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

They really ought not to have replied to you at all. IMO.

The hotel is missing the point.

Yes, they may have an excellent green policy, but they shouldnt expect customers to read every line of their website/brochure and deduce that soap/shampoo shouldnt be removed from the rooms.

They should make it clear, in words of one syllable, in the room.

"Please do not remove the re-fillable bottles" or something like that.

I sympathise with the embarrassment of the OP!

Re Tinkerbelle's post about being a ma and pa business - this is a family run hotel, so not that dis-similar.

I still can't believe that people bothered to email the hotel regarding something that happened to a poster on here that they don't know... if she had emailed, fine, but what on earth does it have to do with anyone else?! And surely only she should post on places like TripAdvisor.

The other point is - we charge £35 a night so people don't mind the shampoo being Sainsburys! If we were going for five star I would bulk buy in small bottles and ASK guests to take them home and also to recycle the bottles too!

I have been to hotels with proper refillable dispensers that are bolted to the walls - now THAT tells me they're premanent and not freebies. If I went to a posh hotel and found posh toiletries, even if full-size, I would assume they were a lovely freebie. Plus if people do take towels and ashtrays, a LOT of people must take these bottles - mostly in complete innocence I would have thought.

Thay are daft. And deserve the publicity they're getting on here.

Yeah Snowleopard, we'd nail down anything remotely covetable just in case too!

I probably wouldn't have taken these dispensers, to be fair

Do you need a screw driver to remove those dispensers? Agree about the point that if they are attached to the wall they are unlikely to be considered as a souvenir.

But, sadly... this has become the most expensive dispenser ever, wonder how much bad publicity this incident has brought it would have been cheaper to replace the dispensers and add a note to the side

OP here
The dispensers I took were not attached to anything. They were just by the bath and by the sink and plastic! I really really thought they were ours!I actually thought how nice that they didnt have the crappy small ones that you usually take (or is that theft as well??? I always ask DH to bring those home for me when he stays anywhere posh)
I have sent them back now so hopefully I wont be going to hell for my sins.

I think htey have been really stupid and have completely ruined your memory of the trip. You have a right to be pissed off but I think you should put it behind you foget about it and just think that they overreacted - which they did.

I really feel for you having a lovely experience marred by these events.

Mum2sons, I wouldn't be embarrased for that, as long as you have not take the fittings they do not have a leg to stand on. I think all this thread is mostly an outrage to the hotel reaction rather than a go at you.

If one is to blame is the hotel.

I'm looking at their yet unsullied Twitter page and licking my chops like a dog near an unattended butchers shop.....

ummmm this thread is from 2007!

Necroposting at its finest.

Ha ha!! My necroposting virginity has been lost!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/303601-to-take-the-body-lotion-and-soap-from-a-GBP250?page=10

As this is from 2007, the OP has probably served her time and been released.

A link to the original thread would have helped, OP. But I’m guessing you have been stealing things that obviously weren’t intended to be complimentary from a hotel room? The letter from the hotel manager seems completely reasonable to me. Good on them for their green credentials.

ZOMBIE

Why did you resurrect this?

Because it's the sequel to the other one that got resurrected.

Places like this usually fix the dispensers to the wall.

Someone please make it stop. I have no desire to go back to 2007, I'd have to get up and do the school run, for one.
I'm not sure we needed the first one again let alone the sequel.

2008 was better than 2007, but if I could go back, I would be happy to wait.

This adds some context. So it's not like you too the miniatures that everyone else takes, as hotels expect, you actually took the full size refillable!

If we're firing up the DeLorean then 1985 would be a good shout for me.

We did this is closure for me so thank you op.

I do like to take toiletries home from hotels. Handy for swimming. I’m not sure I’d of taken full size ones though. Malmaison used to do generous half sized ones 125ml and a note to say please take them home.