Sexual assault during hotel stay

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Myself and 3 friends booked a spa night at a popular hotel on the Wirral.
A drugged up strange man broke into one of the rooms during the night and got into a bed with one of the young ladies and sexually assaulted her, we were subsequently all traumatised and extremely upset. We were up with police most of the night giving statements, the doors on the rooms were different and one automatically locked, so we’ve assumed the other did - it didn’t as it wasn’t a fire door. We spent most of the time in the bigger room (with the fire door) getting ready etc as a group so had gotten used to the door slamming locked.
Anyway, during the night and next morning the reception assured us both rooms would be free of charge. We had already paid for lunch, dinner and drinks as and when purchasing. We spent a considerable amount in the short amount of time we were there.
Then as the lead guest on the booking I contacted the hotel the following Monday to ask guest relations to call me - I just wanted to clarify - as directed by reception staff - whether there was a key card used to enter the room or if the door was faulty, I didn’t put any information within the email; just that I would like management to give me a call.
I got a rude email back, not asking about the welfare of the assaulted party or other traumatised guests but demanding payment for the rooms - the ones we had been told were free of charge.
I then get further threats of taking me to a debt collection agency and pay the bill in full for both rooms.
Now 7 months down the line I get an email from
TripAdvisor asking for a review, I post a review stating what happened and how the management l/guest relations have responded and treated us and the management have said it’s completely inaccurate and they’ve only asked for payment for food and drinks! I’m absolutely raging! I’ve tried to edit my review to include the screenshots of emails stating the exact amount in question is for the 2 rooms but it won’t let me edit my review, I’ve then tried to post another review to back up the initial review and it’s only bringing my camera roll up to post from earlier today, I’ve deleted and redownloaded the app etc to no avail - I can’t get them posted to back up my version of events

isnt there som sort of rule that hotel rooms have to automatially lock
so sorry for your frien hope shes ok

Although the police have been great in terms of investigating and putting a case together for my friend to get justice, their communication is lacking. She’s had CPS letters confirming he’s been charged and about court but the section where it’s meant to say what the charge is is blank and my friend has tried to clarify that to no avail. I think it’s likely sexual assault and threats to kill?
They’re using that as an excuse but how could just not mentioning payment for 2 rooms that were previously offered for free affect a court case. They could’ve simply not mentioned it. I think they think they’re admitting liability by not charging us, because in the grand scale of things £267 won’t break the bank for them. We spent upwards of £600 whilst there on various meals, snacks and drinks! They sometimes have 2 weddings a day. But even then as a guest relations manager if you’d been advised by the hotel legal team not to waiver the charge you’d still be nice to the guests and maybe arrange flowers and/or a voucher to come back. But anyway; the gripe isn’t even the money, it’s the treatment since and the lies on the TA review from Geoff.

The third sentence of OP’s first post.

“We were up with police most of the night giving statements…”

Third sentence “We were up with police most of the night giving statements…”

Geoff is a lose cannon. He writes obvious shite when the hotel is criticised. He needs to be introduced to the concept of truth and professionally addressing his guests concerns.

OP you could try reporting the hotel’s response as “inappropriate” on Trip Advisor. If there’s no button in the app, then log in to the website instead. I don’t know if the link is on every response when you read the reviews normally, but it should be if you find it via your profile and all the reviews you’ve written. The link should give you a box to say why it’s inappropriate so you can explain and offer to send them the emails as evidence. Hopefully Trip Advisor will as you for the evidence and take the response down, though I don’t if they are that proactive or bothered about playing judge in these sorts of disputes.

I’m so sorry for your friend and hope she is able to move on and that the court case goes well.

By me that. Thanks for the post as was considering going there for spa break with my partner.

As for trip advisor I really agree with you putting it all on there as it is a warning to other female guests. I can't reiterate enough how valuable that info is.

I'm absolutely disgusted with their response. I'm surprised it's not appeared in the Echo. Might do once the case is heard at trial maybe.

I really hope your friend is recovering and will get justice for what's happened.

I hope you are all OK.

The reply of the manager is disgusting when considering this is in regard to a complaint centred around a sexual assault. I hope this blows up and ends up in the paper. I’d be shocked if he kept his job.

Just read it.

Well Geoff needs to do one. What an awful human.

Totally totally shocked by his reaction.

I think I would make it my mission to force the hotel to change the door locks in every room to be self-locking so this could never happen again. I would plague Geoff the GM and the director/owner every day until it happened, and I would write press releases and first person accounts about your experience for local papers, radio, TV and trading standards, and basically anyone who will stand still long enough to listen, until they confirm publicly that your request has been acted on. This is a fucking awful public safety and VAWG issue and anyone nitpicking on here should be ashamed of themselves too. Your poor friend.

Everyone should put in Thorntons insta posts female guests check trip advisor

I like the idea of the google review. The hotel looks bad with their response to you - it doesn’t look like you’re lying, please don’t worry.

I would complain and also charge back with the card company / section 75 as they have acted beyond poorly. I would also talk to the local press once the verdict is in. There are reporters who are members of the Neston and Parkgate fb groups so it won’t be hard to engage them.

I am really sorry Your friend has gone through this. I hope that they are doing okay

They may be worrying now that if they comp the rooms it will be seen as an admission of guilt if the door was faulty.

My first thought was that the person who offered to comp the rooms forgot to pass on the message or update the system. There may be some plan in this, but I’d bet on it being old-fashioned incompetence.

Geoff sounds like an arse and the hotel seems to dislike having guests to stay so who knows.

After some googling, I found a news article, and it's apparent that this same hotel had ANOTHER sexual assault case occur by a guest 😐 this was back in 2014.

Regardless, this is appalling and I hope your friend is okay.

Time to walk away. You won’t gain anything from this battle.

Tbh - having read the managers response, it massively would put me off that hotel even more than your review. You can always judge a company by the way they handle things when it all goes wrong. His rude, unprofessional response is disgraceful. He has shot himself in the foot in my view 😂

Id be incensed and would be carefully putting up factual reviews on as many sites as I could.

I got conned by Booking dot con last month. Totally ignored by Booking - my bank have sorted it out. Not a lot of money - £95, but the annoyance and sense of injustice has made me review literally everywhere I can to put off as many people as I can. Trustpilot is good for venting reviews 😂

Hope your friend is ok 💐

Jesus Christ.

Never mind…

Geoff responds with the same pompous manner to a post complaining about soggy vegan sandwiches as he does to a guest whose party experienced sexual assault. Quite frankly the least they could have done was cover your food too. That doesn’t need to be an admission of guilt. Just basic human decency.

It’s unbelievable isn’t it. Someone could tell the most horrific story in the world with some minor detail about what they were eating and posters on here would be like “do you always have takeaways?” So bloody pedantic.

One poster the other day described her boyfriend hiding in the under stairs cupboard during a house party because he didn’t like her friends. Another poster completely ignored his weird behaviour and said “was he not allowed to have his own friends there??”. Constant blaming of others, it’s tiresome.

I hope that you are all recovering, and the horrible man is going to prison for his actions. As someone else mentioned Trustpilot sometimes works well for reviews/getting action. I had an issue with a very large insurance company, went in circles for months, wrote one trustpilot review and head office immediately sorted it and cut out the incompetent middle guys. What utter twattish behaviour on the part of the hotel though. I hope they see this and realise they made a very big mistake.

I see the TripAdvisor response and it has an option to “mark response as inappropriate”. Wonder what would happen if people clicked on that option and reported the responder for victim blaming?

Do you have it in writing that they will not be charging you for x,y and z? If so, I would totally ignore them.

In terms of the trip advisor- get your other friends to write one too (not the victim unless they want to)

What was the man charged with? I work in a court and can help you.

I've seen a few posts about men getting into women's rooms recently. It's disgusting men do these things but to have so many hotels failing basics in safety is depressing. You absolutely are not unreasonable op.

I don’t want to be THAT person, because I’m totally on board with all your concerns but I just want to say that if there is any chance that this can be traced back to a particular legal case, is there not a risk that it could prejudice any hearing / trial? Particularly now that you’ve named the hotel and people have found your review. I’m sure someone else will be able to either confirm or tell me I’m talking bollocks.