Rhinefield House issued a duplicate key to our room.
Returned to Rhinefield as a recharge in beautiful New Forest surroundings. The welcome was warm and was shown to our room - which are named rather than numbered. We opted to breakfast in our room and received a call around the time it was due to confirm our egg order. Within a few moments of that call, we heard a rustling at our door, it wasn’t like the traditional knock of room service. Then another guest in outdoor clothing and a suitcase walked straight in. Both shocked, she excused herself immediately and left. This was bad enough, but it was how it was handled.
Please bear with the length, because I want to faithfully and fairly recount what happened.
On ringing reception, was told a) it was housekeeping - I assured her it wasn’t and asked the duty manager to call which she eventually did. Although pleasant enough, did not appreciate b) her own anecdote of her experience, c) her advocating of the shock that must have been felt by the guest walking in! It felt as if it was an attempt to deflect and minimise the incident.
An offer by way of restitution was made and agreed upon. However on check out - the receptionist referred to the incident thus, d) ‘We have had a miscommunication’. Somewhat taken aback suggested that ‘we’ did not have a miscommunication.
A chilled bottled of wine (the same as the one accompanying dinner) was offered, e) only dripping wet and the duty manager literally attempted to hand over the slippery wet bottle, f) leaving me to suggest perhaps it might be an idea (for safety) to dry it and put it in a bag which they had behind the desk, to which I detected a degree of impatience - prompting me to ask genuinely if she had a pressing prior engagement. Finally, in the absence of any explanation of beyond a repeated ‘human error’ broached the subject of how a key was issued in the morning when check-in was at 3pm - received the sheepish ‘There is a conference’ then g) again had to ask how there was a duplicate key issued to an occupied room - when finally they admitted that they had overridden the safeguards put in place to avoid this from happening and that the room names were similar! The point is, it was half-heartedly handled and if they had admitted what had happened upfront, and offered the apology in a manner in keeping with an establishment of it’s calibre - there would be no need to recount this, but as I left not feeling confident that this couldn’t happen again - here we are.
