Overview

My visit to this branch of Waterstones was deeply unsatisfactory. All sorts of unpleasant difficulties right from the front doors. Impossible to reach some areas within the shop because the display tables are so huge and the gaps around them so narrow. The only really good thing about my visit was (with one unpleasant exception) the delightful members of staff I met around the shop.

Transport & Parking

The nearest step-free station is Tottenham Court Road, which is half a mile away. Several bus routes will drop you very near by in Gower St. Several bus routes pass down Tottenham Court Road, which is one block away (about three minutes walk/roll).

Access

There is step-free access at most entrances but no automatic doors, and the double doors are heavy and stiff and very hard for a wheelchair user to open and pass through because you have to open both doors at the same time - one open door is too narrow for a wheelchair user to pass through. There is, at last, a good and new lift to all floors, located towards the Malet Street end of the building. There is too little room throughout the shop for a wheelchair user to manoeuvre, the display tables are huge and the gaps around them are too small for most wheelchair to pass through. Whole areas, entire sections, entire ranges of bookshelves, are therefore inaccessible to wheelchair users.

Toilets

I did not find any toilets of any kind. If I find a toilet in future I will update this review with details.

Staff

Almost all the staff I encountered were utterly charming and keen to be proactively helpful. One member of staff deserves special praise for outstandingly friendly, helpful and delightful customer service, I found him in the basement on the afternoon of 19th April 2025, at the till nearest the artists' materials section, I didn't get his name, but he can be identified by his fringe and his youthfulness. The world needs more booksellers like him! On a subsequent visit (9th May 2025) I asked another member of staff, a middle-aged man with grey hair who was working in the languages department, to pass on my request to make at least some of the entrance doors to the shop electric and automated, to improve access for wheelchair users. To my astonishment his manner was both insolent and condescending: he told me that as the building was listed this would not be possible. This is not true - hundreds of listed buildings have electric automated doors and in any case the doors are all shabby, nondescript late 20th century doors, of no historical value or interest whatsoever. He also claimed that the doors are always pinned open in pairs, which is again not true - at most one of each pair of doors is pinned open at any given time, and a single open door is too narrow for a wheelchair user to pass through. It was an altogether horrible encounter, and his obnoxious manner was very bad PR for Waterstones. I'm very surprised they allow him to work in any sort of customer-facing rôle. The managers of the shop are severely reprimanded for placing such large display tables all around the shop, creating barriers for wheelchair users, and for failing to install electric doors to facilitate ingress and egress for wheelchair users.

Anything else you wish to tell us?

This was in so many ways an unhappy shopping experience. The entrance doors alone, heavy double doors, not automatic, are enough to deter me from ever visiting this branch again. The member of staff I discussed the doors with (see above) is an absolute disgrace. Does Waterstones not realise that disabled people spend money too, and that they are losing business by making their shop so dismally inaccessible?