There was a bed bug; an actual bed bug on my actual body. In a hotel. In actual London.
I know there is some reservation in the world about naming and shaming. There’s something vaguely indecent about it. Someone rips you off, fucks you over, or rents you a room for actual money that has actual bed bugs in it, but for some reason, it’s the adult thing to keep a stoic silence. Is it churlish or weak to complain? Is it unfair to point out unfairness? Answers on a postcard, please.
Meanwhile.
I’m naming and shaming. This bed bug experience cost me £90, a night’s sleep and a lot of stress.
So here it is: the Norfolk Inn, Norfolk Square, Paddington, London. The most awful place I’ve ever stayed, and would have been even without the bed bugs.
I stayed there one miserable night in early August, 2024. I’d flown halfway around the world from Japan, an 18-hour flight. I was exhausted. But I was back in my city, looking forward to putting my feet up and decompressing with a bottle of wine, and hitting a local cafe for a proper full English the next morning.
I lugged my suitcases from Heathrow on the train to Paddington.
Alarm bells: the front door of the Norfolk Inn seemed to have broken locks and seemed permanently open which does not ding well for security. There was no one on the 24-hour front desk.
When eventually an indifferent member of staff appeared, I was given a room in the basement.
The basement was accessed through a spring-loaded fire door and a narrow flight of stairs, to be negotiated with big bags.
The basement stank and there was a crushed cockroach on the carpet outside my room.
The key card I was given didn’t open the door. I went back up and the staff guy gave me a master key, one that would presumably open any door in the hotel. Incidentally, reading the online reviews of the Norfolk Inn, it would seem that this is not the first time the staff have given a guest a master key.
Once in the room, the door wouldn’t lock. I wedged my big suitcase against it to keep it secure.
The room stank. The bathroom stank. Everything was filthy. Half the curtain hooks were broken and the rag of a curtain dangled from the rail and failed to cover the window. The furniture was apparently stolen from a skip such was its disrepair.
The place was squalid.
I sat on the bed to have some reviving wine and plan my next move.
And there it was. the fucking bed bug. Dark, appleseed shaped, walking on my leg.
And so there’s clarity: yes, I know what a fucking bed bug looks like. The infestations in France and Korea have been in the news this year. And here was one in London.
If it had not been past midnight, had I not been fatigued by the flight, I would have left and found another place.
I complained loudly and swearily to the staff man who reacted as if I was being unreasonable.
A bed bug? It was only a bed bug. What’s the problem?
He showed me to another room on the second floor. It was marginally less squalid than the basement, there were no evident cockroaches, and ripping the bed covers off revealed no bed bugs.
I reluctantly agreed to stay in that room.
Once again, the curtains seem to have been murdered and barely covered the window. The furniture blocked the door to the toilet/bathroom and had to be rearranged to allow the door to open. The bathroom stank, there was mould in the shower, which looked too contaminated to use, the floor was almost as dirty as the basement room. The place was murderously hot, but there was an air conditioner balanced on top of the radiator — but it wasn’t plugged in and, on examination, there was of course, no socket to plug it into.
Outside the room there was a pile of trash in the hall which included vile rags covered in some kind of oily substance which may or may not have been actual body fluids.
I rolled the bed covers back but sleep was near impossible but vigilance for crawling biting things mostly forbade sleep.
I booked the room through Agoda.com who have been startlingly indifferent to my complaints. I suspect they may have taken down the review I submitted to their site of the Norfolk Inn and its bed bugs because I can’t find it.
Indeed, rather than act on the feedback I gave them in both the review and an email of complaint the site has been regularly sending me email encouraging me to book a room at the very hotel I complained about and which has bed bugs. So big name and shame to Agoda.com too.
The reviews of the Norfolk Inn include similar tales. Bed bugs, cockroaches, mice, filth, indifference. Read the reviews on Tripadvisor and Google. When booking hotels, read the reviews. I didn’t. My fault.
The Agoda.com listing for the Norfolk Inn contains some nice photos of a hotel anyone would be happy to stay at. The interior photos, the photos of the rooms are not the Norfolk Inn. They are a deception.
Agoda.com joins Booking.com and GoToGate.com as big online booking agents that are happy to take your money and then abandon you to your fate and stuff their fingers in their ears when you try to tell them about the shit they served up to you. GoToGate.com defrauded my son and his partner out of hundreds of dollars mis-selling a product and then ignoring our complaints.
Please don’t use these companies. You are exposing yourself to all sorts of financial risk. Book direct from hotels or airlines if you can, even if it costs a little more.
Which brings us back to the Norfolk Inn, Paddington, London. Did I tell you about the bed bugs?
Also published on chris-page.com