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.

Yes, I think I agree Rossetti. Maybe she had no energy or the inclination to be 'resourceful' at 1am in the morning and has every right to be pissed off and have a rant.

What some posters seem to be forgetting is that the OP is the CUSTOMER in this scenario.

This might be 'the norm' for the industry but why? Why are we (the customers) not kicking off & trying to get this practice changed?

Er dg didn’t you see the Hmm of irony ?

The reporter just wanted to make contact. Nothing interesting

Er dg didn’t you see the Hmm of irony ?

Not in Joey7t8s post ????????

I was the one you quoted. I was making the point it isn’t funny.

I actually think OP made the right call.

Don't they say driving tired is almost as dangerous as driving drunk? Op was in a strange city, in the dark and tired. Not driving around in the night, navigating strange roads, with roadworks, was the right thing to do.

Especially as pointed, there is no parking at the Ancoats Hotel, which would've had poor OP walking around a strange city at night and trying to navigate city center driving with one way systems.

It's not weedy to not want to endanger yourself and others by refusing to drive if you're tired. It is sensible.

I complained. Anyone else?

Hope OP is getting some refund/compensation.

Do you know, if after a day that started at 6.30 am, involved a full day of work and driving, arriving in an unfamiliar city at 1am to my pre-booked hotel room, I was told that I had no room - I think I would probably have sat and cried, and then gone to my car to sleep in it (or maybe been strong enough to say no way, I'm sleeping in the lobby but my bed is paid for here).

Particularly if there are motorway closures in the area that I don't know where they are or how to get around them. Or where exactly the alternative hotel is. Or how to get there even if there weren't closures. Or knowing if there definitely was a bed there.

I travel all over the world, and take all sorts of modes of transport. But I wouldn't get in a taxi at that hour in a strange place when I was so tired. Particularly not when the plans had so spectacularly fallen through and I reckoned that all the receptionist would want to do is export the problem and make it someone else's problem.

At 1am, as a 40 something lady, of independent mean, working FTOH, running various other activities, running the household while DH travels, and bringing up DD, and driving since I was 16 and confident on motorways.....yada yada yada

I would have done the same.

1am, after getting up at 6.30am the previous morning.

I would ABSOLUTELY have done the same.

And then raised merry hell in the morning.

But I don't see why the OP should be made to feel bad about not continuing on to find an alternative solution, to a problem not of her making, at that hour of the morning.

Do you know, if after a day that started at 6.30 am, involved a full day of work and driving, arriving in an unfamiliar city at 1am to my pre-booked hotel room, I was told that I had no room - I think I would probably have sat and cried

I don't know if the OP was travelling for work or pleasure, but if for your, your corporate H&S people would have an opinion about (a) driving until 1am on a day which started at 0630 and (b) driving the following day not having had a proper night's sleep. Because although not strictly illegal - car driving isn't subject to tachograph regulations - a lot of employers are extremely nervous about the implications of an accident involving an employee driving on company business for whom rest periods haven't been properly taken.

I know of several companies with multiple offices which have a table of "yes, you can go there and back in a day" and "no, you can't go there and back in a day" - one employ forbids day travel between Bristol and Manchester, for example, and quite right too.

Exactly Biddypop.
Easy for us to be resourceful and full of smug solutions in the middle of the day after a good nights sleep in our own beds. OP didn't have that luxury.

I don't see why people are calling the OP unresourceful. Shemade a bed for herself where she needed to and sorted herself out in the morning. She would have prefered what she paid for or an alternative she felt comfortable getting to.

I can totally see that at 1 am after a long day, with the place I thought I would be sleeping turning me away and the alternative they are prepared to offer seeming somewhat dangerous to drive to in my current state, and with my decision making somewhat impaired by fatigue, I would bed down in my car overnight rather than spend goodness knows how long on my phone trying to find a bed somewhere I thought I could safely drive to after the Travel Lodge receptionist failed. Sleeping in your car is uncomfortable but it can do the job enough to make you safe to drive in the morning and I would certainly see that as preferable to trying to navigate roads I didn't know and diversions if I'd already been pushing it to get to the place I was at.

The OP wasn't "made" to sleep in her car, but then it is legally impossible for a company to force an individual to sleep in their car. The OP wasn't given an alternative that was preferable to sleeping in her car though. And her choice to do so, in the circumstances, wasn't an unreasonable one.

I'd have done the same too.
Am quite frankly disgusted that the OP is being berated for sleeping in the car rather than driving exhausted to find a room for the night.
It is so so dangerous to drive when tired.

How much arguing would you want to do at 1am after being up for so long when the person your arguing with is just saying
“No”

And you just want to sleep

All airlines and large hotels overbook. It makes more profit for them, it keeps costs down for customers and in the case of airlines it helps the environment by making sure planes don’t fly partially empty. It’s not going to change. But those huge benefits come at the cost of the occasional victim who gets bumped. The airlines/hotels need to put aside a fraction of the huge savings they make by overbooking and set them aside in a budget for really making it up to the few people who get stuck with the shitty end of the stick.

Much easier for the airlines because they have everybody arriving at the same time and can do a reverse bidding war to see who cares least and will accept the lowest bribe.

Much more difficult for hotels operating on a first come first served basis who’ll be faced with someone who might be really desperate for their bed at 1 in the morning and can’t very well ring round every room saying “Anyone happy to get up and take a trip to South Mims in return for 50 quid?”. But the principle remains the same: they make a lot of money from this practice so they need to spend some of it compensating the resulting casualties.

I guess I’m being unreasonable calling the OP unresourceful. Some people are just very good at dealing with whatever problems life throws at them and at any time of day or night - we all know people like that. However, I accept that the hotels (and airlines) are very shitty to have this policy and a lot of people would have just done the same.

Haven't RTFT, but in support of the OP, there might well be some Travelodges nearby but the road closures in that area at night are horrific. The detours make no sense, and to travel around that area is very confusing and tricky

I say this as someone whose journey from work to home at midnight normally takes half an hour. Taken an hour before now, bloody nightmare.

I don't think driving when tired is sensible either, think about it, really.

Bloody hell OP hope you are ok now? I won't be staying at Travel Lodge again - they have treated you disgracefully. Anyone trying to 'victim blame' needs to remove their head from their sphincter and fuck right off.

Saw up thread that someone had experience of a male travelodge member of staff walking into their room unannounced in the middle of the night. That happened to me at Euston at 2am- a strange bloke walked into my room. I screamed at him and he ran away. I went down to reception to complain and the male receptionist said it was him- no explanation of why. Travelogue never even responded to my complaint. I would never EVER stay at a travelodge again.

@rockimere and @biddypop I totally agree.
I regularly drive long distances on the continent and stop off in similar kinds of hotels. Part of the problem i would imagine for the op is that she would have bern psyched up only to drive that far, really tired as 1am and as you switch engine off in car park, you kind of lose any ability to do anything else other than get into your bed. I too would have slept in the car rather than risk driving. I may have taken taxi, but that wasn't offered by TL.

I regularly drive long distances on the continent and stop off in similar kinds of hotels.

I would be pretty hacked off if a Formula 1 turned me away.

Mind you, these days I'd be pretty hacked off to be staying in a Formula 1: those days are behind me. I've progressed to Ibis now, because I am classy.

Yanbu op. Hope you get a refund and compensation.

No closures last night? Just found this on FB
Smart Motorways: Manchester
Tonight's slip road and link road closures are as follows

All of those M60 & M62 closures are on the other side of Manchester, not where the OP was ... but she wasn't to know that. Even I struggle with junction numbers around the M60, and I'm local I have to work it out knowing that Stockport is J1.

The OP had paid for the room and phoned to say she would be late, as I understand it. Whether or not she could have driven to another hotel is a red herring; the room was paid for, and should have been hers. If she’d been a no-show they would still have had her money.

Read and consumed info, surprised TL haven't been on yet with grovelling apology. I may have done same as op or not, myself, depending on how feeling. Cars lock and I'm quite short so could probably be ok comfy on back seat. Early start with the sun though...

Whether others would have/ not done same is neither here nor there. To turn a woman away at one in morning from a room that is fully paid in advance is appalling. I knew they double booked but I didn't realise that was with the paid up in advance as well, that seems totally out of order to me.