Premier Inn website charging multiple times - no announcement or compensation 30 August 2022 at 9:22PM in Consumer rights 15 replies 2.7K views

Aitch7

jon81uk said:

As above its not Premier Inn being defended, its stating that even if they process the refund today the 5-10 days is how long the banking and credit card system may take.

As it hasn't come 13 days later it may well be that they didn't process the refund, but once they have asked their payment system to send a refund they can't do any more, the 5-10 days may not be within their control.

So at what point are Premier Inn accountable?  It seems like never!

km1500

If you paid by debit card, ask your bank for a 'chargeback' of the second (or first) payment.

jon81uk

Aitch7 said:

jon81uk said:

As above its not Premier Inn being defended, its stating that even if they process the refund today the 5-10 days is how long the banking and credit card system may take.

As it hasn't come 13 days later it may well be that they didn't process the refund, but once they have asked their payment system to send a refund they can't do any more, the 5-10 days may not be within their control.

So at what point are Premier Inn accountable?  It seems like never!

They are accountable to send the refund in the first place. As I said if it hasn't now come 13 days later they probably have done something wrong such as not actually sending the refund.
But if they have sent it, allowing five days for the banking system is perfectly normal.

Undervalued

Aitch7 said:

On 25th August we booked a room online at Premier Inn East in Cambridge for a stay 4-6 Sept - wish it was for leisure but it's a difficult trip for a medical consultation.  At the point of payment an error message came up and said it had timed out and so I tried again and payment went through the second time.  A couple of days later we received a text from the bank saying we had gone into an overdraft - it was at this point that we discovered the cause was Premier Inn charging 2 lots of money for the booking.  We only received one email confirmation and booking reference number.

With no Reservations/Customer relations phone line over the weekend, we tried phoning the Premier Inn we were staying at but they never answered and still today (Tuesday) have the same recorded message saying that they are experiencing a high volume of calls and to call back or try the website at which point the call ends.

We've had to borrow money just to be able to pay our bills.  We are on a low income and struggling.  We got a bit of money transferred over the weekend to stop the bank charges and I spent all day today sorting out how to cover the second erroneous charge from Premier Inn.  

I finally spoke to Reservations/Customer relations on the main phone line today and they were unbelievable.  The person I spoke with left me on hold and came back to say she had been told that the website banking system had had issues and charged lots of people twice and that they would refund the money in 5-10 working days!  I explained our situation and asked to escalate the case - she said there was no way to escalate the issue.  I asked to speak with a manager - she told me that her manager refused to speak with me as she would only be saying the same thing!

Eventually - after 6 times of asking - I spoke with a different manager who said all the same things and gave me a case number, but they don't care in any way - no apology, no offer of compensation and no customer care on any level.

There has been no announcement on their social media despite this problem being widespread.  I saw a post on facebook of someone saying they had had the 'timed out' error message and Premier Inn advised them to try again - no mention of the banking issue that they clearly know about.

Why aren't Premier Inn announcing this issue and why aren't they resolving it promptly with appropriate refunds and compensation?

Can they legally keep our money for 5-10 days?  They will be earning interest on it all over this time!  It's an absolute disgrace.  We literally have no money whatsoever and according to them they can leave us this way for 2 weeks.  

If they are at fault then, theoretically at least, you have a legal claim against them your actual losses, which you have a legal duty to take reasonable steps to minimise. For example by moving money from a savings account (if you have one) rather than clocking up unauthorised overdraft charges.

There is generally no right to compensation beyond that. Many companies might offer a gesture of goodwill but they don't have to.

Marsli

I have suffered the same issue with a block booking for multiple rooms.  The screen said the transaction had been declined but it hadn't.  It had taken the payment but not secured the room.  Only when payment was made the second time was the room secured.

As this is all done on Premier Inn's website direct they can't blame anyone else for the error!!!

Premier Inn have acknowledged they received my funds twice in Mid September but advised it would take around 15 working days to receive the refund.  This hasn't been refunded and on speaking with them today, they advised they have been inundated with calls about the same issue, so have now set up an escalation list for people past the 15 days or in severe hardship!!!  I don't want to be on a list, I want my money back that you acknowledged 3 weeks ago you had received twice.

I have now put a claim in with my bank and hope that it will be resolved one way or another.  Won't be rushing to book with Premier Inn again.