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Premier Inns

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  • Premier Inns

    In Autumn of last year the King Tutankhamun exhibition was being advertised and my wife expressed an interest in attending. It was her birthday during November and I arranged with Hilton Hotels for a room and tickets to the exhibition for the following day. Hilton however, were useless and so I tried the exhibitions other hotel partner, Premier Inns.

    What followed was a farce.

    They assured me the booking was made, took my details and then did nothing more. I chased them up and was told I would receive a call back. I did not receive a call. I chased again and commented on how difficult it was to spend money with them and was promised, once again, a call back. I did not receive a call. When I chased them a third time, with less than a week to go before the birthday, I was told the tickets were not yet on sale - but were sold out for the day I wanted...

    I managed to get two tickets, five weeks later and when they finally arrived, they were for the wrong day. Most of the rest is in the following letter to the Chief Executive of Whitbread PLC, the owners of Premier Inns.

    I am not so naïve as to assume that Alan Parker will even see my letter, much less read it, but somebody will and that somebody will not want it to get any closer to Alan Parker than absolutely necessary.

    In any case, they are somewhat hoist by their own petard by foolishly offering full refunds to anyone who is not "100% satisfied" when it is clear that they cannot organise a ****-up in a brewery, which is perhaps why in spite of the company history, they have halted all interests in brewing.


    Alan Parker,
    Chief Executive
    Whitbread Group PLC
    Whitbread Court
    Houghton Hall Business Park
    Porz Avenue
    Dunstable
    LU5 5XE2
    10th March 2008

    Dear Mr Parker

    “Our aim is to brighten peoples lives, whether they are guests, employees, partners or part of the communities in which we operate.” Alan Parker, Chief Executive

    So often it is the case that companies preach much but practice little.

    During early November of last year I attempted to book tickets to the King Tutankhamun exhibition with your company, Premier Inns. I must confess, you were my second choice but since Hilton Hotels made a complete pig’s ear of my booking, I contacted Premier Inns instead and was pleasantly surprised to be offered both the tickets I wanted and a room at your hotel in Docklands on the night I wanted them for.

    However, my joy was short lived, as it transpired that the tickets, although not even on sale, were sold out for the date I had chosen – quite a feat in itself as I am sure you can agree.

    Despite my longing to spend money being ignored, I persisted valiantly in my attempt to force my cash on your company. After numerous telephone calls and several email messages, I was finally able to secure a set of tickets, albeit for a date over a month later than I had originally been assured I would get, or so I thought. I was sent the tickets but they were valid for the wrong dates and I was forced to order another pair, meaning more wasted time on the telephone, where once again I had the joy of experiencing how your company ignores people who want to spend money with you. In addition, the tickets were sent in a plain white envelope with no attempt whatsoever made to draw attention to the fact that the envelope contained anything important and they were very nearly discarded as junk mail.

    At long last, although disappointingly five weeks later than planned, I did stay at your Docklands hotel but was then overcharged for my stay. After weeks of steadfastly insisting that I pay your company and in the face of stiff opposition, fuelled by incompetence and indifference you finally agree to let me handover my money and then you take too much.

    This in itself should be enough, but, incredibly, there is more.

    I was going to let it go, really I was, but now I am being sent emails promoting your company and its services.

    As a consequence, I sent an email to your company after following a link contained within one of the email messages. I have attached a copy of the receipt that I received, informing me that I could look forward to a resolution within 5 working days.

    To date, I have yet to receive a response, much less a resolution.

    Such a low level of service is a nasty cancer that will most certainly spread in attitude throughout your organisation. However, this is now brought to your attention and like me, you must wonder how many individuals even bother sharing with you their experiences.

    I would like to make clear my dissatisfaction with the entire experience I received from your company. I am left feeling frustrated and disappointed and this is not what you pledge as your stated aim, part of which I have quoted at the head of this letter and it is most certainly not in keeping with the boast I find on your website that states “…Premier Inn is 'Consistently Extraordinary'

    Finally I would like to leave you with another piece quoted from your website, “…the Premier Inn brand offers the 100% satisfaction guarantee – if you’re not happy, you get your money back.” It seems absurd of me to request my money back, even under your own guarantee, having tried so hard to give it to you, but the truth is, you do not deserve it.

    Accordingly, I am providing you with my booking number in order that you can repay me the sums spent with your company - XXXXXXXXXXX

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    Yours sincerely

  • #2
    Re: Premier Inns

    Marvelous!

    Do let us know what happens.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Premier Inns

      On the rampage again then hun, I'm looking forward to watching you in this latest of your battles.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Premier Inns

        they might send lenny henry round to humour you to death!

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Premier Inns

          This bit made chuckle a lot - you never let anything go!

          "I was going to let it go, really I was"

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Premier Inns

            Originally posted by stevokenevo View Post
            they might send lenny henry round to humour you to death!
            I suppose that might work - except that he was never funny, ever, at all, not even remotely, once.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Premier Inns

              Originally posted by Xena View Post
              This bit made chuckle a lot - you never let anything go!

              "I was going to let it go, really I was"
              I had rationalised that they were cheap for a reason (they were £200 less than Hilton quoted) and had they left me alone, I really would have just chalked it up to experience. But they took my visit as a tacit acceptance of my wish to be bombarded with emails exhorting me to come and repeat the experience.

              There is a reason I use the Centurion concierge service and I really must exercise more discipline and not do these things myself.
              Last edited by Cetelco; 11th March 2008, 13:35:PM.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Premier Inns

                I am so sorry you had a crap time considering it was for your wife's birthday too, however your letter is fantastic, it really cheered me up. I love the wording made me really giggle, cant wait to see what happens.....

                Hugs xxxxx
                Scarlet

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Premier Inns

                  just in case anyone didnt get it.....

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Premier Inns

                    LMAO stevo i was wondering what the connection to lenny henry was.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Premier Inns

                      Ok I called them yesterday because they emailed me again, twice last week and again yesterday and I had still not heard from them. Magically they were dealing with my letter right at that moment.

                      There was some problem with getting through which further serves to demonstrate that you really do get what you pay for.

                      This morning, I received the following letter.

                      Dear Cetelco

                      Thank you for your recent letter addressed to Mr Alan parker which has been passed to myself for investigation and reply.

                      Please accept my sincere apologies for the disappointment caused to you with regard to a booking for the Tutankhamun exhibition. At Premier Inn we always strive to provide our customers with a high standard of service and I am sorry that on this occasion we failed to achieve this.

                      Further to our telephone conversation, I am most sorry that tickets were not available for your original choice of dates and for the fact that you were overcharged for breakfast when you actually did stay at the London Docklands Premier Inn. Due to the upset and inconvenience caused to you, I have arranged with the hotel directly for your credit card to be reimbursed with the full cost of your stay. I do hope that this goes some way to restoring your faith in Premier Inn and that you do continue to use our brands.

                      With regard to the lack of response to your original email due to this not reaching Guest Relations and the telephone contact numbers listed on our website. I can confirm that these matters are being taken up with our Systems Department for investigation and rectification to ensure that this situation does not arise again.

                      May I take this opportunity to thank you once again for taking the time to contact us, although I very much regret that you have found it necessary to do so.

                      Yours sincerely
                      I have not checked to see if the hotel have reimbursed me, but even if they have this letter does nothing to assuage my feeling that Premier Inn are far from premier.

                      For example, what does this sentence suggest? "I do hope that this goes some way to restoring your faith in Premier Inn and that you do continue to use our brands." First of all, I simply do not trust them to have done it and second, why would this company only want to go "some way to restoring [my] faith" instead of all the way?

                      I think that Premier Inn need to strive a good deal harder if they are to meet the lofty promises they promote on their website and depending upon whether or not they actually do reimburse me, I may not have finished with them yet.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Premier Inns

                        Well done though, they obviously decided they couldn't wriggle on the 'not 100% satisfied, you get your money back'.

                        I may stay there and be 99% satisfied.............it's a daft policy really, but at least it seems you successfully called their bluff.
                        "Although scalar fields are Lorentz scalars, they may transform nontrivially under other symmetries, such as flavour or isospin. For example, the pion is invariant under the restricted Lorentz group, but is an isospin triplet (meaning it transforms like a three component vector under the SU(2) isospin symmetry). Furthermore, it picks up a negative phase under parity inversion, so it transforms nontrivially under the full Lorentz group; such particles are called pseudoscalar rather than scalar. Most mesons are pseudoscalar particles." (finally explained to a captivated Celestine by Professor Brian Cox on Wednesday 27th June 2012 )

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