geedee

Member
Feb 1, 2014
686
1
16
Sydney
THE PLACE IS THE CRAGS HOTEL IN SCOTLAND THE GUY HAS LOTS OF BRILLIANT RESPONSES

Customer review
DREADFUL”
1 of 5 bubbles Reviewed 16 July 2015 via mobile

We had a voucher for this hotel,we could never get a booking for it despite several tries,we eventually got a booking for the 15th of July for a two night stay but had to forfeit the evening meal on the first night,which we felt was reasonable as the voucher had lapsed by this time but we needed to pay an extra £21.
We arrived to be given room 7 at the back of the hotel next to an open fire escape,with a caravan parked at the back,the bedroom was dark,dreary,dull and old fashioned and extremely unwelcoming, you could not see out of the window as there was a huge bush blocking the view out of the only window,which was probably a blessing as it was the car park. The car park was so over grown we decided to park on the main road as it looked unsafe, we should have taken that as a sign.
We left almost immediately as they could not give us another room.
We know that vouchers don't always guarantee the best rooms,but, if you want return guests,at least offer a decent room. I would be embarrassed to image foreign visitors being offered this room for a stay,but apparently the hotel was full.WONT be going back,lesson learned .
Stayed July 2015, travelled as a couple
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OWNER RESPONSE

HapsterChapster9, Owner at Crags Hotel, responded to this review, 1 August 2015
Shortly after reading your review I was reminded of a quote… ‘I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth’.

It was Hamlet who spoke these words. I don’t know why he wasn’t feeling mirthful… the Danish have always struck me as surprisingly chipper. Perhaps he had been forced to watch the entire first series of ‘The Killing’! Or maybe he had been browsing various reviews posted about Denmark… things like, “Denmark! Probably the worst country in the world! Won’t be returning here… overly inflated sense of self worth… particular in areas of bacon, beer and TV crime series!”

Comments of this nature are bound to play havoc with ones ‘mirth levels’!

Like the Prince of Denmark, I too have suffered something of a depreciation in the value of my ‘mirth portfolio’! but unlike Hamlet… I am very clear on the causes of my ire! and it is on those causes that I propose to be tough!

Before I address the points raised in your review I would just like to make a small point regarding the English language… in its written form, it is a thing of intense beauty. When required, it can be both delicately poetic or, should the need arise, it can inspire feelings of obliterating terror…

I don’t want to dwell too much longer on it, Atacus, but… it wasn’t until I saw your contribution to written English that I also saw how lifeless, prosaic and thoroughly impotent it could sound!

I wouldn't mind so much if you had an excuse... for instance, had you been a tribesman from Sarawak who had just won the annual ‘head-hunter of the year’ tom-bola prize, which, this year, happened to be a 'Groupon' trip to Scotland... then I would concede that it was reasonable to expect your English to be below average... or if you were part of a deputation from North Korea... or from the Siberian hinterland... or even Wolverhampton... then you would have an excuse not to be able to communicate in English... but, Atacus, you are from Glasgow! One of the most eloquent places on earth! There is absolutely no excusing it!

It would have been far better had you submitted your review as a series of emoticons...

'We went to the Crags and thought:
Car park – scary face
Room – embarrassed face
View from window – expression conveying complex mixture of disappointment and unfulfilled, mid-life ennui (tricky emotion… but should be achievable)!
Overall experience – cross face (with maybe a bead of perspiration to signify deep frustration)'

But you didn’t do that, Atacus… instead you submitted a collection of words, thrown randomly together… the sort of review that the dating app ‘tinder’ would be proud of!

And the result of that arbitrary assembly of words was an unprovoked attack on my car park… and my window! and the fact is… I love that car park… and I love that window!

If I may quote directly, ‘… (the car park) was so over grown we decided to park on the main road as it looked unsafe…’!

I give you full permission to cast your eye back up the page and re read that last sentence, as I am sure it makes as little sense to you as it did to me… go on, re-read it I will wait here for you!

Finished? good! then lets carry on…

If, when when you booked, you had alerted us to your requirement for exceptional standards of non-threatening vehicle storage and spectacular views of Edinburgh castle and its millennium firework display, then we could have saved you the trouble of driving all the way here!

Did you feel your person… or that of your car… faced serious physical threat from the occupants of my car park, i.e. a bunch of flowers/weeds?

What did you think was going to happen?… did you see our scruffy little shed in our scruffy little car park and think ‘A-ha! that looks exactly like the sort of shed in which mad scientists dabble in the dark arts of genetically modified weeds’?

Did you fear that during these ingenious, biological meddlings we had inadvertently created ‘Weeds of Mass Destruction’ capable of… hmmm growing?… errrrr quickly?

Perhaps you thought these horticultural horrors would… hmmmm… brush up against your car? and I don’t know… scratch it? or worse? Aaaahhh what if these Weaponised Dandelions were capable of enveloping your car in their shrubbery embrace and dragging it into its herbaceous tomb… from whence nought may return?

Did you conceive that lurking behind the lupins and daisies were hordes of triffids? had you foreseen a John Wyndham style conspiracy of plants… a 'final solution’ or ‘lupins-raum’… preparing to deliver ‘botanical blitzkrieg’ in my car park!

I grant you it is overgrown and much occurs out there which I know very little of... but I think I would have noticed a global invasion by an alien plant species!

or… and I wish to tread delicately… there are… how should I say?… ‘other activities’ that occur in car parks that one might consider ‘unsafe’… did you catch a glimpse of someone that bore a passing resemblance to Stan Colymore? I don't think so!

So it is with the utmost respect that I suggest your reaction to our car park was an ‘over-one’!

So let us move onto the, so called ‘unwelcoming room’!

Much has been said… by greater minds than mine… about what can be reasonably expected, by way of views from ones hotel window! I am no plagiarist… but:

‘May I ask, madam, what you were expecting to see out of a ground floor hotel bedroom? A re-enactment of the battle of Bannockburn? Nicola Sturgeon being repeatedly beaten with an Arbroath Smokie? a horrified looking triffid fending off the amorous advances of Stan Colymore?”

There is a bush because… there is a bush! We do not advertise stunning views, because there aren’t any to be had from our hotel! When we relocate our hotel three miles to the north and offer commanding views across Loch Lubnaig… then we will include this in our marketing campaign… until then… I am sorry to say that ‘it is the Bush’!

And so I bring to a close my reaction and response to your views… Please do not think that I have taken nothing from this experience… I am proposing to get the car park weeded, and I will sit down with room 7 and we will have a little chat about things that it can do to make itself more welcoming to guests!

So we have both learned a lesson (albeit not an ‘English Lesson’)… In the politest possible way I would like to suggest that next time you write a review you should briefly refer to the towering work entitled ‘The Ladybird book of spelling and grammer’. It is a weighty tome, possibly a little high brow, I grant you, but if you employ some of the principles contained twixt it’s covers then you may succeed in convincing future readers that you possess a superficial familiarity with the ‘written word’!

All of us here at the Crags would like to wish you the very best in your quest to find the ‘dream view’! and we also hope you eventually discover a car park that provides you with ‘womb-like’ level of security you so crave! Please be sure to send us photo’s when you do!
 

geedee

Member
Feb 1, 2014
686
1
16
Sydney
SAME GUY

Not Great, Walked out even though we had a booking”
1 of 5 bubbles Reviewed 9 October 2014


Loud Pub, turned into a "hotel". Are room was on the top floor and had no bathroom. We walked out and stayed in a lovely hotel just down the road. I wouldn't recommend it.

The price wasn't exactly a bargain either!!!

Stayed September 2014, travelled as a couple

AlexScrivenor, Owner at Crags Hotel, responded to this review, 16 October 2014
I am outraged... absolutely outraged... by what I have just read!
The instant... and I mean the instant... I read your review I launched a roots and shoots inquiry regarding the circs you have described!
It appears something fishy has taken place and I want answers... as I am sure you do!
I spoke to housekeeping and they swear blind that on the 17th (24hrs prior to your arrival) they cleaned the room as normal and found nothing untoward... they are also 100% confident that the day after your schedule check-out everything appeared to be normal! Hmmmm... Mysterious!!
To corroborate their testimony I conducted a full inspection of room 4 and found everything as it should be. The bed was in its place, the TV, kettle and corner cabinet were all as we had left them... and most importantly... the en-suite bathroom was exactly where we had left it the day before!
So it appears that at an unspecified time on the 17th the bathroom vanished and then reappeared 24 hours later!
I asked some of our regular customers whether, on the day in question, they saw a bathroom leave the building. None of them could remember witnessing such an event!
Housekeeping have suggested a preposterously silly scenario... they think... (now get this!)... that perhaps you were mistaken... (ha!) and, contrary to what you have claimed in your review, there was a perfectly usable bathroom in exactly the place that you would expect to find one.
To this I say... pish (not the Scottish definition of 'pish'... but the companion of the old English word 'pshaw')! How could 2 people fail to find a bathroom in a room measuring 9” by 11”! Particularly people of your obvious prowess! You appeared in every way to be model citizens! Broad shoulders, steady gaze and firm handshake! There was no sign of a white stick when you checked-in! There was no indication that you had been smoking ketamine in the car-park! There is simply no way that two rational, intelligent and... dare I say it... attractive people, such as yourselves, could possibly have missed the whacking great bathroom shaped thing attached to room 4!
Therefore 2 theories present themselves. Either... in much the same way as our 'pub' turned itself into an 'hotel'... perhaps the 'bathroom' turned itself into a 'Corby Trouser Press' and therefore escaped your notice!
Or, (and I favour this theory as it does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics to quite the same extent as theory 1) On 16th (48 hours before your arrival) a Mr & Mrs X occupied room 4. I suspect, for reasons best known to themselves, they decided to pinch our bathroom and carry it, brick by brick, to their own domestic abode! However, 24 hours after the first brick was lifted, and perhaps as a consequence of a guilty conscience, they decided to return it from whence it came.
I contacted Mr & Mrs X and explained my suspicions in vivid detail... the stunned silence, and subsequent howls of derision with which they were greeted, were as clear an indication of guilt as a signed confession! Put it this way, I have never been called a 'baw-bag' by an innocent person!
I have made it clear to Mr & Mrs X, that they are no longer welcome in our hotel. They are criminals of the first order!
In conclusion, and by way of compensation, I would like to offer you a 100% complimentary stay in any one the nine en-suite bathrooms that we own... they are all extremely comfy however room 4 (as can be seen from traveller photo no. 7 above) is the only one with the quirky 'hidden bookcase' doorway. I hope that this compensates - … compens... hmmm
hmmm... 'hidden'... ermmmm... 'book case'... right!...
This is embarrassing. I have an inkling as to where the misunderstanding may have occurred!
Let me explain.
By way of a design feature... and as a tool for entertaining small children... we placed a 'comedy, fake bookcase' with a big door handle at the entrance to the bathroom in room 4... it appears you may have missed that! Until now... no-one... in the seven years it has been there, has ever failed to find the aforementioned bathroom. I can see we have been riding our luck!
I will, with immediate effect, remove the bookcase and replace it with big, friendly signage indicating the presence and whereabouts of a washroom... perhaps I will dispense with the whole 'door thing' and go with a contemporary open plan bedroom-cum-toilet! Eitherway we will never allow this travesty to occur again!
I apologies unreservedly for the mistake and I am happy that you managed to find alternative lodging!
I think I may also owe Mr & Mrs X an apology
 
Aug 31, 2014
257
0
16
Aberdeen/Singapore
Having just spent six weeks living in a rattan shoe box in a palm tree I am tempted to quote even more Python related dialogue from the the 4 Yorkshiremen 'Luxury, absolute luxury'
Serioulsy, brilliant responses, we use trip advisor on a regular basis and the usual grovelling apologies to one star bogs claiming they are second only to the Burj Al Arab Dubai are pathetic.
So obvious that some glowing reviews are plants written by hotel emplyees, fer a good laff check some of the one star reviews of Bintan Resorts compared to "real" reports