If visiting York, England, beware of this place
Marcia and I have just returned from a couple of weeks holiday in the UK. Part of the reason for this little vacation was to take my aged mother (now almost 90) for a short break to the beautiful and historic city of York. A place to which none of us had ever actually been. My sister made the arrangements for us, having carefully checked the various hotels for suitability and she suggested that this one, Four High Petergate, looked like a good choice. Here is their web-site…http://www.fourhighpetergate.co.uk/home.asp
As you can see, it does look lovely, and is certainly a little out of the ordinary. However, you must remember that before booking it my Sister (who is an attorney by the way) had specifically described the requirements for my Mother (she is 89+ years old, is registered ‘disabled’, has a pacemaker and artificial hip and knee – walking, and especially stairs, are more than a little tricky for her). She checked that:
[1] We could park directly outside the hotel so that Mum would not have to walk any great distance
[2] That, despite there being no lift (they did warn her) that they had a room with suitable access for an elderly person with the described issues
So I told her to book the hotel for two nights – she did so, paying $310 deposit (i.e. one night’s stay).
Imagine our surprise when we arrived (in the rain) to find that not only could we NOT stop in front of the hotel, the nearest legal parking spot was about 400 yards away. It transpired that vehicular access to the street in which the hotel stands is restricted to certain hours (i.e. evenings and nights) and at all other times the street is closed to traffic. I managed to park (blocking a gate) about 50 yards away and we helped mother up to the hotel. Which is reached, from the street by three very steep steps, with no handrail! (Not what I would call ‘good access’ for an elderly lady).
Anyway, we checked in, to be told that while our room was ready, Mother’s was not. So she sat in the reception room while the owner took us up two flights of steep, twisty stairs to our room. When I asked whether Mother would be expected to climb these stairs, he replied that they had her in a first floor room so there would be no problem for her. Our room actually turned out to be rather Spartan – yes it had a bed and en-suite bathroom, but very little hanging space and nowhere to put anything (i.e. no drawers, or cupboard). Still it was only for a couple of nights and it was clean and certainly quaint! So we went back down to find Mother who had, meanwhile, been taken up to her room.
We were told that she was on the first floor (remember in UK, the ‘first’ floor is actually called the ‘ground’ floor and so this meant she was up at least one level). This turned out to be in a different wing of the house. We were directed along a corridor, down three steps and through a couple of heavy fire doors to a flight of at least 15 steep steps that, like those in the main house, twisted round through 180 degrees at the top (with no landing). We found my Mother in a closet (there is no other way to describe the smallness of the room) sitting on a chair gasping for breath and quite incapable of even removing her coat, let alone unpacking. Actually this was a good thing, as there was even less storage space in this room than in ours and the bathroom was so small that when I went into it I could not actually close the door unless I was pressed against the far wall!
While Mother recovered I went downstairs to remonstrate with the reception clerk (who, it turned out, was the owner!!!). I said that the room for my mother was not acceptable and could he please find an alternative. His reply was: “We only have one room on the ground floor and that is occupied.” Since that appeared to end the conversation as far as he was concerned, I asked if, since he could not provide suitable accommodation, there was another hotel that might. He refused to suggest alternatives, or tell me the names of any other hotels, merely saying that there ‘is a place up the street’.
We found it, and they could accommodate us and so we moved there. When Marcia and I had my mother settled into the new place we went back to the Petergate for our, and her, luggage. We told the owner that we had managed to find somewhere suitable and would he please ensure that our deposit was refunded. His reply stunned us! Not only did he refuse to return our deposit, but he said that he would be charging us for the full two days because the “cancellation policy” stated that 48 hours notice was required.
I pointed out that we had not cancelled anything! We had turned up as arranged, checked in and were present. His accommodation was totally unacceptable and clearly the information given to my Sister when she made the booking was, to put it politely ‘misleading’. Had she been told the truth, she would never have considered the place.
So then he got sarcastic. He asked “What did you expect from an 18th Century Town House in York? Of course is has stairs!” To which my reply was “And how much do you know about the hotels in Akron Ohio? We relied on your description and assurances which have proven to be totally misleading”.
Another point, which I missed on first checking in, was that there was no phone in the rooms – so while Marcia and I were on the 2nd floor in one wing of the house, and Mum was on the 1st floor in a different wing, we could not call her room, nor could she call for help if she needed it. When I pointed this out to the owner, he replied “She should have a mobile phone then”. The perfect host!
I won’t bore you with the rest of the details of the discussion, which went nowhere, the guy was indifferent to the point of rudeness and basically said that ‘I have your money and there’s nothing you can do about it’. As it turned out, we were right, and he was wrong! My Sister was able to recover not only her deposit, but also the additional charge for the second night (which the guy had added to her credit card immediately after we had checked in). I post this tale because it does show that there are still unscrupulous hoteliers around who will screw you if they can and you do need to be really careful when booking.
(We also lodged a formal complaint with the York Tourist Board about this place)
The happy end to this story is that we stayed in a beautiful Best Western hotel called “The Dean’s Court”, which is situated the very centre of York, right across the street from the Minster. The people were kind, helpful and pleasant, the rooms were comfortable and well equipped, the food was excellent and my Mother was very happy. The hotel was the perfect location from which to explore the beautiful old city centre of York (even for my Mother who could not manage to walk far) it is so centrally located. Not only can you park the car directly outside, but the hotel will then valet park it for you (a service that is not as common in the UK as it is here, I can tell you).
I thoroughly recommend it to anyone thinking of visiting this ancient and very interesting city. Their web site is here