Pine Lake Resort

Shambolic

We booked a 3 night stay at Pine Lake based on the rather impressive website.

If ever there was a case of false advertising this is it.

The lodges are nothing like the pictures on the Internet and are more like tumbledown shacks.

When we arrived our 6 person ‘luxury lodge’ had such a mouldy, fusty stench that we had to open all the windows and use a full can of deodorant before we could unload the car. The lakeside view we had requested was obscured by 2 large bins right in our eye line and we were told there were no other lodges with a lake view available.

When I came to make breakfast on our first morning we had no grill pan, it took housekeeping an hour to bring one by which time it was way past breakfast.

The tin opener didn’t work and there was only one battery in the remote control for the TV in the bedroom. I woke up to find a huge spider in our bed on two separate nights, meaning I had to sleep in the incredibly smelly twin room.

We ate in the restaurant twice. I had phoned up in advance to request a gluten and dairy free meal and reiterated this twice on arrival. My potatoes nonetheless arrived mashed with butter and had to be sent back. The replacement boiled potatoes were so hard they were inedible and once again were returned to the kitchen. Third time not so lucky, they were only marginally better so I left them, how difficult is it to boil a potato?!

Now for the worst part of our experience, the customer service. On checkout, nobody on reception enquired about my stay so I had to inform them that I was unimpressed and wanted to see the manager. I was told she was on holiday for 2 weeks by somebody wearing a ‘Resort Co-ordinator’s’ badge, who made no effort to deal with my grievances and simply gave me the number for the ‘Customer Service’ team.

I phoned and was told to submit my complaint via e-mail, I did this and after hearing nothing for 10 days, not even an acknowledgement that my e-mail had been received, I had to phone again to chase them up.

I was then asked by somebody with my detailed e-mail in front of them to tell him the nature of my grievances, read the e-mail!! He assured me that somebody would ring me back asap. 3 days later a rather unsavoury e-mail appeared in my inbox, basically saying there was nothing they could do and shirking all responsibility. Never before have I encountered such a poor standard of customer relations.

This resort is tired, overpriced and does not deliver what it claims to. Quite frankly my partner and I are disgusted by the way we have been treated.