Closed for Renovation - Review of Kensington Rooms, London

I booked in advance for this room. Myself and my friend were to perform in a show in Chelsea so we thought we would book somewhere within a 30 minute walking distance. We came across Kensington Rooms on Booking.com we clicked through pictures of the rooms and what not and decided that we quite fancied this place so we would book it. Not an issue. For the two of us for 6 days it cost £342 so £170 each. Not bad. When we checked into the room we shortly discovered that this was not the room in which we had paid for. So I rang the number in which I was given just incase of any problems and the women who answered spoke very basic English which made it near impossible for her to come to terms with what the issue was. I had told her that the room we booked was to have a balcony. She said that the balcony room was below us but someone has already checked into that room earlier that day and has already complained that they did not ask for a balcony room. So we put two and two together and worked out that there was a mix up with the rooms, she said that she will contact her manager the following day and let me know if we were able to swap rooms or she would offer us a discounted fee. Considering we had already paid the moment we booked this room I did not understand how a discount would be given!

Upon investigation of the building itself we could not find a communal kitchen area or anything else. Even though on the website in which we booked with we were told that there was kitchen appliances in our studio room in which we could use. The only thing in which we had was a rusty kettle which every time you boiled it smelt like something was melting/burning. So again, myself and my friend were not happy about this. We found a letter on the worktop addressed to new guests about the rules of the building. Fair enough. No smoking in rooms (although we had booked a smoking room seeing as we are both smokers) if caught £50 fine. Understandable. Below this it said no noise after 10pm £100 fine. This is all well and good making these rules, but if other guests aren't to follow them what is the point in having them in the first place. Firstly our neighbour for the week found it funny to talk as loud as she could in the early ours of the morning for a good 2 hours or so. All you could hear was her moany little voice on the phone to her mother from what it would seem whilst her boyfriend constantly left the room every 2 minutes slamming the door as he left. Above us, Graham (which we named him) must have been doing Zumba in his room at 3am, it's either that or he was having a party with the Hulk. It sounded like things were being thrown across the room, dropped on the floor. Banging every two seconds. So this £100 fine they talk of, does it only apply to certain people? On our last night we came home at about 11pm. Tired and ready for bed we just packed up all of our stuff as it is. But our neighbour has the cheek to knock on our door and tell us to be quiet. I'm sorry? What?! You have been keeping us awake all bloody week with your racket and now you expect us to be quiet. I don't think so!

It was hard enough to see at night as it was because both lights in our room did not work so we had to use the flash lights on our phone so we could see. The wifi is terrible. I could not make a single webpage load on my laptop after needing to do some work one evening as I returned home. The shower was dodgy. The shower curtain kept falling down every 5 seconds anyone was in there, the shower head itself wasn't attached to the wall so it would just spray water everywhere and hope for the best.

This really was a terrible experience for us. Tempted to ask for a full refund back or my so called discount for a problem which wasn't even solved!

Room Tip: I wouldnt even bother booking for here at all!

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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC

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