Review of Great Victoria Hotel 4*

I stayed at this hotel on a business visit to Bradford. It was the worst experience I have had in any hotel. From I entered until I left, it was disappointing. I arrived at night after having travelled several hours so I was exhausted. The man on duty at the desk requested that I paid for my stay before I would get a key to my room. I told him that my company had already paid (which they had) and he should check his records. He did a very cursory check and told me that, no, there was no record of payment having been made. I had to pay these funds from my personal account which I was not expecting. As it was after work hours, I couldn’t call my company to get them to speak with this man and to confirm to him that it had been paid. So far so bad… I got to my room, and settled down to what I hoped would be a restful sleep. Instead, I heard every vehicle that passed the hotel, every move the person above my room made, and in the morning, every alarm and every kettle that boiled! Horrendous! For the entire time at this hotel my sleep was practically non-existent. Worse was to come. My company had only booked me for 3 nights (which was the charge that was taken from my card) and needed to pay for a fourth night. They called the hotel and duly advised them to charge another night on the company’s card that they had left the details with the hotel. Instead, the hotel AGAIN charged MY personal card instead! This although they had by now apologised for changing me for the three nights my company had already paid for and having refunded that to my card. The fact is that they then had no reason to have retained my card details because they already had those of my company’s! This was simply awful. I ordered food on evening number 1. There was a deal where the meal should have cost according to their documents I believe £21. This turned into £30.00! When I complained the manageress advised that this £21.00 was only for a certain period, despite my having been also advised of the cost being £21.00 by the staff in the restaurant. As she spoke, one member of staff at the desk told her that she wasn’t aware that this was only for a particular period and neither were the other staff members, so maybe the manageress should tell the staff. By the way, the manageress was a superficial complaints handler, one who appeared to hear nothing of what I was complaining about much less to care too much about how my stay was affected. Poor. Now to the food! I wish there was facility on this page to show you the bowl of OIL that my meal was drowned in! Absolutely appalling! The noise from the street and from the other rooms made for a lack of or extremely poor quality sleep. The comedy of errors and poor customer service response would have made this rating a zero, had that been possible.