Kingston upon Thames, Chase Lodge Hotel

Upon check in the entire balance of the stay is required. There is no cancellation policy and as soon as you complete the booking form there is very little you can do to get your money back if you need to change your booking as we did. They say they can't give your money back because they are a small hotel yet with the other breath they tell you to book quickly because they are so popular the rooms go very quickly.

I called the Chase Lodge Hotel looking for a single quaint airy room and was told that the Jane Seymour rooms was the perfect room to book. It was in the garden, so separate and very quiet with a sky light. Upon seeing the room for the first time I was devastated. The room was very small and poky and very dark. The skylight was very small and there was almost no natural light in the room. Upon further inspection the bedside light did not work (we assumed the bulb was broken), there were slats missing in the bottom of the bed, there was very little hot water and the main heating didn't work so they installed a portable heater. Outside the room was not much better as the doorway was at the end of the garden next to a ladder and all the rubbish bits they wanted to hide from the main house.

The telephones in the room only work when someone is at the desk which means there is no direct in or out dialling and when someone tried to contact us they were told rudely that the out of office line was only for medical emergencies.

We were very busy leaving early in the morning and getting back late at night and only had a chance to mention the state of the room to the girl who handled the breakfast, we didn't have a chance to mention it to reception staff. When we did politely mention it to them a few days later they said why we did not contact them sooner and how were they supposed to know all of this was wrong with the room. In fact they are, as it is their establishment! They also said that the girl we mentioned this to at breakfast didn't say anything to them.

Wouldn't stay here again....

The internet coverage implies that Chase Lodge Hotel is situated in the village of Hampton Wick, and that "it is hard to imagine, in the tranquil surroundings of Chase Lodge, that you are just a half-hour journey from Central London."

The centre of the "village of Hampton Wick" is a busy traffic laden High Street running some twenty five yards from my single glazed bedroom window. The traffic noise is constant from very early morning to very early morning. It appears as a London suburb, and has no village atmosphere, indeed no resemblance to a village whatsoever.

There is no parking exclusive to the hotel and you have to commandeer a residents parking bay if you are lucky.

The hotel is accessed by entering a key into a coded security lock on the front door.

There was no receptionist at the reception desk after 6.00pm

After watching the poor reception on the ITV channel I ventured to Wickers restaurant, accessed from within the hotel. I ordered a bottle of Stella beer which was served, without a glass, by my phone fixer.

I ordered a plain medium-rare fillet steak (tenderloin for my American cousins) with salad. The steak arrived medium but had been pan-fried in oil, not grilled. The steak had absorbed the oil and tasted of nothing else.

I returned to my room and eventually fell asleep, in spite of the traffic noise.

In the morning after showering with a first class shower, with oceans of hot water, I ordered breakfast from and was served by my phone fixer. I ordered bacon with tomatoes, as I always do when working away from home. I have certainly never been served anything like this. On a large white plate was one small cold rasher of bacon with a white encrustation. To keep it company was one small, cold, half tomato which had no skin on, and thus absorbed the same cooking oil as my steak. The coffee was excellent.

There were no single rooms available at sixty six pounds and so I was charged eighty five pounds for the use of a small double. The room only had space for a single chair, and if a couple were occupying it then one person would have to sit on the bed. There was no dressing table.

The biggest insult of all came when I arrived at my place of business in the morning. I had tried on three occasions, the previous evening, to phone the guy I was meeting, from my hotel room. I missed his mobile each time but it retained the hotel phone number within it. The matter was urgent. Imagine my disgust when he told me, at my morning meeting, that he had returned the call on two occasions, only to be told each time that the hotel staff was too busy to put through the calls. There were two diners, including myself in the restaurant at the time of the attempted calls.

The hotel appears to partly aim itself at the American tourist market naming its rooms Henry VIII etc. If you are an American reading this review, who has already visited, I can only apologise. If you haven't visited, then don't.

If you do decide to try it, my suggestion is to pay only for a shower, and a coffee, and move on.