Hôtel Vendome Saint-Germain

Это был действительно очень красивый, очень удобный и лучший отель.

Amazing hotel and staff! Couldn’t recommend more, hotel was very clean and perfectly located. Very close to a metro station. The staff could not do enough for you, we had an issue with the hair dryer in our room asked reception for help, and within 10 minutes it was sorted out. Breakfast was very good, fresh pastries, juice and fruit were available along with a variety of other food. However the only hot item was scrambled egg, so if you’re looking for a full English style breakfast this wasn’t available. 10/10, can’t fault anything about this place and would happily stay there again if I was visiting Paris!

The payment processes at this hotel are terrible. I booked online directly with the hotel, which asks for card details as a guarantee - no problem with this, as it’s standard practice. When I checked in, payment was requested, which again is quite normal. However, when I checked my bank a few days later, I found the confirmed payment had gone through fine, but there was an identical amount that was ‘pending’ or ‘on hold’! This meant that the money (several hundred euros) was unavailable to me until the pending transaction dropped off. I don’t know why there was a pending transaction as full payment had already been taken at check in, so this in itself was annoying. However, pending transactions usually drop off after a few days at most, so I waited. A week later it was still there and the money was still unavailable to me. At this point I emailed the hotel to be simply told ‘we haven’t charged you twice, there is no problem’. I emailed back explaining that there was clearly a problem that had nothing to do with my bank, and I didn’t receive a response. I then emailed again asking why there had been no response, only to be told basically the same thing. A few more emails back and forth and a phone call later, I was told ‘Yes this is NORMAL, it will drop off eventually at some point’. In actual fact it took an entire MONTH for this money to be released back to me. This is absolutely outrageous and the blasé attitude of the hotel is difficult to comprehend - they didn’t seem to think it was a problem that, due to their own payment processes, customers could be left for a whole month without access to funds. It was fortunate that I had enough money in my account to deal with this deficit for the month, but if I hadn’t, then the hotel made it clear they would do nothing other than just ‘wait’. Absolutely nowhere is this temporary ‘double charge’ mentioned. From looking at previous reviews, it seems I’m not the only one who’s had this experience. I honestly cannot recommend the hotel for this situation alone, even though the hotel itself has a lot going for it - clean, comfortable, great location.