Travelodge website alert

Mark_Hewitt

Travelodge seems to have gone back to their old website? I made some bookings on the new site and they aren't there!

MikeTravelling

You know that an organisation has a problem when, after several years of pretty-reliable service week-in, week-out, their website starts getting flakey.

I use the Travelodge website regularly and I stay in Travelodges four night most weeks. I need a supplier with a dependable website and, until early FEBRUARY (three weeks before the main website disaster) I had been very happy with Travelodge.

Travelodge didn't plan to run a "£9/night" sale in 2011. They were forced into it by a series of problems which hit their site from mid-February. As well as my business, six colleagues had followed my example and WERE (!) regular users of Travelodge.

1. It suddenly became very easy to "double-book". Response times on the website nose-dived, leading you to click twice and end up with two reservations on the same night; I suffered this; first time I've EVER ended up with more than I wanted from any website.

2. A colleague suffered a similar fate; he rang their enquiry line. the snotty response of "well, that's covered by our Terms and Conditions and that's tough" lost Travelodge his business FOREVER.

3. Very early in March, we suddenly got an e-mail: "come and use our shiny new website". So on the Thursday morning, I sat there bleary-eyed, surveying my laptop at 06:00hrs. An hour later I'd almost booked two weeks' accommodation at the Rugby Travelodge when the website fell over citing "Unprecedented demand from the Sale". Oh really - how many times have you run these sales? At least four times to my knowledge.

4. As one of my colleagues said, having wasted a lunchtime failing to book on the travelodge website: "someone's made a right pigs-ear of their upgrade". Travelodge had launched the sale after falling back to their old website; and things were still not quite firing on all cylinders.

5. Later in the day, I managed to book three weeks in Rugby - but at £19/night not £10/night. The bookings didn't actually show up for 24 hours, but that's another story!. Oh, and we can't print off VAT invoices for those nights. HM Revenue & Customs may have an interest in this..........

6. Now, the important lesson in this saga is: "don't get mad, get even". Especially to help the wonderful hotel reception staff, who'd experienced a never-ending stream of people arriving, swearing about the ***~~~***Travelodge website!

7. So I wrote, politely, to the CEO at Sleepy Hollow (don't laugh - that's the Travelodge Head Office address!). I pointed out the problems, the frustrations (and provided his team with screenshots - one of my companies develops and deploys new/updated websites for a living. So I'd taken screen shots; we were going to use this as an example of "how to spectacularly stuff up a website upgrade"). We've added it to the "Lessons Learned" section of the Risk Management course.

8. The important part of any letter of complaint is to make clear what will resolve your frustration/complaint and how the supplier can rectify your "sub-optimal experience".

9. A week later; I have an apology (actually three apologies) and an e-voucher which will put me back to the equivalent of having successfully booked at £10/night on the first day of the sale.

10. No anger; stay polite; be firm; give the supplier a chance to rectify where they've stuffed up.

11. Oh, and put it in writing without fail; I'm never sure what the average IQ of the call-centre staff is, but it's unlikely to be above double-digit. Either that, or they are bound by a set of business rules which are designed to generate conflict!

12. RESULT!

Mike