The Greyhound Inn — Restaurant in England

Felt had to do this review as soon as possible after a dreadful stay overnight at the Greyhound Inn last weekend. I’ve been using this hotel on and off for some years as my daughter lives locally in Chalfont St Peter so handy for visiting her. It’s always been a bit of a hit and miss experience as the hotel has changed ownership a few times with some stays better than others. I was pleasantly surprised on a previous stay in December 2024 as the ownership had changed hands yet again and there was a lovely new Manager in charge. I had booked the large dulux double room. I was also advised that the room rate now included a full English breakfast. It had previously been continental breakfast with option to pay extra for the full breakfast. The new Manager made a point of coming up to everybody to ask how their breakfast was and the impression I got was that he was trying to improve the very negative impression the pub had. In fact most locals only use the pub as a last resort as it had a bad reputation for poor food and rude and uncaring staff. I was therefore looking forward to another overnight stay in January 2025. However turned out to the worst stay in the Greyhound Inn to date. I had booked through booking.com as usual and again selected the Dulux Room with breakfast included. We went to check in at 3.00 pm at the bar. The first member of staff didn’t seem able to grasp we were trying to check in so went off to get another member of staff called Dillon who was very pleasant but it was obvious there was a problem. It turned out from Dillion’s explanation that the Dulux room was not in use as it was closed for maintenance. I queried why we had no warning and why we had to find this out only when we had arrived to check in and Dilllion said he would go and get the Manager. As the Manager had been very accommodating on my last visit six weeks previously I wasn’t expecting any difficulties. Dillion came back and said the Manager wasn’t available but he had been told that the only way forward was I would have to cancel my booking via booking.com and then rebook again for the overnight stay. As there is usually a cut off point that can have free cancellation with booking.com and we were on the actual day of the stay I was wary I would even be able to cancel and pointed out it wasn’t my fault but the Greyhound Inn for not advising me earlier. Dillon looked very uncomfortable but stressed there was nothing else he could do. It also posed the question that if they hadn’t had availability to rebook we would have been left out of pocket for a room we had booked that was not available and without any booking at all. After rebooking on booking.com a standard double room we had another nasty surprise as I was advised by Dillon that there was no option for any breakfast at all as they had stopped doing breakfasts and the room rate was for room only. This was not mentioned by Dillon before I rebooked and as I know the standard rooms are quite small and definitely not worth the price charged for just a room without breakfast at all I was annoyed to say the least! Dillon said that to honour the original booking they could knock £30 off an evening meal. I said this was no good to us as we already had arrangements for a family get together at my daughter’s house. Imagine my surprise whilst we were talking with Dillon as someone came into the pub to make enquiries about an 80th birthday party with 20 people and suddenly the Manager appeared from nowhere to duscuss this with the customer. Couldn’t be bothered to discuss in person his mess up with our booking but was smarmy and full of charm for a potential expensive booking! It was also not the same nice manager that had been there only 6 weeks previously. Dillon didn’t give any explanation apart from to say the previous Manager no longer worked there. I did mention to Dillon that I was not impressed by the lack of customer service displayed by the Manager fobbing us off with Dillion having to give the bad news. Things got even worse after this. The double room was even smaller than other rooms I have stayed in in the pub. The bathroom was so small that the bathrrom sink had to be out in the bedroom and the bathroom door handle was so loose it nearly came off in your hand so could have been locked in the bathroom without any means if getting out! The two entrances down to the bar from upstairs were both trip hazards and proberly breaking fire safety regulations. The one entrance had bags of laundry on the stairs nearly blocking the stairwell and the other entrance down to bar at the back of the pub had planks propped up on breeze blocks up to the stairs which were very wobbly to access. I have taken pictures and will be forwarding these on to the relevant authorities to do a spot fire check if that is possible. We were also not told what the check out arrangements would be. Check out was by 11.00 am. We left our room at 10.00 am and tried to go downstairs to find the door into the bar locked. We had to go back up the stairs with our luggage and down the back staircase. We then found a barrier across that door into the bar. We moved that to get into the bar area to find no any member of staff around at all. I left the room key on the bar counter and we tried to use the main entrance to leave to find that locked as well. That meant as far as we could see we were locked in with nobody to ask how we could get out! As we were pondering what on earth to do i heard a sound from the ladies toilet to find a cleaner in there who appeared to be the only staff member in the building. I asked her how we could leave but she didn’t appear to speak or understand any english. However seeing our luggage she appeared to understand we wanted to leave and showed me we had to leave through the emergency exit. None of this had been explained to us the day before. The whole negative experience had finely put me off booking at the Greyhound Inn in future as it’s a complete shambles of a place and the worse Managerment I have seen there in all the times I have visited and that is saying something. The current new Manager needs to be sent on a retraining programme to learn good customer service and deal with mess up’s himself and not pass it off on your poor staff member. As they have had a change if Managers in quick succession perhaps this latest one wouldn’t be there long either.||||There is a very active community website in Chalfont St Peter which as mentioned previous has a poor feedback for using this pub and will be interested I expect from my experience that nothing has changed under new ownership. It’s a real pity as the pub is over 200 years old is pretty in the downstairs areas and is very central for parking up the car and walking to my daughter’s house in the village. I’m now in the position for any future bookings that I can’t trust them the booking will be honoured from my recent experience . I don’t want to be in the same position again in future so will have to consider using the next available accommodation across the road in the George Inn or the Ethorpe Hotel in nearly Gerrards Cross which means using the car but has an...

We booked out 8 of the 12 rooms for family to stay at the night before a funeral, which included the children and sister of the deceased. We arrived before check-in to add an additional night for three of the rooms. The gentleman at the laptop seemed to struggle to do this and handed over to a very pleasant young woman. We then found out that he was one of the managers who went onto the bar to shout loudly that it was his day off and he shouldn’t have to be there and have to deal with stuff like this. I haven’t added any of the very bad language that punctuated this outburst. There were diners eating in the bar. Not exactly the welcome we were expecting. Naturally we decided to get lunch elsewhere.|Check-in was easy - we had the young woman again, who was efficient and friendly. We came down later that evening to meet other family for drinks - we did think about going elsewhere, but as we had family travelling from all over and arriving at different times we thought it would be easier to stay put.|Some of us ate - mainly burgers, scampi and sausage and mash - all perfectly fine but nothing to write home about. |We were warned that last orders were at 10.30pm but were quite coldly ushered to bed at 11pm by a different manager with one of the party being told that we were not to make too much noise! I can assure you this was totally unnecessary and quite frankly rude!|The continental breakfast the next day was fairly woeful - sliced bread, a choice of 3 cereals and croissants. I ordered and was charged £10.95 for scrambled egg, bacon and sliced wholemeal toast. I must say that the young man with long dark hair serving us was attentive and charming.|As we were waiting for the cars to collect us to take us to the church several of us were asked to check out - even though it had been confirmed that we had the rooms for an additional night. Eventually we were able to speak to the manager on the phone and it was sorted. You can imagine how distressing this was for us and as a manager of a boutique, family run hotel, I find it very strange that a manager was not on site at all times.|At 8am the next day I phoned reception to see if I could extend our check out as myself and my partner were feeling very unwell - we have since found out we have covid, but was informed that this was not possible. Again as a manager of a hotel I know that there is always wriggle room of at least an hour as housekeeping can leave a room to last. When I suggested this, the person refused. I then asked if we could book in for another night, but was told the hotel was fully booked and they hung up.|I checked on booking.com and could see there were 2 rooms available - I called back and said I would like to take one. After much negotiation we were eventually allowed to stay in the room that our niece was checking out of.|I feel that the owners of the hotel really need to look at the team managing this hotel - they continually made us feel that we were an inconvenience, seem to have no customer service training whatsoever and are clearly unhappy in their jobs. |I am aware that the management team may come back to say we were demanding, rude and unreasonable - we were not. | After this very long winded account of our stay, I feel that I must end on some positive notes - the building itself is gorgeous, with lots of original features. The beds are very, very comfortable and the pillows were amazing. The young woman and the young man with long dark hair were both efficient, charming and friendly - maybe they should be...

Usually, I would take some time to set the scene as to how and why we came to visit a given venue; in this case, I cannot be bothered because the excuse for a hotel, otherwise known as The Greyhound Inn, is simply not worth the time.||So, we needed two rooms (£85 per room, per night), including a 'Continental' breakfast (more on this disaster later).||The hotel didn't offer a single occupancy rate or have triple rooms, so we had to pay full price for one person.||We arrived in time for the evening service (they stop serving at 9pm) and ordered drinks whilst we perused the menu, which on paper, looked appealing.||My wife ordered fish and chip; me and our youngest son ordered pizzas with a side of fries and onion rings, which we shared.||The miserably small pizzas were very average; 9 inches at best and very chewy pizza bases. The fries were fine, as were the onion rings, but if you get those wrong you really shouldn't be in the hospitality arena.||My wife's fish and chips were the worst she has ever had. The battered fish was well over-cooked and the grey-colour fish looked very unappealing. The chips, again, were fine as were the garden peas.||During our stay we found out that the venue has had various owners in recent years and it regularly suffers from flooding (there was a residual smell of damp due to relatively recent flood damage). The Greyhound is on the market, but whoever buys it will need deep pockets, because it wasn't just the evening meals that were disappointing.||In the rooms there were smart TVs, but you had to log in to your own BBC account in order to watch BBC channels; the same went for the other terrestrial channels.||The showers in both rooms were appalling; a drizzle of water came out of the showers and were a complete waste of time. I questioned this at breakfast and was told that it was because the building was so old. ||Utter rot; clearly, the water system needs upgrading, but no one has bitten that particular bullet.||I have been to hotels that are hundreds of years old and I have never been in such a situation when turning on the shower.||The final insult was breakfast.||A lacklustre presentation of a few crumpets, pre-cooked 'American' pancakes and the cheapest white sliced bread. There were tall jars of cereals, some fruit that had been in a fridge overnight (who puts apples and bananas in a fridge?) and small jars of jam.||So far, not very 'Continental'. ||The morning staff eventually did bring out some warmed croissants, but it was too late to salvage the experience.||This venue has all the foundations to be a great place, but the next owner will need deep pockets to work very hard to rescue what could. be a gem.||As it is, my advice is this: avoid,...