

Following on from our complaint we received a very well written & dealt with response from the hotel which offered a 50% refund as gesture of goodwill & asked us to call for this. My partner & I called repeatedly, 4 times in fact because we kept being told I would need to speak to management to receive the refund but there never seemed to be management onsite… Seemed very odd to us! During these calls we kept being told ‘oh you are the person who has left a review’. We had zero clue why our review was being mentioned; yes we had left a review of our experience which was true, factual & fair. After going round & round we further spoke with Emma & later Jordon MorbyJames (who calls himself the ‘Operations Director’). During our conversations we were told a few things but I will outline some of them for context:

We were told the review we left wasn’t fair & they were becoming unwilling to refund any money until the review was adjusted… The review was exactly our experience & It was not going to be changed but we were willing to make an adjustment to say the hotel had given a partial refund, Quid pro quo is illegal & it was becoming bribery! My partner shared I had autism when the hotel questioned why we hadn’t dealt with the issues that evening. There were many reasons but one was because she was having a meltdown & just needed to get through the night so we could leave in the morning, it wasn’t in anyone’s benefit to be dealing with the matter whilst she was in this state & I spent the night calming her. She was told she had issues, the hotel acted highly discriminatory. Once she pulled them up on this she was told ‘you are putting words into my mouth’ and they tried to cover up what was said then they put the phone down on her! Just to add, the phone was slammed down on us on multiple occasions & we were told we were being aggressive also on multiple occasions, which we certainly weren’t! When we got to the final stage with the hotel (we had spoken with them easily 10 times by this stage, I say spoken but the language was appalling!) I spoke to Jordon Morby to give them one last chance to issue the refund following on from the letter we received saying they would. I was called a liar & a chancer, he then told me they considered the matter closed & hung up! The whole time we spoke with the hotel we were accused, questioned, quizzed, various words were said to us & we have never experienced anything quite like this In the end we went via our original booking with Booking.com who equally gave them ample opportunities to deal with the matter without success. They agreed the situation was appalling and were trying to resolve it. Like us, the hotel weren’t answering the phone, responding to any emails/correspondence or able to speak to a manager (history repeating itself!) We finally got our refund after battling. It was such an AWFUL experience from start to finish, which could have been dealt with far better by management following their great response to our complaint. The hotel is currently being investigated by as it would appear there are numerous issues. Please avoid, I really can’t express this anymore than I have. To add, due to the ongoing threats regarding our review, all the information contained within this are factual & correct. All calls were recorded & all statements are true either made via writing or...

Really poor staff and management attitude which really ruined this stay.

The room itself was ok. Maybe a tad dated but fine. Only real complaint was that it was a bit hot and stuffy. No aircon and the fam provided didn’t work very well. Other than that does what’s needed.

Location is great, right in the middle of town with free parking in own car park.

However numerous poor customer service issues -Had called the day before but been on hold for 15 mins with no answer before giving up (can produce phone records to show this -Had asked the receptionist in the evening if I could add breakfast. She said she could either do it now or I could add in the morning. I opted for the latter. When I asked for breakfast the next morning was told I was too late and I should have asked the night before (!). Tone was accusatory. I explained the receptionist the night before had told me I could add in the morning and was told ‘No idea why she was said that’ and that I could go and ask the staff in the restaurant and if I was lucky there might be enough for me. Would have been nice for the receptionist to try and resolve rather. The way I was told made me feel a little like it was my problem. The couple waiting in line before me sounded like they’d been double charged and could hear the receptionist telling them in a stern tone that it wasn’t their problem and they’d charged the site they’d booked on the correct amount (or similar). -There are signs everywhere threatening fines for a number of things, parking and not giving the reg, dirtying towels (£100 fine per soiled towel…), smoking in the room among other things. None of these things are unreasonable (apart from the £100 towels maybe) but with so many and the problems listed above you get feeling that you’re lucky that you’re lucky that they’ll take your money and let you stay there.

Have to say - felt like I was a school boy who’d done something wrong after the breakfast bit. Decided not to go hunting for someone to ask if I could possibly have breakfast and went elsewhere. Would say wont be staying there again, suspect I’ll have to at some point. Not looking...