Perouse Lodge Sydney

I recently stayed at Perouse Lodge and found their website rather misleading. For starters I'm not sure how they manage to get their three and a half star rating as I've stayed in both four and three star hotels and this comes no where near. Quite possibly self-rated. They fail to tell you that in order to have your room serviced it's an extra $25. They also failed to tell me this when I checked in. The double rooms barely had enough room for you to move around the bed so in order for someone to get pass, one of you had to climb onto the bed. We were not the only individuals staying there with this complaint. Also they did not inform us that payment was required at the beginning of our stay. Instead they debited a credit card without authorization (and might I add the wrong card) in the midst of our stay till it maxed out. Needless to say when we went to pay for lunch that day and our card declined, we were less than impressed. When we confronted the receptionist about this issue we were met with an abrasive individual who said it was her right to charge the card, that she did not need to inform us of this transaction and that this was common practice in many hotels as she had worked in many 5 star hotels before and this was their practice (she did not mention whether she worked as a cleaner but I could tell by her customer service why she no longer worked in one). She also had limited knowledge on how to fix this problem as if she merely voided the transaction the money would go back onto the card within 24hrs instead she refunded the amount which took 7 days in order to process. I'm also concerned with the lack of information on fire safety. No evacuation procedure was to be found anywhere. Also the fire alarms on fault setting thus they would not be set of in the case of a fire rendering them useless. The information folder in the room had out of date prices for the cafe below which were misleading and gave no number for the hotel in order for relatives to contact us if need be. The air conditioning unit in our room was extremely noisy if set below 25 degrees. When we asked them to fix it the merely said there was nothing much they could do, sent their son to look at it who then said it was fine (because he tested it at 25 degrees). They didn't offer an alternative room or try to get a professional out to look at it. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep. To be frank I have stayed in better backpackers then here. I would not recommend staying here to anyone. Not value for money.Date of Stay: December 2008