we had a wonderful stay. Loved view and pool. Just wanted others to know we were charged $375 to much when I got my credit card statement!!!!!!!!!!

After faffing about on the hotels unbelievably slow website I booked four nights, then the web page disappeared at the point of confirmation and low, the reservation was lost and the cost went up by 50% with one night being totally unavailable. VERY unimpressive. The telephone team could not have been less helpful if they tried, which they didn't.

On arrival (9pm Sunday) reception was manned by three people, the one person who was actually helping customers was kept talking by a customer who was oblivious to the growing queue behind him. Finally another receptionist offered help.

Being charged $100 deposit for a key was a novelty I have not experienced before.

They forget to mention the ground floor is actually called floor 10!

The studio room had no view, well a brick wall!, but it was perfectly quiet and away from it all and fantastically well equipped in the kitchen, a laundry, ok bathroom, CD/DVD player, TV, phone etc The 'office' space was limited to sitting facing a wall in a corner and not possible to move with your own ethernet cable - the ones from reception (more deposits!) was a metre long.

I would stay, and am staying, there again only because of the location and facilities not because of the staff or service.

We stayed at Meriton Kent Street for 4 days in a two bedroom apartment, on our way from Sydney to New Zealand. Seems like most others we found the lifts a little slow at times but overall we had a great stay and found the receptionist very friendly and helpful. We forgot to pack some medication and the reception staff were very helpful in putting us in contact with a doctor. And we were very greatful that we could store our lugagge and go shopping on our last day.

The apartments we found were clean and had everything we needed. Loved having a washing machine and dryer - much better than a hotel!!

We will be back

We stayed 8 nights in a one bedroom apartment at the end of January. I booked direct with the Meriton on their website and paid the $194 per night x 8 nights up front. At the time of booking I requested a high floor.

We arrived at just before 1pm and an efficient but "superior" receptionist told us that we could have a room on floor 20 immediately or the planned room on floor 45 at 2pm. We decided to wait.

A note about reception, the desk is about 1.4m high and the staff on the other side are all seated. This makes it uncomfortable for someone short like me to fill out papers and deal with the staff. With the exception of the guy who checked us out all the recpeption staff were efficient but cold.

So when we got our room we were impressed. A large corner apartment with a nice sized bedroom and a well planned living/kitchen area. Nice touches in the layout were the facts that the bathroom and laundry were located at the end of the hallway by the front door to cause minimum disturbance to the bedroom and living room area.

The balcony was huge with a fabulous view of Darling harbour and even the airport in the distance. Cool to watch the 747's landing.

Unfortunately some of the details let the apartment down. All the knives were ridiculously blunt, despite getting someone up to show us how to work the oven we couldn't get it above 70 degrees, the handtowel rail fell off every day, one day the handle to the laundry came off in my hand. (This was fixed at no penalty charge to us by the time we returned the next day).

Internet is available in the room but was very expensive. Reception did provide a cable to us free of charge with no bond.

The room was well serviced daily but late in the afternoon which was a pain if you were back and wanted to relax.

The lifts were mostly ok, queues formed in the lobby on a couple of occasions but mainly because only 5 people would get in a lift with room for 15. One lift was out of order for the whole 8 days we were there.

The pool and jacuzzi were nice but I was put off when the hygiene guy took samples and then returned with a large sack of chemicals. The sauna did not work. Did not try the gym.

Our keycards worked without a problem for the whole 8 days. In a previous hotel my keycard had to be repeatedly reprogrammed because it would not work, until we discovered that having it in my bag next to my mobile phone demagnitised it.

One last thing you might consider is that if like us you get a room on the 45th floor you will discover that you are only on floor 35 above street level because the lobby and street access are on level 10!!!!! This means that level 20 is really rather low and therefore it is not surprising that it would be noisy from the street. At level 45 (35) we could hear traffic and sirens but no partying.