George Powlett Apartments should not be recommended by your site!

Fawlty Towers meets its match
George Powlett Apartments in East Melbourne offers minus four star service. The manager’s mantra appears to be ‘the customer is a pain in the arse’.
We were bluntly refused an early check in. A fellow guest commented: “This place is straight out of the dark ages”. She proved to have portent as a fuse blew and our lights went out with a loud bang.
I thought a call to the manager would soon sort it out but was told to walk to the store, buy new fuse wire and fix it myself. I had no idea what to do with said fuse wire should I find some in my possession, but gamely braved the late-night walk.
The store didn’t stock what we were after. But my ‘not the man-shed type’ guy MacGyvered us a new one using tinfoil. Though impressed (and more than mildly surprised) I was left in fear of everything electrical. The hot water went back on though. And someone did arrive to replace the fuse the following day. Not the lightbulbs, just the fuse.
Call her crazy, but my daughter assumed the lights would now work. She turned them on, which promptly re-blew the fuse. I didn’t bother the manager this time, just passed my man his trusty tinfoil. Stubbornly deciding they should come with the room, I drew the line at buying new lightbulbs. And we passed our remaining evenings in darkness.
The only time I saw the manager smile was when we asked to use the internet. He’d just installed a wireless system and was keen for us to test it. Helpful as ever, I took my laptop along when requesting a refund, so he could see the error message and (hopefully) sort out why I couldn’t get online.
I was told his laptop connected just fine – though he didn’t offer to lend it to me. His inference was clear: my laptop and I were just being difficult. Feeling the need to prove the problem was real, I showed him the DNS error on my screen. His response: “This is why I didn’t want to go wireless, you end up acting as tech support.” Not that he had actually offered any ‘tech support’. He just handed me back my money, wordlessly and with a straight face. Basil Fawlty has nothing on him.
After we left (thankfully escaping without electrocution) my errant daughter said she’d left her passport in the room. We called the hotel to ask if they’d pop up and check. The unquestionably arduous climb up one flight of stairs and returning our phone call proved impossible.
We’d have to wait for the cleaning lady and manager to come back on shift before they could be troubled with such difficult questioning. This was would take three days. (It’s a fairly important US passport we’ve lost here, not some silly computer game.) Although immediately calling the staff to ask if they’d seen it was out of the question, the less-than-helpful receptionist did at least offer to call us back when she had news.
I waited the requisite three days and finally phoned the hotel, complaining they hadn’t been in touch as promised. More fool me. The receptionist brusquely replied: “I told you to call back on Thursday if you hadn’t heard from me, which, by the way, was yesterday”. Well, when put like that, I suppose my complaint was both tardy and baseless! Almost incidentally, no, she hadn’t found the passport.
During our stay we ‘enjoyed’ countless examples of similarly less-than-stellar customer service, but I think you get the picture. Like Fawlty Towers, George Powlett might well warrant its own TV series. But only the masochistic would actually visit.