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

I was thinking the same…

One thing is to take the tiny plastic bottles of cheap products and the other one is to steal the decanters.

Vintage MN!

I know, I know, I know it’s a Zombie.

But can I please comment on how having dvds and cds in hotel rooms was a thing! Now you’d just link your Netflix to the smart TV. I love it!

I wonder what titles and acts they provided.

Bridget Jones the Edge of Reason? The Holiday? Children of Men?

Keane? The Killers? Artic Monkeys? The Sugababes?

Love it.

NagBad would be ruder

Really?

A coincidence a previous poster name changed to post about feeling humiliated Stratton Hotel contacted them to say they should send the toiletries they took without consent back?

And you post an email reply where Stratton Hotel explains why guests shouldn't take them?

Aye, right.

Link: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/303601-to-take-the-body-lotion-and-soap-from-a-GBP250?postsby=mum2sons

@DownNative both threads are from 2007.

I stayed in a hotel where they had these gorgeous toiletries that they were clear were able to be used as much as we liked while there, but if we wanted to take them, we would be charged the price of the bottle which we could buy full ones at reception.
I thought it was fair, and definitely better than having to use cheap sample sachets

I know this is a zombie…BUT!!

The point isn’t that it’s not a bit CF to take full-size dispensers from a hotel (I wouldn’t do it - however the original OP claimed she took them by mistake) it’s that the ABSOLUTELY FUCKING BONKERS, downright rude and snotty as fuck response from the hotel is well out of order and v unprofessional.

The end.

I quite like a zombie thread, tis like a little window into the past!

Very weird to take large toiletry dispensers, and even more so that random mumsnetters were getting involved and emailing the hotel about something that had nothing to do with them

God yes, I’m so thick it didn’t even send up a huge red flag that it was a zombie when I read of such things as bleedin’ DVD’s and cds - lol!

Me, too!

(As long as I notice it's a zombie, and don't end up posting a lengthy rant 😂)

Im sorry but you were super cheeky to take large bottles of toiletries with you. Their email isnt snotty, its polite but to the point. If everyone took the toiletries it would cost a fortune. These aren't single use miniatures. They really shouldn't have to tell people not to steal their products!

Doh zombie!!!!

I wonder if, every few years, Stratton's get a bunch of passive aggressive emails and one star TripAdvisor reviews, 'oh no, that bloody thread on MN has risen from the grave again!' Odd it happened around Halloween.

But the response from the hotel wasn't to the original OP. It was to another mner who, based upon that thread, decided to email them. Now that's bonkers.

Perhaps some of their customers have a long way to go in honesty, removing the single use items is a different thing from removing the large bottles, I have a basket full of little bottles from all over the world but I've never removed the large, usually more expensive bottles, in the same way I've never stolen towels etc. A business has every right to seek recompense from its dishonest customers. good for them.

Haven’t read all of the responses but it wasn’t very “green” of them to make the OP post the soap and lotion back. Packaging and transport emissions would be way higher than just asking their regularly delivering supplier for an extra two.

& I would feel a bit morally dirty using soap and lotion dispensers in my room that a poor unsuspecting guest had to SEND BACK.

If they haven’t had any issues since 1996 I’m sure they could let one discretion slide.

Some people really shouldn't be in customer service.

So true. If the reusable dispensers cost £17.50 each I don't want to be covering the costs for the people who have stolen them. Why would I? Is it only people who steal hotel stuff who object to this, they are OK with the rest of us subsidising their "hobby".

Standard zombie thread warning, but...

It's not a coincidence. One MNer (in the thread you link) took the bottle and was contacted by Strattons. Over the ensuing days/weeks lots (well, several) of other MNers (including OP of this thread) contacted Strattons to ask about their policy and talked about the wording of the replies. It was a whole Thing on the Talk section for about five minutes, fifteen years ago.

I think the hotel are quite right. The policy is available on line and will be obvious to most people you can't take full size toiletries home.

Even the original person agreed it was jer error and returned she just felt embarrased.

I think it is more snotty of you to complain to them based on a mumsnet post.