I must have stayed the same time as richardhall99 and binman!

Stayed over the weekend, also using an Ambassador free weekend night.

Room Booked: 1 KING CLASSIC CLUB LOUNGE ACCESS CANARY WHARF VIEW
Room Received: This is where it gets interesting. The hotels own website and rooms for sale when booking via IHG do not match the names (necessarily). They also do not have room + club lounge access for all room types. The offered upgrade was a Junior Suite with no view (which we declined). A different Junior Suite was then offered (with a Canary Wharf view), but this was next to the elevator and was also an interconnecting room (not known when accepting). These are 2 big no nos for me (the sound proofing was poor), so in the end we took the booked room type with the offer to upgrade to a 1 bedroom suite on the 2nd night.

When we went to our room, it stunk of cigarette smoke. Housekeeping attended and deep cleaned the room, and the source was 'investigated'. Anyway, after a couple of hours, we were finally in a room and didn't fancy moving for the 2nd night, so kept this room for both nights. We were offered 20% off the room rate which was accepted.

I really want to love this hotel, but there were so many small things that went wrong. We spoke to Micaela from Guest Relations (who really was fantastic at trying to put things right), but eventually I sat down with Jessica, the Guest Relations Manager. She is relativity new, but it's clear she really wants things to improve - so asked the problems we encountered. General issues raised were:

The whole check-in experience, room allocations and room issues (smelling of smoke), which I did note that Micaela sorted.
The pool could do with a bit of TLC. Plenty of broken tiles in the hot tub (just left on the side), and the stairs into the pool were hanging off.
Charging £4 to borrow an umbrella is just silly. You're meant to be a 5* hotel, but regardless of what star rating you are, I've never had to pay to borrow an umbrella. If theft is high, then take note of the room number when giving out umbrellas and put a hold on the room which is removed if not returned.
Breakfast in the club lounge was painfully slow (as mentioned above). It took 40 minutes to receive scrambled eggs on toast (close to what I ordered, but not what I ordered). After 40 minutes, I ate what I was given.
Service in the bar (as mentioned above) was no where near a 5* hotel. Some members of staff were great, others were not. When using our free drink voucher, it felt like we were an inconvenience.

It was clear from my conversation with Jessica that she is on a mission to get the hotel back to a 5* service level. I wish her the best of luck and hope to see things improve.

They could do with an extra member of staff in the Club Lounge. I do not recall his name, but the chap there in the afternoon and evenings (sometimes breakfast) clearly cares about his guests and was running around doing all he could, but it was unfair for him to be doing that alone.

On the positive side, staff in the club lounge were great and I thought the food and drink offering were of a high standard. Evening canapés were plentiful and the alcohol selection, specifically beer and spirits were of a good range. I just wish they had Baileys! The hotel is in a good location (plenty of walks) and easy to get into London. I just hope the hotel stops this penny pinching mentality *cough* 1ply toilet paper *cough*!

Upon checkout, the £4 KitKat taken from the minibar was not removed when applying our £15 Ambassador credit. The member of staff checking us out stated it does not include the minibar. When I invited them to check the letter placed in the room (which stated it could be used on the minibar), the charge was removed 'this time' and the wording would be investigated.