Simon Calder: Every minute counts when you use a hotel phone

No complaints from me about my job description, which can loosely be summed up as "go to lots of places and pretend to work", but part of the duties include experiencing mediocrity so that you don't have to.

For every bar, gallery or shop that you read about in The Independent Traveller, the writer is likely to have visited another one that failed to make the grade. Space is at a premium, and we prefer to use it positively. So, you will not read about my unhappy visit to probably the only bad restaurant in Brussels, which provided a gastronomic disaster quickly followed by a gastric disaster. Nor will I dwell on a recent woeful boat trip in the Lake District. But my stay a fortnight ago at "the city's most stylish deluxe hotel", as the Park Plaza Leeds styles itself, bears repeating.

The Park Plaza says it is "a chic haven for sophisticated business and leisure travellers alike". Indeed, when you step off your train and out of the main entrance, the 20-storey skyscraper is right in front of you.

It was just me, surely. I walked most of the wrong way around the building before I hit a dead end, then retraced my steps and followed the building's perimeter until I found what looked like a service road. Here, hidden behind a parked car and a van, was a revolving door that led to the reception desk.

No complaints about the reception I got from the front-desk staff. At this stage, though, what I thought I had booked online diverged from the hotel's interpretation. I was convinced that the £95 room I had reserved included breakfast as well as bed, but the friendly receptionist assured me the booking was room-only.

"Smoking or non-smoking?" she asked. "Whichever is highest," I replied. She found a room on the 17th floor (non-smoking, as it happens), with a spectacular view facing south. Like every room in the Park Plaza, it was a "design-led bedroom", yet one seemingly so complicated that a card was provided to explain how the lights worked.

Every room is supposed to have a "walk-in power shower", but mine was missing: you had to stand up in the bath. One of the chrome contraptions that, in some combination, caused the shower to work, came off in my hand. After that I started trying to tick off all the headings in our regular 24-Hour Room Service slot.

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The section called "Keeping in Touch" was where I started to part company with the idea of writing a serious hotel review. For a start, the selection of viewing and listening: BBC News Channel had "no signal", while Radio 5 Live was nowhere to be found. Ah well, I thought, I can always listen online – but the LAN cable provided for the internet didn't work with my computer. Probably my computer's fault.

Worse was to come. As you know, the cost of telephony has plummeted, and most calls now cost next to nothing. Except at the Park Plaza. A notice warned that a 10-minute call from the hotel-room phone to a country outside Europe or North America would cost £97.70 – more than the price of the room. This seemed completely out of line with market rates.

Wilfried Persevalle, Park Plaza's regional director for sales and revenue, agrees that paying more for a 10-minute call than you pay for your room is unacceptable. He also says the call charges listed in the room were inaccurate: the true cost of a 10-minute call to somewhere outside Europe or North America is only £65. In other words you would have to stay on the phone for 15 minutes in order to exceed the cost of the room. But suppose you want to call a UK number outside Leeds? £1.10 is the rate. Even a "free" call to an 0800 number will cost £1.50.

"The charge is to cover the service cost incurred for collating the bills at the end of a guest's stay," says Mr Persevalle. "We consistently monitor market rates to ensure that we remain competitive with other UK hotels." If competition enables Park Plaza to charge £11 for a 10-minute call within Britain, then there's something wrong with the rules. Meanwhile, reflect before you connect.

Park Plaza, Leeds: 0113 380 4000; www.parkplazaleeds.com

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