Hawthorne House 

We stayed here on the weekend of 3/4 May 08 to attend a wedding. Booked a double room months in advance for £65 a night inc breakfast. Arrived to find nowhere to park (even to unload) - not mentioned on website or in email exchanges with owner. Two teenagers were running the place, they weren't sure where we could park either - turns out to be a public car park 1/4 mile away. Then the downstairs was a total mess as it turned out there had been a flood the week before. So no sitting room, nowhere to eat breakfast. No mention of this before we arrived, no explanation, no apology. We had to eat breakfast on our knees in our bedroom (not so easy with a full Scottish balanced on a bed). The owner finally showed up on the Monday as we checked out. We complained about the lack of communication as we would have liked the opportunity to have found somewhere else to stay. (It turned out she had booked some of her other guests into alternative accommodation). We also asked for a discount as the quality of the accommodation was not as we had been expecting. She became very abusive saying she wouldn't have taken our booking if she'd know we were 'those kind of people' She said we already had a discount as she'd given us a family room (which we hadn't asked for or wanted) and so the £65 per night bill was now a 'discount'. Given that this was the original price we had agreed to, we didn't see it that way.

We booked the family room at Hawthorne House for a one night stay (3/5/07), it was a very special trip to celebrate our wedding anniversary, we booked a couple of days in advance and gave an estimated arrival time of 7-8pm but explained it could be later as we had a 4'5 hour journey with 2 children. The owner said this was fine, that it didn't really matter when we arrived as long as she had a rough idea.
We arrived just after 9 only to be told that she had "just that second given the room away"!!! she refused to tell the other people about her mistake as she said that would be unfair them to them.. never mind that we had just travelled
for hours to get to the place that we had a secured booking for (had left credit card details and everything).
This left us miles from home, with 2 very tired children and nowhere to stay.

Owner cancelled on us 2 weeks prior to booking date, due to a double booking (which just happens to fall on the weekend of the Scotland vs Ireland 6 nations rugby match - just try getting another hotel in Edinburgh for less than £100 person per night!!!) When I telephoned (after wasting my day trying to book another B&B) to see if they would help us out with any compensation as the error was their fault, the owner was very rude, stated she had given us plenty of notice (yeah, right!) and actually put the phone down on me. I phoned back and managed to get her name, but she refused to discuss anything else. Please DO NOT use this hotel if you actually want a trouble free break!