This has got to be one of the best TA responses I've read for a long time. The Crags is a decent wee pub with rooms, anyone expecting 4* facilities would have to be nuts!
Review:
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 .
Owners response:
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!
Yours
Basil
He's got previous for his somewhat unique style when it comes to TA reviews, more
here. Click on the 1* reviews to narrow it down.
JF
