The Rookery

EDIT: The hotel has subsequently offered us a partial refund, which has done a lot to absolve some of the hurt outlined in the review below. Last weekend we stayed at this hotel for our wedding. To begin with, we were absolutely blown away by the hotel -- the welcome and service, the decor of the building and of our room, the breakfast and the location were all second to none. We loved it so much in fact that we decided to extend our stay from 3 to 4 days while we were there, at great expense to us. While staying there we encountered a number of snags, as you expect from any hotel, that we were willing to overlook because we were finding the stay so delightful -- the cleaning staff left copper cleaner in the bathroom, there was no "Do Not Disturb" sign in our room so the housekeeping staff walked in during our honeymoon, there were no glasses in our mini bar cupboard. Also, the night before our wedding our ground floor room was subject to terrible noise from both upstairs and the road, so I slept quite poorly... as I say, snags we were willing to overlook. However on checkout day, after leaving our luggage to go for a stroll around London, we noticed an unannounced charge on our credit card to the tune of ~£45 for items taken from the mini bar that we had not had. Assuming this was just a simple error (after all, the Duty Manager mistook us for another couple when we checked out, and apologised for the mistake), we figured we'd simply clear up the issue when we headed back to the hotel. We were extremely surprised then, upon arriving back, to find that this was not merely a simple mistake. The (same) Duty Manager notified us that the charge was not done so in error, without sending us an explanatory email first, and on top of that, we were being accused of taking a USB adapter from the room during our stay and that we would incur further charges if it could not be found. After assuring them that we took neither the items from the mini bar nor the adapter from the room, they asserted it was "impossible for those items to be gone if we hadn't taken them" -- refusing to entertain the notion that the hotel's staff may have neglected to replenish the mini bar, and in the process accusing us of dishonesty. Needless to say we were very upset by this accusation. After some back and forth, the Duty Manager promised us a refund for the mini bar items. But at that point the damage had already been done. We understand the desire for managers to defend staff when it feels like entitled customers are trying to take advantage. My partner and I are very considerate, very honest people, often to a fault. However, this situation was handled with the least tact of any interaction I've ever had with hospitality staff. As someone who suffers from social anxiety, I have never been put into a situation where I felt confrontation of this nature was necessary, until I stayed at The Rookery. I would go as far as to say that this interaction came close to souring the entire experience of our wedding weekend, an experience that should be the happiest of our lives. In light of this experience, all of the snags we encountered over the course of our stay feel all the more egregious, especially for a 4 star hotel as premium The Rookery. Before this experience, during our stay, we were talking about returning for anniversaries in the future, but now I'm not sure if I can in good faith recommend anyone I know stay here, for fear of experiencing what we did. I can't begin to express just how saddened I am to be writing all of this. It started as the best customer experience of our lives, and became quite literally the worst.