Travel lodge. Am fucking fuming

[IAmNoAngel]

I am currently bedding down in the car park of the travel lodge at Birch services on the M62 as the room I booked and paid for over a month ago has been double booked and there are no rooms left.

Am especially pissed off as have driven here straight after a 6.30 start this morning and a long day at work... in Nottingham. So a nice tiring drive as well.

I have stayed here a lot. I never will again. Cunts.

Hadron it isn't anything to do with being 25 then, just to do with personality or anxiety. By 25 it's not age related!

Yes, I suppose she could have been at the point of absolute exhaustion, almost collapsing with fatigue when she arrived at the first Travelodge

After a day at work, several hours driving to arrive late, needing to be up and alert to see a client the next morning - yes I certainly would not be driving across a city I don't know with unclear road closures in the middle of the night.
This is entirely TLs fault and their failure to sort it out.

The only time I have been stopped by police whilst driving was due to fatigue. I hadn't even realised my driving was being affected.

The op clearly stated the other travel lodges were also full and turning people away. As they offered her another hotel, I'm sure if the one down the road has space they would have booked that first ffs.

To be honest, I'd also not have slept in my car, I'd have found another hotel but we are all different.

Either way, this is shit treatment and I hate companies that pull this double booking crap. It really puts me off ever using them because you're just not certain you will get a room. Easy jet also pulls the same shit.

Basically they are capitalising on a certain amount of guests just not turning up, so they get both that guests money and the guest who gets the rooms money. The issue arises when both guests turn up, then one is fucked and they have to refund. It's pure greed.

I have worked stupid hours with a few hours between shifts so I get the tiredness. She’s had a long day but so long she can’t manage to go to a nearby hotel?! Rubbish.

I would have paid a taxi, got a receipt and claimed it back before I slept in a car.

Driving while tired can amount to dangerous / careless driving, it's a seriously bad idea. It's hard to prove so the chances are that unless you cause a crash doing it (such as the tired driver who caused the Selby rail crash which killed ten people) you wouldn't be prosecuted, but "probably won't be prosecuted" isn't the greatest standard on which to base a decision to drive while impaired. I think the OP made the right call to sleep in her car rather than risk driving further in the middle of the night.

Hillingdon - Why would you use Travelodge now, though, when other cheap hotel providers are so much better?

It's a bit like the difference between, say, Kwiksave in the 90s and Lidl/Aldi now. Kwiksave was such a godawfully horrible experience - you were absolutely made to feel like a pauper in that shop, with horrible packaging of horrible goods in a horrible environment. Now, Aldi and Lidl work hard to deliver great quality food for cheap prices in a way that doesn't feel quite so much like you're being punished for not having so much money to spend. Travelodge are the Kwiksave, Premier Inn the Aldi!!

Also, Travellodge Covent Garden is one of the worst hotels I have ever stayed in. Lino floors, fluorescent strip lights, furniture bolted to the floor, and no window at all last time I stayed. Godawful.

Can MNHQ please put a comprehension test on the registration page? This gets ever more fucking ridiculous

TheIcon

I'm amazed anyone tho is this is acceptable or that the OP was remotely at fault or should have done something differently.

She booked and paid for a room. She did nothing wrong. Even by Mumsnet standards it's a bit of a push to be anything other than 100% with the OP on this one!

Storm
IYRTT, I have said all along that Travellodge are in the wrong.
I am interested to know why the OP - who travels independently for work and has stayed in this (motorway) hotel may times didn't think to ask about all the other hotels nearby & stand her ground for a taxi if she felt she needed one.
Perhaps she did all of the above. We don't know because she hasn't said.

I would have paid a taxi, got a receipt and claimed it back before I slept in a car.

Claim it back from whom?

TL didn't even hold her prepaid room, TL staff couldn't authorise a taxi. Who was going to refund her?

This happened to me about 12 years ago at a Premier Inn (pre-merger and still called Premier Lodge I think) and the receptionist rang every single hotel, B&B and guesthouse in the near area until she found somewhere for me to stay.

Didn't stop me complaining to hotel chain management of course, but the receptionist couldn't have been more helpful.

I was quite panicked though - the thought of arriving somewhere you don't know at night following a long drive and then finding out you have nowhere to spend the night is really horrible whether you are 25, 45 or 75.

Morse
The OP could know the hotel or the chain well, that doesn't mean she knows the area well, given where the hotel is located.
There was no prepaid cab
It was ot on route/disruption to timings in the morning were a real possibility
The hotels are busy so as for all of the rooms being free, there are hundreds of workmen in the area for the road works where do you think they are staying?
Hundreds if not thousand(s) of fans travelling into the area for the match where do you think a good chunk of them are staying?
Then there is the school holidays which always boost occupancy for a range of reasons

@ItalianCortado

I'm amazed anyone tho is this is acceptable or that the OP was remotely at fault or should have done something differently.

Yeah isn't it AMAZING that people have different views, different opinions, different trains of thought, and people question what some people say if they find it a bit outlandish?

Jesus fucking wept.

No-one thinks the double booking policy is a great idea, but some of us are finding it very hard to believe the travelodge would have MADE the OP sleep on the car park ...

So I call bullshit on that one...

And no I don't work for them!

stand her ground for a taxi if she felt she needed one

She said the staff can't authorise a taxi. TL business model is minimal staffing. That is why they are cheap. No amount of standing your ground will enable the receptionist to authorise that payment.

Blunt: The op clearly stated the other travel lodges were also full and turning people away
No, she stated that the one on the opposite side of the carriageway was also full. (There are two hotels side by side).

C8H Would be doing my upmost to claim it back from travel lodge esp with other posters stating that’s in the terms and conditions. Or I would have sucked it up myself if I had made the decision not to drive.

It sucks and the op shouldn’t have been in that position, but she was and had to deal with it. Hell would have frozen over before I slept in a car when there are other options.

No-one thinks the double booking policy is a great idea, but some of us are finding it very hard to believe the travelodge would have MADE the OP sleep on the car park
So I call bullshit on that one

This ^

This happed to me once at a hotel in Cyprus. They said they didn't have our booking. That we would have to spend 4 days at a different hotel and then be moved back.

I said I hadn't booked a multi site holiday. I would stay in 1 hotel for 2 weeks and wouldn't move. They said it wasn't possible.

An hour later with me still in reception refusing to budge, they admitted they did have spare rooms at the hotel. But they were sea view and unless I was prepared to pay for an upgrade I couldn't have one. I told them it wasn't my problem they couldn't allocate their rooms properly and I wouldn't be inconvenienced for their issues. In the end I got the sea view room. For no extra money. And was treated to stink eye looks from the receptionist for the duration of my stay.

catin
Hadron it isn't anything to do with being 25 then, just to do with personality or anxiety. By 25 it's not age related!

Yeah you're right actually. That is totally true about the anxious personality thing. This makes me slightly less judgemental of my younger self. I think that's the quickest bit of self resolution I've had ever!

Bloody infuriating.

Happened to us with a JUry's Inn in Ireland - 4 of us going for a wedding. Having booked rooms months in advance, and told them we wouldn't be arriving till about 10 pm, I then phoned them ON THE MORNING OF OUR ARRIVAL to remind them that we were coming from London and wouldn't be arriving till 10 pm ish.

Arrived to find our rooms had been given away.

Luckily I did not have to explode, since Irish friends who were waiting for us in the bar, exploded instead - and probably considerably more spectacularly.

They did manage eventually to find us somewhere else.
Needless to say, would never choose a Jury's Inn again. Ever.

We operate a relocation policy (for more detail on why would it be necessary for you to be relocated
If a room is unavailable on arrival (other than due to an event beyond our reasonable control then we agree to either:
provide a room, and subject to availability any equivalent Extras which you have booked, in another Travelodge hotel and pay the reasonable cost of transport to that alternative hotel or any applicable car park charges; or
provide a room in a third party hotel and pay the reasonable cost of transport to that alternative hotel or any applicable car park charges; or at your request or, if in our reasonable opinion there is no suitable alternative hotel accommodation available, cancel your booking and refund you any money you have paid in advance for the unavailable room(s) including related food & beverage Extras (all other Extras are non-refundable).

A two min google search on T&C travellodge confirms that OP should have stood her ground.
They pay for transport as part of their 'relocation' policy.

Pay peanuts get monkeys

Totally uncalled for comment.

a) - Many VERY capable people work in minimum wage/ zero hours jobs just because THERE IS NO OTHER WORK!

b) - Intellect and/ or wage scale is no indicator of empathy or courtesy

c) - there are plenty of people who are in ridiculously high-paying jobs who wouldn't give a toss about whether they chucked a family with newborn triplets out into the snow if 'computer says "no" '

d) - minimum wage is not only crap to live on, but it generally means that the worker is at the front line ie - no authority to do anything about the system, but comes in for all the flak and the abuse

You sound a bit of a tosser dad

@Thelcon

'Oh for God's sake, of course she thought it was worth ringing to let them know.

She fucking said she did just that.

Can MNHQ please put a comprehension test on the registration page? This gets ever more fucking ridiculous.'

I don't think the OP told them on the day or when she was enroute that she was taking up the room. I took it from what she said that she said that at the time of booking which isn't the same at all, if that is the case, Any crisis could have changed her plans between booking and arriving.

I would have paid a taxi, got a receipt and claimed it back before I slept in a car.

And if she has no cash on her? Was she supposed to walk or drive around in the dark in an unfamiliar area looking for a cash point?

In OPs situation I would have done exactly what she did. YANBU at all OP but it doesn’t usually take long before posters arrive telling you what they’d have done differently and how much better an option it was than the one you chose

queen We can’t cover every eventuality! Ok then, I would have found a taxi company that accepts cards, is that better?