A couple of weekends ago, Sam and I stayed at the Park Plaza Riverbank, a nice modern 4-star hotel in London, by the Thames, just a bit upstream from the Houses of Parliament.

We booked from LastMinute.com and got a double room for a mere £93 for the night. I completed the field for special requirements to advise that we cannot have feather pillows or bedding. When we arrived, with no prompting, we were told that feather pillows had been removed. What’s more we’d been upgraded to a river-view room - priced at somewhere around £350 a night, I later noticed. Result!

There was a special offer on breakfast of £25 for two that we later took up on - a good saving on the £17.50 standard price.

When we returned to the room after my friend’s 50th birthday party, we found that the pillows on the bed were all feather. Just what you need when it’s well gone midnight and all you want to do is crash.

One phone call to the desk resulted in a promise to sort things out. But no more than an empty promise.

I had to call a second time. This time, a few minutes later, a maid turned up with yet more feather pillows and had to go away again, only to return with three pillows instead of four. We gave up. We desperately needed sleep.

Next morning, breakfast proved OK, but disappointing. Not a huge amount of choice, average-at-best quality ingredients, amateurishly-cooked full-English and staff bumbling around ineffectually.

When we booked out we informed the guy behind the desk how disappointed we were at the mess-up over the pillows and were told the Customer Services Manager would be in touch with us. No offer of reducing our bill was made.

And, you’ve guessed it by, now haven’t you? We haven’t heard from the Customer Services Manager.

This hotel has pretensions. It tries to be trendy, but the service and processes aren’t up to its 4-star claims. At around £100 a night from Lastminute, it’s OK if you’re happy for your wishes to be ignored and don’t have high expectations for breakfast. At full price, it’s pitiful.

We shan’t be returning. And will be putting Park Plaza Hotels at the bottom of our shopping list when looking for somewhere to stay.

Tags: hotel, poor_customer_service, pretensions, bumbling