Hotel Scheidberg Bed & Breakfast in Wallerfangen bei Saarlouis

Pros +

• The hotel is wonderfully located in the middle of the forest. It is very quiet. Good parking, dog-friendly. The decoration of the hotel has not changed since the 70s, staying there is a time travel, which I found rather pleasant. The hotel restaurant was open only for breakfast as it seems. Breakfast was OK. Buffet on first morning, no buffet on second, but food was brought to our table. Room was clean but of a different, lower standard of what was promised in the booking and pictures. It was smaller, had no balcony, and the bed was really old, creaky and noisy. Overall the hotel had a feel of being not only neglected, but almost abandoned. Overall, management of the hotel was cold, unfriendly, and unapologetic for their shortcomings. They really need to improve their communication. Not worth their advertised "4 stars"!
• Beautiful grounds with many walking and cycling trails immediately from them. Ideal for dogs - genuinely welcoming in all areas including the restaurant which is very relaxing as a solo dog owner
• Bad

Cons -

• When we arrived for check-in at 5pm, there was no staff anywhere, reception was empty, everything was dark. Our key had been left on the reception desk, without explanation on where to find the room. The room number was in the 300, so we went to the top floor (2), but the room was not there. As there was nobody around, we had to explore to find out where was the room located. Going to floor -1 (U), which was dark with zero light on, and smelled of abandon, with various equipment stored on the floor, we found a door to exit the building in the back, leading to an annex building, where rooms in the 300s are on ground floor, and rooms in the 400s are in its basement (-1). Not only the hotel is mostly empty, left in the dark, with a musty smell pervading its premises, the lift is switched off from 11pm to 7am. The wifi stopped working during nights. And the mobile phone network does not reach the room, you have to go out of the building to get a signal.At check-out, there was a sign that payment had to be made in cash only as the credit card machine was out of order. We were not asked for payment by the staff who took the key, so we thought it had been settled by our card through booking.com. It turns out it was not, and the staff had made a mistake. The hotel requested us by mail rather abruptly to make the payment by transfer, without any apology or recognizing their mistake. A lot of very poor communication on the side of hotel management, we would have liked to know in advance that the room we booked had been downgraded to a less comfortable one, but there was no information, and when we asked, no apology, only "rooms in main building are being renovated and not available, and anyway, you got a cheap price", blaming the discrepancies on booking.com... Not a professional attitude, not professional management, and we were left with a weird feeling about this place.
• Nothing!