To take the body lotion and soap from a £250 a night hotel? They have asked for it back!!!

[mum2sons]

DH and I spent our wedding anniversary in a v expensive boutique hotel. I took the body lotion and soap home as I usually would do (sad, but I get v excited about these things!)Yesterday we received a letter from the hotel asking for us to send the 2 items back for the future enjoyment of guests!!! Talk about humiliation! Looking forward to MNetters views

perhaps there's a tracker device in the bottom of the bottle?

just told dp this story and he said

she is lucky they didn't call the police

and i said really

and he said yes it's theft

I was just saying on the other thread, the OP should have emptied them out and replaced with Tesco value soap etc.

My DP felt the same zippi. Said they could be arrested and was keen to know it had been sent back! I was quite really. Seems an over reaction somehow.

well she'd be an easy target for their targets (and I say that as an ex-officer's wife)

what a terrible waste of police time and money that would be

Maybe you should have spoken to a solicitor, sending them back could be seen as an admission of guilt if they're in a book throwing mood

Just skimmed the thread but I feel I'm in a huge minority here... you shouldn't have taken them, their asking for them back was NOT a heinous crime, giving the name of the hotel and encouraging an email campaign was childish, and I'm not surprised they are sending back snotty replies if they have been bombarded with emails today.

Did you actually enjoy your time at the hotel, or did you loathe it so much you want to put loads of other people off?

mum2sons, may I ask (and apols if you have already posted this), what was the actual text of their letter?

hi, welcome to the League of Sane People Who Think Stealing Is Wrong. as you spotted, it's a select group... [baffled]

well aitch I think thats a little unfair.

Have you ever taken a pen from work? and envelope? a sachet of sauce from a cafe? you catch my drift?

but anyway my beef (ha!) is them actually taking the time out to write a letter to ask for it back! that's pretty sad

well as it happens, because i work from home i've never come up against the first two examples and i'd sooner eat my own face than a sachet of sauce (except perhaps tartare...) so i kinda don't catch your drift, tbh.
i know that the OP has said that she didn't think it was stealing but she sure as hell didn't think it was above board. and i think the responses here have been really shocking.
i think that the hotel should have left it, from a public relations POV it's not good, but to intimate that because it's a business that it's okay to nick things is just weird imho. but maybe that comes from being self-employed, i don't know...

Hotel in Melbourne had it's very nice products in pump dispensers on walls, that way if you have travel bottles you can nick the contents, but you leave the pumps.

They either need to make it clear (fine to use the green angle) or screw the bloody things down.

It's not theft.

For it to be theft, she would have to intend to deprive the rightful owner of the goods or the value of the goods.

She thought she had paid for them.

SO no intent to deprive.

crapola, eemie.

Taking hotel toiletries is not stealing!!! (well, not normally)

Taking the bedlinen and towels would be stealing - as has been repeatedly pointed out, here and on the other thread, you are normally assumed by the hotel to be going to take the toiletries home (and if you don't they will be chucked anyway).

This hotel should have spelled out that it does things differently.

unless she will swear an oath to the effect that she would have wrapped them up and taken them had the manager of the hotel been standing in her room while she was packing, i think that it's theft. if she says otherwise then i will readily concede that she did not think that she was doing somethign dodgy.

taking the single use or sample size toiletries is not stealing, definitely. taking a set of 250ml pump dispensers is. and the hotel clearly thinks so.

let me try this one on you aitch

have you ever eaten a grape from a supermarket?

without paying for it?

an unwashed grape? yeuch.

I don't follow that logic - you're taking toiletries provided by the hotel whichever way you call it.

It's a crappy plastic dispenser same as you'd get from any supermarket

particularly since my friend, who works with people with mental health issues, told me that one of her clients used to take her hamster to the supermarket and let it into the fruit section to 'get a wee nibble'.

quoi?

the logic is easy-peasy. you can quite clearly see that one is refillable and large and you can see that the others are single-use. if in doubt, you could ask the chambermaid, they'll soon tell you if it will get them into trouble or not.
if the OP will attest to the fact that she would have taken them under the nose of the manager, then we do not have a problem imho. but no, i wouldn't take something that i didn't have to break a seal on, iykwim.