We've just spent 3 nights in Reykjavik in a well known international chain hotel (I've left their name out at the moment till I get some views on this). Rooms at this hotel start at about £130/$200 USD.
Later that night I go to run a bath (about 10p.m.). The water is hot, very hot. Scalding hot. I turn it down - no difference. I turn it up - no difference. Knowing there's little they can do at that time if of night we don't report it immediately to reception - we've had a long day and will speak to them tomorrow. I run the bath, wait an hour for it to cool down to tolerable levels and have a soak. The bath and the shower use the same water system so we can't even use the shower.
We report it to reception at 8a.m. the next morning (Friday), tell them we'll be out all day so if they could have it fixed. We're not back till 8p.m. There are no notes or messages in the room saying it's sorted. We'd been at a spa all afternoon so neither of us wants a bath or shower immediately. We run the water for 20 seconds and all seems fine. Until later, my husband is too warm in the room and decides to have a cool bath. Water runs for 30 seconds and gets scalding again. This is about midnight - I'm fast asleep so there's little to be done.
We report it to reception on Saturday morning again. Again we're going to be out all day, so we ask that it be fixed. The receptionist was apologetic and said it would be sorted. We come back about 7p.m. - and can see that maintenance has been in by the grime that's been left on the side of the bath. We run the tap. Instant sauna in the bathroom. Reception comes up to check - yup we're not stupid, and can work a tap. It really is still broken.
It's now 7.45 on our last night in Reykjavik. We have to pack up everything and shift to a room across the corridor - where she's checked that the water does actually work. She specifically got us a room close by so we wouldn't have to move far. She runs up and down to get the key cards whilst we move our bags. The beds in this room are still made up as singles, but by that point we really don't care.
We've wasted enough time on this so we just dump our belongings and head out for dinner.
We're very irritated at the lack of real apology for the inconvenience. We don't understand why they didn't just shift us the first or second nights - there was plenty of spare capacity. We didn't expect to get comped for our stay or anything daft like that, but a token gesture for the inconvenience would have been appreciated eg free upgrade for our last night (as we were having to move anyway) or since our dinner plans had been upset maybe a dinner in the hotel. But nothing was offered. I can accept that things break. I don't have a problem with that, what does irk is the way the problem was handled. I still don't understand why they didn't move us the after the first night rather than fix the water with us situ, or definately after the second nights when the issue had re-occured.
We finally get back after dinner about 10:30. I go to freshen up and discover we've not actually got any towels - obviously the room wasn't meant to be occupied so there are none at all. We phone down and get some about 20 minutes later. Long bath taken!
On to the next morning - we've been down for breakfast and are back up in our new room getting our things together. Checkout is at 12 noon, but we're planning on checking out earlier and leaving our luggage in their luggage store so we can stay out in the city longer. Our airport shuttle isn't till 1:30. Housekeeping are in the corridor working on rooms around us. It's about 10:15 and I'm getting our stuff together. I hear a key being used in the door, look up and the door just opens, quite slowly and only a couple of inches but it opens. I say 'Excuse Me' and it closes immediately. Now I didn't have the Do Not Disturb sign up, but why did they a) open the door without knocking first, or calling 'housekeeping' and b) whenever I've stayed anywhere before they don't service rooms on check out day until the guest has checked out.
Interestingly enough we weren't asked if we enjoyed our stay when we checked out.
So am I right to be irked by this all?