What a let down... Such a shame.
I recently booked 3 nights accommodation at The Mark. I have been to NYC many, many times, normally staying downtown at the likes of: The Bowery; Soho Grand; Mercer etc. On this trip I decided it might be nice to do something totally different for the first few nights of my 12 day stay and book a good hotel uptown or on the Upper East side. After a fair amount of research on the similar hotels in this area, which hold a 5 star rating akin to The Mark, I decided to go ahead and book a Madison King Room. I have pretty high standards when it comes to hotels, travel a decent amount and I work in an artistic field so therefore apart from basic requirements deemed necessary in a hotel such as; good service, quiet rooms, bed quality, cleanliness etc., I am personally always very drawn to the small design details and décor of a hotel, therefore based on what I saw from The Mark website and its status as one of NYC's nicest and most luxurious hotels, it looked beautiful to me and I very much looked forward to staying.
My husband and I flew in from the West Coast after flying from Sydney (20+ hours of travel) and arrived at The Mark at around 8.30pm on a very rainy Sunday night. The desk staff were nice enough, no major faults there, although honestly there is a somewhat snotty, pretentious feel about the place. It's fine if you like that sort of atmosphere (which I realise is all part of that 'UES NY' atmosphere and was half expecting it) but we found it a tad cold and insipid, it lacks warmth. You can still do 'refined UES' but be less wooden and stiff about it if that's the main agenda at your establishment due to the neighbourhood you are located in.. It all just comes across painfully stereotypical and rather boring. 
We checked into our room and waited for about 20 minutes for our bags to be brought up. I was very impressed with the cleanliness of the room, the design was lovely, very stylish and it was spotless, as was the bathroom. Literally gleaming and it had a very cosy, glamorous and comfortable feel. The mini bar was good and wonderfully there was a large freezer section full of ice – so during your stay you have ice 'on-tap' so-to-speak ~ one feature I loved. We headed downstairs to meet a colleague for a drinks in the hotel bar then retired to the room and booked some room service food.
This is where it all when majorly downhill. Whilst I was waiting for the food I decided to take a deep bath, I was shattered after all the travel, the bath was great, great that is until I went to unplug it. After several attempts on both my husband's part and mine, we surmised it was totally broken and we'd have to call reception for them to organise a plumber. (BTW the plug in the sink was totally blocked too). A plumber was sent up at around 11.30pm who set about trying to fix the bath. At 12.45am he was still there and unable to fix the plug, so was shovelling bucket loads of my bath water into the shower, the room was a mess. Following this we got 40 minutes of incessant loud banging as he went at the plug with a crowbar (or what sounded like something similar). It was 15 mins into this stage that my husband went to the front desk to say we would need to be moved to another room as we were unable to get to bed for the previous almost 2 hours due to said hammering in bathroom at almost 2am. 
Whilst my husband was at the front desk he received a very flippant and disinterested attitude from the receptionist. He asked that we were moved as it was getting onto 2am and we needed to get some sleep. He was told there were no rooms available other than one smaller than the one we had paid for and if we moved that's where we would be for our 3 days stay. They also told him the hotel was otherwise fully booked for the Monday and Tuesday – call me a cynic, but on a Monday and Tuesday night in early April in this area, I am instinctually feeling this was a lie. Also when I checked online in the room from my laptop, every form of room from a Madison King to their Penthouse was available to book… (Why on earth don't hotels cop on to that fact guests can tell when they are lying about room availability by simply checking online ?!!). During my husband's time downstairs the plumber (a really nice guy BTW) came into my room, dripping in sweat from all his efforts saying it was totally unfixable and he wasn't sure how he could fix it the next day either.
I was pretty disgusted at this attitude from the front desk. Fair enough if we were in a 1 or 2 star hotel, but their entire attitude was snotty and cold and totally unacceptable for the level of hotel they claim to be. Had she said; "I am so sorry we are full tonight, would you mind staying in the room or the smaller one and out of courtesy we will move you to a better or same level room tomorrow?" that would have been utterly fine, also, we were very unimpressed that she never checked with the plumber after 15 or 20 mins to see how things were going as she would have been aware we were hanging around waiting for him to fix it. 
We decided to stay the night and check out the following day as I'm not interested in forking out money to hotels who blatantly show they don't give a fiddlers about you unless you are paying for their Presidential suite. When my husband ventured down again to tell reception we would be leaving the following morning he was met with a stunned 'rabbit caught in headlights' stare from both female and male receptionists, who suddenly started pleading was there "Anything at all they could possibly do?", "Could we upgrade you to a better room tomorrow sir??!" What a joke, 30 minutes previous we were told there were "no other rooms available" other than a pokey lower level one. The following morning upon checking out we were asked how we enjoyed our stay? When we replied 'Very disappointed" yet again, another 'rabbit caught in headlights stare' from the morning staff who then mentioned "was there some issue with your bath plug, I see a brief note here, I am so sorry, next time please come and stay with us and I will ensure you are upgraded"… The whole way they handled themselves was almost embarrassing esp. when they claim to be 5 star. 
When we decided on the Sunday night at 2am to leave, I booked a room immediately at The Greenwich Hotel in TriBeCa and we moved there first thing Monday morning. Which, within second of walking into, was warm, inviting, friendly, cosy, incredibly decorated and totally welcoming, they have service and details down-pat. In hindsight I was actually totally delighted The Mark treated us the way they did as if not, I wouldn't have moved hotels and had a wonderful 2 night stay there will 100% return to The Greenwich on my next NYC trip. It is without a doubt the best hotel I have ever stayed at in New York. 
On an end note, if you do decided to stay at The Mark… a tip, book a room away from Madison Ave, during our one and only night stay, I must add the room was crazy noisy, at around 5.30 or 6am we were awoken by the irritating, high-pitched, repetitive beeping noise of a truck reversing, or maybe it was a bus as it happened about 6 or 7 times between this time and 8am… aka zero sleep from 6am onwards. Fantastic when we only got to bed 4 hours earlier. In addition this was only made my annoying in addition to the loud humming all night long of the air conditioning unit which were found utterly impossible to turn off. 
Really disappointing overall and a really awful way to start a long anticipated break away in NYC.