We recently stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Southampton when visiting my dad (Botley Rd, West End). I originally wanted to stay in the Premier Inn as you know exactly what you’re getting and I’ve never had a bad experience. Needless to say, I seriously wish we had of done as the Holiday Inn has given me one long and continuous migraine. Our mistake was looking at Hotels.com and just going with the cheapest - how much do I regret not spending that extra fiver?

We only wanted somewhere to lay our heads to be honest. We had plans the entire duration of our stay so just needed a bed and a cot for the night. My only expectation was that it was clean and comfortable - I wasn’t expecting Claridge’s for £50.

First impressions were fine - the lobby was clean and the bar was quiet and surprisingly tasteful. The receptionist was a bit scripted but I’m not really an expert on these things so wouldn’t presume to have done any better. We were unable to drop our bags off as our room wasn’t ready so we left them in the car and took a cab to my dad’s for dinner. In hindsight, perhaps we should have seen the room before leaving. We weren’t going back to the hotel until really late that evening so there wouldn’t be an opportunity to complain in the early hours.

When we returned later that night, we grabbed our keys and went to check our room. We’d both had a few to drink so just wanted to get Dexter settled then get to bed ourselves. Unfortunately - all went downhill after that. Craig had an asthma attack and couldn’t open the window to get some air, there was no mattress in the cot rendering it useless to Dexter, the sofa bed mattress was filthy so he had to come in with us. Our bed was a standard double so it was a bit of a squeeze, and all the chaos had made him whingey. As I could hear the next door room, I worried about them being disturbed by his crying so took him downstairs to the lobby to rock him to sleep. The security guard was pretty friendly so let us sit in the darkened bar until Dexter was quiet enough to take upstairs. It was 2am before I got my head down.

Believe it or not, the problems we’d faced that night aren’t my reasons for throwing a wobbly. I appreciate rooms in budget hotels aren’t refurbed very often. The stained sofa bed had given me nightmares and the room resembled student accommodation - but it was £50 and I can’t blame the hotel for Dexter’s demeanor that night. Nope - the problems started when we’d actually left the hotel.

We were driving home on the motorway when Craig got the call. We noticed it was from the hotel and I picked it up in case they were calling to say we’d left something behind. The same robotic receptionist from the day before asked me if we’d enjoyed our stay and I innocently assumed it was a simple courtesy call. I was wrong. She was actually calling as they seemed to have lost a ribbon from a pillow and wondered if we had mistakenly packed it. Here is a picture of the offending item.

I stated that I doubted it would have found its way into our luggage as we only had one bag between us, but nevertheless I’d check when we were at home. She informed me apologetically that she’d have to charge us £5 if we could not find it - I politely informed her I would check my bags but I felt they’d have more success if they searched a little more thoroughly. She informed me that she would call the next day to see if we’d found it, I was past listening at this point so said that was fine and hung up. I reiterated the conversation to Craig and he was pretty incredulous. It was during this conversation - I began to see what had happened. It was this:

RECEPTIONIST’S LOGIC

(one seemingly void of rational reasoning and that flies in the face of every other conceivable possibility)

Housemaid reports lost tag = guests must have taken it

I had stated down the phone that I recalled seeing the ribbon and this was true. I had seen the crappy thing on my pillow and tossed it aside as I assumed the button might scratch my face as I slept - I couldn’t speak for Craig. Craig had been drinking and was preoccupied with trying not to die that night so his testimony was unreliable. In truth, there may have only been one sodding ribbon the entire time. She had been pretty insistent that both the housemaid and she had searched the room trying to locate the damn thing so the only explanation was that we must have taken it.

When I checked my bag at home - the ribbon wasn’t there. Case closed. It must be still in the room, or it was never in the room in the first place. I completely forgot about the fact she was due to call the next day as I didn’t personally believe she’d bother - but she did. In fact, she called at the worst possible time - when we were food shopping on Christmas Eve. We were unsurprisingly pretty stressed out as we had a buggy and a trolley to contend with, and were working from a mental list to get all we’d need for Christmas.

The call lasted less than two minutes and I was furious when it was over. It went a little something like this:

RECEPTIONIST: “Hi Mrs Mills (not my name as I’m not married but hey ho), have you had a chance to look through your bags yet for the ribbon?”

ME: “We only had one bag and it’s not in there I’m afraid”

RECEPTIONIST: “Ah that’s such a shame as unfortunately we’ll have to charge you for it”

ME: (getting snappier) “Go ahead. The moment a penny leaves my boyfriend’s account we’ll be onto head office as I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous”

RECEPTIONIST: “I am sorry but it’s company policy”

ME: “Well we’ll see what the ‘company’ has to say then. I was talking with my other half about this last night and we’ve been saying how stupid this is. The insinuation is that we’ve stolen it, and I can assure you we’d never do such a thing - particularly something so utterly pointless as a ribbon. Think about it - that is what you’re saying”

RECEPTIONIST: “Umm… okay…”

ME: (cutting in) “… We’re pretty offended to be accused of stealing to be honest, but if there is nothing you can do, charge us and we’ll take it up with someone else” (I hung up)

They only ever intended on charging us £5 so this isn’t anything to do with the money - it’s the principal. They can’t find it - so they blame the guests. I already knew the Holiday Inn had a reputation for charging the earth for extras - this just seemed like another way to swindle money out of their customers. I’d heard one story of an 80 year old woman being accused of smoking in her room and hit with a ridiculous fine - she had never smoked in her life! (< Granted this story came from mum and she’s hardly worthy of a gospel candidacy).

I don’t blame the receptionist - not really - she was just doing her job. I can’t imagine how embarrassed she must be having to call past guests in the hopes of recovering bloody ribbons. Surely an easier way to address the problem would be to simply inform guests on arrival that they’d be grateful if guests could simply pop them on the bedside tables when they check-out. Simple. You wouldn’t forget such an absurd request in a hurry and would duly double-check before leaving.

The receptionist has since called again to inform us that head office have agreed to drop the case. The poor receptionist did her best to make the call sound conciliatory but it’s simply too little too late for us. The fact is - we were made to feel as though we’d done something wrong - when we hadn’t. My issue is that they had the audacity to suggest we’d taken it (accidentally or not) and then proceeded to knowingly keep it from them. At the very best they were accusing us of negligence of Holiday Inn property which is quite unfair if we consider the item in question is a bit of faded fabric.

To think we hadn’t actually had a good night’s sleep, were disgusted with the state of the sofa bed and useless cot and hadn’t complained says something about us as a family. We can get past sub-standard accommodation and aren’t the type of people to complain - but coupled with ribbon-gate I simply had to write about it to get it off my chest. Shame on you Holiday Inn.