EMAIL REPLY FROM SNOTTY STRATTONS HOTEL - Soap and Lotion debacle

[NadineBaggott]

Dear XXXXX

Thank you for your e-mail.

It is always worth bearing in mind that whilst website reviews can be useful they can also be misleading and only give one side of a story.

Strattons is well publicised for its strong green policies for which it has won many awards both locally and nationally. We offer a luxury experience without sacrifice to the environment - something that we pride ourselves on and have worked for 17 years to create. We have stuck to a comprehensive environmental policy since our doors first opened in 1990, it is now a hot topic in the media and Strattons has been used as a leading example for the last few years and regularly features in the glossy magazines and broadsheets.

We have been using refillable dispensers since 1996 and have never encounted a problem with them.

Our website explains our toiletries, a refillable dispenser with fantastic products. We offer 6 x 250ml dispensers in each bedroom (no soap bars) each costing £17.50 each - £105 per room. If every guest took away the dispensers we would have to increase the room rate or decrease the quality of product, I am sure no hotel could justify £100 of a room rate only covering the toiletries.

'Luxury bathroom miniatures have been replaced with refillable pump dispensers helping to reduce plastic bottles to landfill by 97%, instead one excellent product that can be used as shampoo, bath foam or shower gel, manufactured by a company which does not test on animals and has their own environmental ethics which re-endorses Strattons own position.'

Our hotel also offers an extensive DVD and CD collection for borrowing, would you expect to take these items as part of the room rate? or even the towels from the bathroom?

We appreciate that our hotel is not to everyone's taste. However we do not hide our policies and have been successful because of them.

Kind regards

Hannah Scott
Manager

guest rather paradoxically perhaps thought it was ok

hotel has never had a guest take them before

so slightly ott reaction to write and ask for them back..it's not as if they were making apoint which would be an example to other guests in future

so both slightly strange behaviours

They claim the bottles cost them £17.50 when you can buy them RETAIL for £14.00

I live 2 mins walk from strattons.I'll stick my tongue out for you when i next walk past

I have still not had an e-mail, I am off to change my deodorant.

Uh...were these plastic bottles or something a bit more upmarket?

Colour me a bit confused!

Sophiewd, perhaps the flannels have embarrassing stains?!

now IO've done some more research if i had a hotel i would have fixed dispensers

small bottles are\ theres to take but would not expect them to take lager ones with dispensers. good point about flannels

Aloha - I'm reading it that the hotel is objecting to the dispensers going, not the products therein (which presumably are to be used). So the analogy is not the cheese cubes, but instead someone taking the cheeseboard as well. Likewise the soap may cost £14 per bottle (and probably a lot less), but the actual dispensers may cost more, especially if they are going with a room theme.

God, they are bonkers writing an email like that, how totally stupid and un customer friendly! Please OP, post a review on tripadvisor and Laterooms, seriously, people will want to know.

ah I think I may be misleading a few folk

I am not the Stratton guest who fancied some soap and lotion.

I am a mumsnetter annoyed by the hotel's stance on the matter and emailed them accordingly.

expat got the same reply

they can't even be bothered to make a reply personal

Oh I know you're not NadBag, they're still mad imo!

NadBag sounds rather rude

or is it me

Ladymuck, the dispensers ARE just plastic bottles! The whole caboodle costs £14 retail. The bottles & contents cannot possibly cost the hotel more than about £5 wholesale. I found that the bottles and pump dispensers cost hotels £2, actually. The OP spend over £500 at the hotel, and was planning to go back.
Not now, obviously.

I think I will write. I honestly could not fault the hotel, we had such a lovely time. I am just astounded at this and truly have felt humiliated. I am after all a girl who when seeing someone had dropped a tenner in threshers once, handed it in in case the person came back! (Crazy but true!)
As I said before, if I was normally a thieving burgling shoplifter, I wouldnt have minded. In fact such a letter may have made me proud of my thieving ways! But I am quite an honest person, that is why I am upset

And quite true, if I had been some A lister would I have recieved such a request for return of soap?

ROFPMPL at nadbag!!

nadbag - what a name

I don't see why that's so odd when peanut packets tell you they contain nuts

I shall be thinking of this when \i watch hotel babylon with renewed eyes later

just read all this! The OP of the other thread should have emptied them out and re-filled with tesco value soap. Blimey

Aloha- OK - they looked more solid from the photos, but I haven't stayed at the hotel. Mind you the rack rate for the suites is only £200 per night, so op was ripped off in the first place.

I haven't read right to the end but I run a residential recording studio - so we have musos staying all the time and if you think you and your DH can create mess.....ha you have a lot to learn.

But they don't nick stuff because they know it's a mum-and-pop business and they meet us both and it's like nicking stuff from your mates.

Big anonymous hotels though. Well it's expected in a way - normally written into the rack rate that there will be some shrinkage. I'm not saying stash the coffeemaker in your bag but god, I don't own a pencil that hasn't come from a Sheraton! (My pens come from Barclays bank!)

In terms of the DVDS/CDs debate that is also utter bollocks. I'm a Starwood Preferred Guest (ie I stay in Westins and Sheratons enough for them to remember that I like skimmed milk in my tea) and they have a sleep hypnosis and music on CDs programme that they INVITE you to take home with you. Probably has sinister marketing messages on but their point about not nicking the CDs is rubbish IMHO.

They should put up a sign and charge your card if you take stuff.

But personally I would have sent a note back saying 'sorry, we mingled the toiletries (both the ones we took and the ones we left) with our love juices and we are waiting to be tested for pubic lice before we return them.

NadBag (I lurve that handle!), I 2nd the recommendation to put the correspondence up on Trip Advisor or some such website. Personally, I wouldn't have bagged a whole dispenser full of stuff but FFS - their attitude is a bit skewiff. Asking for it BACK? I'd have gobbed in it and would have included a note saying that I didn't realise how hard-up they were.