Okay this is going to sound a bit of a rant and I’m sorry in advance, also it has nothing really to do with archery more to do with poor customer service from a leading hotel chain.

At the 3D championships a few weeks back we had booked into a Premier Inn as we didn’t fancy camping and wanted a relaxing location. What a mistake that was. I don’t think I would class it as the premier inn from hell, as I am sure there must be worse out there, but I do think it was a very poor stay. We’d wanted a trouble free stay whilst attending the archery tournament and had stayed at other premier Inns in the past and they had worked well.

First thing to say would be the staff were helpful at all times and remained polite and professional, but they had been put into a situation they shouldn’t have.

The Inn is being refurbished, but we weren’t told at time of booking in January or informed of this until we arrived. Due to this half of the car park spaces were taken up with skips and builders cabins or barriers. So of the 3 nights we stayed, we were only able to park in the hotel car park once.

Premier Inn view from room

We were told we could park 200 yards down round in neighbouring Premier inn. Problem is this was having building work as it is being extended so also have limited parking. Friends ended up in multi storey, which was more expensive and no reimbursement. Having 2 inns both being renovated at same time and sending people from one to the other, is not great planning for any organisation.

Nor is it great to have to carry expensive archery equipment along public streets.

I was told I had to move car, whilst others were allowed to park on pavements. So they didn’t appear to uniformly enforce rules.

With the refurbishment we were given electronic cards, problem being is they didn’t always work (our friends went through 4 sets). This was a pain as we were on the 3rd floor and only 1 lift. You could enter the lift without the card but when you exited onto the floor the corridor door required a working card.

Not impressive notice too see on arrival !!

Can’t say we were overly impressed by the sign on the corridor doors saying they might lose water due to refurbishments.

We had issues with the room that if you had windows open to keep cool, you had either road noise, people arguing or quay side noise. If window was shut you couldn’t turn air con down past 19 degrees centrigrade to cool room. Despite telling reception of this , it wasn’t recorded on my complaint. If I was a conspiracy expert I might even say convenient as this counts to the good night guarantee.

To add to the problems we discovered they charged us twice for the first night, which we discovered when we got home. Apparently this was due to a computer error!!

They did give us a voucher for a free breakfast on the Monday as an apology, which was the only day we could have had breakfast as had to leave early to get to the championship venue.

I would seriously think twice about staying there again, for no other reason than the limited parking. As for other premier inns, I’m not sure as I don’t like the idea of turning up to building site! If you are going to refurbish somewhere let people know before they arrive or ensure it does not have such a negative impact on the guests.

We did highlight these issues with the staff at the time and have been waiting on customer relations to get back to us. Which they did, after several twitter messages, phone call and posts, closing the call for over a week as they said it had been resolved. No it wasn’t resolved, the only thing resolved was they repaid us the money they had over charged us !! Their response has been you had a free breakfast and the goodnight guarantee doesn’t cover parking

I’m not really sure about the goodnight guarantee promise as apparently it doesn’t cover parking issues and since there is no record of our complaints concerning the room, maybe because there were multiple people complaining at the same time. I think in some ways we got away easy as we watched one disabled person struggle to enter their car as they were unable to park in the disable bays.

I have to say I have been very disappointed by the responses from the customer relationships staff and communication from them.

Premier Inn used to stand for quality and reliability. They have gone from being our first choice of accommodation to last resort, not just because of the stay but the handling of the aftercare as I have little faith in companies who don’t help to resolve the issues quickly.

Thanks for reading and sorry this has sounded a bit of a rant.