The hot water was a rumour.

A hotel room is a machine for washing and sleeping in, and when the basic services fail the claim is decided by dates: when you reported it, when they promised to fix it, and how long the gap stayed open.

Read this first

Get a fix time in writing, then hold the clock

Report the failure in writing the day it starts, and ask one question: when will it be fixed? Whatever they answer becomes the spine of the claim. A repair promised for tomorrow that is still promised for tomorrow four days later is not one failure, it is four documented ones, so send the same one-line message each day it remains broken — the date, the room, still no hot water. Thirty seconds a day, and it converts there were some problems with the water into a dated record nobody can argue with. Report first, though. A failure never reported is the one claim they can honestly say they would have fixed.

What you are owed

A refund in proportion to the days it was broken

You paid a nightly rate for a functioning room, so the claim runs by the day: one cold shower on a five-night stay is a modest claim, a week without heating in January is most of the booking. Season and severity set the proportion — a dead air conditioner in a heatwave can make a room unusable, and if it did, say so plainly and claim the night rather than a gesture towards it.

What the failure made you buy

The day pass at the gym across the road for its showers, the fan or the heater from the supermarket, the laundry when there was nothing to wash with. Reasonable, receipted and dated, these are the easiest lines in the claim to win, because arguing with a receipt costs them more than paying it.

The cost of leaving, where staying stopped making sense

If the room could not do its basic job and they could not say when it would, moving out is mitigation, not petulance. The rate difference on the replacement room and the transport belong in the claim, and a booking made at eleven at night two streets away is itself evidence of how bad it was.

How they will refuse, and what answers it

“The boiler failure was beyond our control.”

The boiler is their plant, in their building, on their maintenance schedule. The failure may have been bad luck; what happened next was policy. Ask in writing when it failed, when it was repaired, and what guests were offered in between — because the claim is not that machinery broke, it is that they kept selling rooms the machinery could no longer support.

“Air conditioning is not standard in this region.”

If the listing never offered it, they are right, and there is no claim — book differently next time. If air conditioning appeared in the amenity list you booked from, produce the screenshot and the refusal collapses. The listing is the promise; the region's habits are not.

“An engineer attended your room.”

Attendance is not repair. Ask for the maintenance log — when the engineer came, what was done, and when the service was actually restored — and put your own record against it: the time of each report you sent and each cold shower after it. The gap between attended and fixed is where this claim lives.

Gather this before you write

Video of the failure with the time visible — the tap running cold, the thermostat reading, the unit blowing warm air
Your first written report, with its timestamp, and the fix time they gave you
The daily one-line follow-ups for each day it stayed broken
The listing's amenity list as booked, showing hot water, heating or air conditioning as sold
Receipts for anything the failure made you buy, including a replacement room
The maintenance log, if they will produce it, and the date service was actually restored

Now make them answer.

Tell us what happened in your own words. We write the letters, set the deadlines, and email each escalation on the day it is due.