We made the mistake of only booking 3 months in advance for a central Edinburgh apartment. Upon arrival at their Queen Street offices we were informed that there had been a double booking and we would be staying a mere 15 walk minutes away. 20 minutes in a cab later we arrived in what can only be described as a cross between Guantanamo Bay, Mogadishu and Dodge City.
The accommodation would have been regarded as first class only if you had been living in a packing crate full of weevils for the last three years.
Upon surveying the delightful grounds surrounding our luxurious apartment I realised that the garden furniture consisted of bottle crates, old bar stools and a decidedly ropey looking deck chair. I am sure that if Balmoral is ever being redecorated the Queen would not hesitate to use the facilities to hold garden parties there and I am sure she could make use of the extensive range white goods that had been kindly left to rust away in the grounds.
The upshot is this; we booked in November. We checked that we would be staying in our booked apartment the week before and still they lied to us. We complained but have heard nothing, mind you on the evidence of the poor reviews on here I would imagine they would need to recruit a huge number of people just to deal with the backlog and I'm not sure that there are that many immoral people this side of purgatory.

Do yourself a favour and stay in the Edinburgh Dungeon or Mary Kings Close instead as I can assure you it will be a less horrifying experience.

Where do I begin... when I spoke to the representative at Scottish Apartments on the phone, I was offered an apartment for 4 people (1 double room and 1 sleeper couch) within 15 minutes walking distance to the old town, it sounded ideal and the pictures looked great. 4 girls, just looking to have a great time in Edinburgh for Hogmanay. The problems started as soon as we arrived, the double room for 2 adults was perfect, however the 'sleeper couch' for the other 2 adults where 2 wooden beach beds with extremely thin mattresses. Not very easy to sleep on a bed that slides across the wooden floor, your feet hang off the end and the wooden slates dig into your sides while trying to sleep. I called the apartment offices immediately and they could not move us as they were fully booked for Hogmanay. All they could offer where a further 2 mattresses to try make the beds more comfortable and a kind gesture of a bottle of champers. I tried to call the offices back again to let them know that I was not impressed as I had been totally misinformed about the sleeping arrangements, however they simply ignored my calls for the rest of the evening. After a not so comfortable nights sleep, we spent the day out and on our return to the apartment found a key in the room for another apartment, I called the offices to find out what it was for and the man I spoke to had been on leave for the week so had no idea what I was talking about and couldn’t give me any answers. He managed to get hold of someone else in the offices and we found out they had had a cancellation and there was a spare apartment for us to make use of. A courtesy call or note in the room would have been nice to let us know what was going on, but unfortunately Scottish Apartments fall very short when it comes to communication. The rest of the stay was somewhat pleasant, despite the fact that the apartment we were in (50 Broughton road) was not a 15 minute walk to the old town so we had to take taxi’s every day which started to add up especially over Hogmanay when prices go up. On our last day we were woken by an alarm ringing in the building, wasn’t sure what it was but realised we had no idea what the evacuation procedure was in the event of fire in the building. The spare apartment we were given had no heating or hot water on our last day and after numerous calls to the office this was not fixed, when we mentioned this on checking out, the guy in reception was rather unfriendly and said someone had been to fix it but again they forget to bother to communicate this to us. We complained again about the mess up with our original apartment and were told to write a letter or e-mail as there was no management in the offices and nothing could be done. Really shocking way to treat customers and no way to run a business. So all in all, a rather awful experience at the Scottish Apartments, and not somewhere I would ever stay again or recommend to anyone. Would be great to receive some sort of compensation for being totally misinformed and the money we spent on daily taxi’s and phone calls to the office. Let’s see if management bother to reply to our e-mail now. Save yourself the misery and find somewhere else to stay in what is truly and incredible city.

COMPLAINT
Scottish Apartment.com Head Office 6 Queen St Edinburgh

After staying in one of their apartments November 12th and 13th I emailed a letter of complaint, followed up by post. Further phone calls and emails have been made, but they have failed to give me the courtesy of any response at all.
On their web site they claim to have ‘the widest range of apartments in Edinburgh.’ If the quality of the one we stayed in is in anyway typical they are an appalling advertisement for the quality of accommodation and service.


My letter of complaint was as follows:
Dear David

Order Ref SA1540834
Nov 12th to 14th
Castle Aparthotel, 493 Lawnmarket

Thank you for the bottle of ‘bubbly’ and the apology for the mistakes in our bookings. Had the new apartments you gave us been adequate and fair value, your apology would have been accepted with grace, despite the fact that the apartment was a taxi ride away rather than a short walk to the place originally booked.

When we arrived at the 50 Broughton Rd Apartments on Friday 12th November we found the stairs and upper hallways in darkness. This was positively dangerous, particularly as bikes were being left in the stairwell. We mentioned this to your house staff and (to be fair) they rectified the situation. There was nothing in the apartment to say whether the stair lights were on a timer or not. If so the timer needs changing for winter accommodation, as it was quite inadequate when we arrived at c 16.30

I do not know when you, or one of your staff with responsibility for quality control, last inspected the apartments. Apartment 15 (and apparently Apartment 5) is certainly of poor quality – and, we would argue, unlettable at its present standard. Some of the issues are cosmetic, but some more serious.

In the bathroom there was no plug in the bath, although we could borrow one from the kitchen sink. But as the towel rail (the only heating in the bathroom) did not work, a bath was not a particularly appealing prospect. Added to this was a problem with the drains – when the kitchen sink was emptied the grease and pieces bubbled up into the bath, so the bath had to be cleaned each time the kitchen sink was used.
The bathroom floor was dangerous –there are cracked/broken tiles in front of the sink. Sooner or later someone is going to be injured with a cut foot from this.
The hot tap on the bathroom sink is loose and stuck. To ensure it does not drip it needs more than hand tightening and then cannot be used!

Not that this mattered too much as there was no hot water anyway on Sunday morning! (So no showers.)

The heating/hot water system for the rest of the flat seemed idiosyncratic. The system seemed to come on at night but be turned off in the day, meaning the flat was stifling at night and unusable during the day. No instructions or information were in the flat about the system so we had no way of gauging whether the system was not working properly, or just inadequate or on the wrong timing.

The kitchen equipment was totally inadequate (even for a purported 3 star apartment) There was one mug and two cups (without saucers). When we phoned about this and the other problems, we were provided with extra mugs – although this was of limited use as we could not make a cup of proper coffee. We were told you do not provide a cafetiere or jug for making coffee in (‘you have a kettle and instant coffee’) I have been in apartments of all levels world wide and I don’t think there has been one in the last ten years that has not provided proper coffee making facilities!

The whole ‘kitchen’ pretty much defied the definition – no grill, no oven, no coffee or milk jugs. Effectively unless one was just doing a fry up there was no way someone could cook a meal ‘in’.

Spare duvets were dumped on the floor in the hall cupboard but are stained with what looked like bloodstains and holed with cigarette burns.

On Sunday morning an alarm went off in the building. Although it did not come to anything we realised that there were no fire/evacuation instructions in the apartment.

Two drawers in the bedside table were broken, there is a large lump of plaster off the wall by the bedroom window, oh and the lavatory seat fell off.

You told us this was a 3 star apartment. I fail to see how this apartment can warrant stars of any sort, or command the virtual price of a central hotel. Who rated them Three Star? Is this an official rating by VisitScotland? In addition, our companion, who was placed in Apartment 5, was so appalled by the apartment and how far it was from town, that she left on Saturday morning and returned to Glasgow.

Your offer of free accommodation next time we visited Edinburgh (made before we had seen the apartment) seemed a fair offer at the time for the mix-up in bookings. I am sure you understand that our experience this time, and our lack of confidence in the quality of your other apartments, would hardly encourage a return to your properties.

I do think that if you inspect this property yourself you will agree that you would not be prepared to stay in it.

We look forward to your response, and hope you will make fair recompense for our inconvenience, downright discomfort, and unanticipated expenditure on taxis, breakfast and other meals out.
Yours
Mark Morpurgo

We got to Scottish Apartments at 6 Queen Street looking forward to our stay in a Luxury Apartment! We were placed in room 6 which is in the attic up three flights of very steep stairs with no lift available. When we finally got into the room it was basically a bedsit with a microwave oven for the cooking facilities. Pots were to be washed in the bathroom sink! It was very small too. We asked to be moved to a lower floor which we were. The room was bigger but the facilities were the same. These are NOT apartments and shouldn't be sold as such. That said, the accomodation was clean if basic and had a central location so for the price of £60 per night it is fair enough. However be aware it is not luxury accomodation in any sense of the word. If that is what you are wanting this is not for you.