Malmaison Manchester, Mal 5

I booked this trip for my parents, uncle and I to celebrate my mam's 60th birthday. Unfortunately I became unwell and could no longer go. My parents enjoyed their stay at the hotel. They said it was pretty clean and comfortable, and they especially enjoyed the bar. The said the bar staff were brilliant and couldn't have been more helpful. However, what is letting this hotel down is customer service. As I couldn't attend but was concerned about using the app to cancel when we still needed two other rooms, I spoke with a Hotels.com chat agent who tried to contact the hotel on my behalf but couldn't get a response. I also wanted to arrange something special in the room for my mam's arrival and had used the app at time of booking to ask what was available. I never got a response via the app so a few days before the trip I emailed the hotel directly. Responses back and forth took so long that in the end they weren't able to set anything up as by this point it was check in day and I was told balloons were arranged via a third party. I asked if there was anything at all that could be done to make her stay extra special while she was there as it was a 2 night trip, and they completely stopped responding. Have heard nothing since and was unable to make the stay special for her birthday. This would put me off staying again in case I needed customer service support.

Given my wife and I were there for a midweek overnight work trip, the lack of working wifi in the room (!) was a real hindrance. I mentioned it straightaway to the front desk (on my way out to a meeting), and a technician came up to the room where my wife was trying to work. He couldn't improve things, and inevitably 'next week's upgrade' (no use to us) is going to solve it all. They knew there were two of us coming, but only put out one towel in the bathroom. Despite there being lots of room for a second one, on inquiring, the male receptionist barked at me that a second towel was stored in the cupboard in the room. Why it wasn't just in the bathroom I don't know, and I certainly didn't need speaking to like an idiot for not hunting down a second towel. In the cupboard was a fridge with two bottles of water in it, but it was not plugged in. And furthermore, it could not be plugged in because there was no power socket the cord could ever reach from where it was. I ended up asking four times before I was emailed an invoice (twice before arriving, when we checked in and when we left). The whole experience left us thinking Malmaison is so not what it used to be... our room was thoughtlessly organised and carelessly arranged, and while some staff were pleasant, others were incompetent or rude. We stayed for nearly 24 hours and never had wifi the whole time. On the plus side, the bath and shower were good.