Harrington House Picton

The location is prime, the backyard pool is great, and the rooms were clean. The price was good too, and the vouchers covered good breakfast options. But the onsite service was very poor. There was a quick breakfast with coffee, tea, yogurt, and water, but nobody cleaned the cups or replenished the coffee. We put our towels in the basket as instructed, yet they weren’t replaced. Another occupant told us where to find towels, and later we found some in a bag on our unmade bed. The cups still hadn’t been cleaned, and there weren’t any paper ones. The window AC unit blocked a lot of the street noise and the people coughing next door, so it could be noisy. The ceiling fan really needed cleaning. I locked the key inside and called the emergency number, but after 40 minutes we saw a woman coming back and asked her to let us in. That number wasn’t reliable as advertised. It’s a shame, because the place had a lot going for it.

I had a terrible experience. I booked a room two weeks in advance, received confirmation, took a couple of days off work, and packed my things. Then my reservation was cancelled less than 24 hours before check-in. Booking.com said it was a double reservation. Why hadn’t the owner caught that sooner? It left me feeling like the owner didn’t care about providing good service.

Awful. We never got to stay because the owners cancelled our confirmed reservation one month after we made it, with a month still to go before arrival. They said there was a two-night minimum, even though they had accepted my booking. There was only one night available for the dates we wanted. Even if we’d wanted to stay two nights, the room was already booked for the extra night. The Trip Advisor reviews mention other things about the owners that I’m not allowed to say here, so please read those for yourselves. I think I’d rather sleep in my car.

We had booked the “Double Deluxe,” with a double bed and futon, and nowhere in the booking did we see that the room was limited to two people. When the owners realized there were three of us, they pushed an envelope under the door asking for $40 cash for the extra guest, on top of what we were already paying for the futon. The next morning the owner waited at the bottom of the stairs and insisted we go to the ATM across the road after we explained we weren’t carrying cash because of Covid-19. She wouldn’t charge the fee to our card. We left the key on the nightstand when we checked out. Later, the owner called saying she’d charge us to replace it because she couldn’t find it, then texted a couple of hours later to say she’d found it on the nightstand. She never spoke to us directly, always having Bookings call to explain things. We also posted a review on Bookings.com and it was taken down. The owners were rude and greedy. Terrible stay, I don’t recommend this place at all.