Hôtel le Sauvage

Where do I start, it was awful and so bad we did not feel safe enough to stay - I have never had an experience like it. I should've known something was wrong because over the few months since we booked the hotel failed to answer various emails. I just wish we had not just relied on reviews from the booking site, but checked here and other places before we booked. When we got to the hotel, the room wasn’t ready and the hotelier said our three bank cards had been declined and he wanted us to go and get cash. We had heavy bags, the weather was in excess of 30 degrees and we'd been on the road for hours. We have evidence that all our card companies confirmed no attempt to take payment was ever made. This raised big fraud concerns which my card company agreed with. The hotelier didn't appear to like that I called my credit card company rather than get cash out and started to talk over my call and made gesticulations. I had to raise my hand to ask him to stop. Because the booking was guaranteed by credit card we felt sure he was trying to defraud us and get two payments (one in cash and one via Booking dot com). We've since discovered this sort of thing has happened before leaving customers out of pocket. The hotelier was rude, arrogant and aggressive - stomping around, closing doors and rattling keys. He was utterly dismissive & rude when we asked if his card machine might be broken. It's always possible one card might not have worked, but an attempt to take money would have been visible by the credit card company and there was nothing to suggest an attempt had been made to get payment. But for three cards from three separate banks to ‘fail’ - all functional and with credit feels extremely dodgy. There hadn't been a problem with any of them before visiting this hotel and there wasn't after. The credit card company said there was no reason their end it wouldn’t have worked. The company we booked the hotel through have been useless when we called for help leaving us feeling very unsafe in this man's company, not least because of the hotelier's aggressive behaviour towards us. It appears the hotel has a long standing reputation for taking too much money, not having rooms ready, bed bugs and turning families away late at night from rooms already paid for - a simple internet search provides some horrendous experiences over a number of years. I’m surprised Dijon council hasn't closed them down to be honest. We didn’t feel safe with this man, so we were forced to find another hotel - sadly three times the price, but the staff were lovely and actually opened up rooms they'd closed because of potential noise from a party. They were extremely shocked at how we had been treated. I have absolutely no trust in this hotel. We would've been safer sleeping in our car. I just hope I never experience anything like this again.