Refund Of Hotel Charges

[fredh]

Back in February I took my wife for a Valentine themed weekend at a Britannia hotel near Crawley.
I had booked us for the Saturday and Sunday night in a Executive room.
Despite arriving 3 hours prior to official check in, we was told that our room would be ready shortly. 3 hours later we finally got a room key.
On getting to the room we found that it was a family room with a double and single bed rather that a executive room with jacuzzi bath and other extra touches.
I returned to reception who eventually found us a Executive room.

Later that evening when we decided to use the bath the jacuzzi did not work. Reception sent someone up but they could not get it working either. they offered to move us to another Executive room. Before accepting I checked the room and found that the Jacuzzi in there did not work either. we remained in the room we had.

Part of the package was that a bottle of 'pink bubbly' would be in the hotel room. We got white fizzy wine.

The 'romantic' valentine meal was advertised as a 'candlelit dinner'. Yes there was candles on the tables, however, every other light in the restraunt was also on, far from romantic.

I complained to the reception the next morning and told them that i was far from happy with the standards the hotels were giving. I asked if there was any chance that they could accomodate me in one of their sister hotels for the Sunday night..

they found us a room in Brighton, an hours drive away, and we agreed to accept.

On arrival at the Brighton hotel the room they tried to allocate us was a 'standard' room, as no executives were available. Again I was not happy with this arrangement and the duty manager at Brighton contacted the duty manager at Crawley. I spoke with the duty manager at Crawley who agreed to refund me the cost of one nights accomodation (£61) and this would be credited to my credit card immediately. I accepted and we stayed at Brighton in a standard room.

On checking my credit card statement i found that no refund had been made.

I wrote to the hotel which stated that they were not prepared to give a refund as the duty manager had no authority to offer such a refund.

How do i stand having had a verbal agreement with the duty manager?

thanks Fred H

[Jester]

Re: Refund Of Hotel Charges

Most hotel chains have a customer charter which give you quality promises.

For example, Premier Inn state in their charter that if you are not completely satisfied with your stay then they will refund all or part of your money (or words to that effect - unfortunately I don't have a Premier Inn receipt nearby to get the exact wording).

I've had a look at the Britannia Hotels website but cannot see such a charter, but most will usually have such a charter as a leaflet or poster in each of their rooms.

I stay in a lot of hotels due to the nature of my work and find that most of the big chains (Radisson-Edwardian, Intercontinental, Hilton, Premier etc etc) take customer satisfaction very seriously. Indeed, any time I have made a complaint in the past I have often had offers of recompense or free nights. Now this may be to do with the fact that I am more often than not a corporate customer when I stay at these hotels, or it may not.

For example, after a bad experience at a Radisson-Edwardian hotel in London a few years ago, I wrote and complained to their customer services department and got offered a free weekend away in the hotel of my choice (from their chain of course). When I took up that offer I found they booked me into the very plush (and expensive) suites.

I can't comment on the legal aspects of this (other than to say that if you did not get what you paid for and what was promised then there must be something illegal about that unless they made a reasonable offer to put things right at the time), but sometimes making a serious complaint and just being a plain old pain-in-the-ass to them does get results. I can't why selling a hotel room should be any different in law to any other distance-selling protocols.

In these days of internet sites that rate hotels (such as TripAdvisor), it is in the interest of the hotel to try and maintain a good reputation else their trade tails off. People can and do make decisions on hotels based on other people experience ratings of such hotels (I know I do).

Britannia are not a big chain, but they are big enough that they should care about this.

My advice is to write a strongly worded complaint to their Head Office in the first instance and see where that gets you.

I am sure that someone who can adequately comment on the legal aspects will be along to add their opinion shortly.

Hope this helps.