Charged £5.85 by Premier Inn to get a refund

Marvel1

You could try using the feedback form at the bottom:

https://www.premierinn.com/gb/en/contact-us.html

RefluentBeans

Ask for the money back - but I think if they decline you’ll b SOL 

eskbanker

HurriKane91 said:

eskbanker said:

HurriKane91 said:

HurriKane91 said:

Premier Inn charged me twice for my room, once when I booked and then the day after the booking. I called up guest relations and they apologised and issued a refund. However, their phone number charges 13p per minute and I was on the call the 45 minutes. I asked for this charge to be refunded as it's not fair to get charged for a refund which was Premier Inn's mistake in the first place but was refused. Do I have any rights here? Seems absurd to be charged £5.85 for a £79 refund. 

The £5.85 wasnt a fee, it was the total cost of the 45-minute phone call to get my money back. I called the premium rate number because that is the number the hotel gave me.

So you weren't really "Charged £5.85 by Premier Inn to get a refund", but paid that money to your phone provider as a result of choosing to call Premier Inn on a premium number, albeit one they'd supplied - was the cost of calling that number shown on the email (or however Premier communicated it to you)?

Well I was, the cost of the call was £5.85, and the hotel didn't offer me a national rate number or an email. They made a mistake and because of that I have to pay out of pocket to get my money. Does that seem OK to you? 

You didn't answer the question in the post you quoted - it's obviously not ideal to incur costs pursuing a refund, although it seems unlikely that they'd be legally obliged to reimburse those, but if they failed to adhere to the regulations about such numbers then it may help your case.

Jumblebumble

eskbanker said:

HurriKane91 said:

HurriKane91 said:

Premier Inn charged me twice for my room, once when I booked and then the day after the booking. I called up guest relations and they apologised and issued a refund. However, their phone number charges 13p per minute and I was on the call the 45 minutes. I asked for this charge to be refunded as it's not fair to get charged for a refund which was Premier Inn's mistake in the first place but was refused. Do I have any rights here? Seems absurd to be charged £5.85 for a £79 refund. 

The £5.85 wasnt a fee, it was the total cost of the 45-minute phone call to get my money back. I called the premium rate number because that is the number the hotel gave me.

So you weren't really "Charged £5.85 by Premier Inn to get a refund", but paid that money to your phone provider as a result of choosing to call Premier Inn on a premium number, albeit one they'd supplied - was the cost of calling that number shown on the email (or however Premier communicated it to you)?

As I understand it  0871 a revenue sharing number so while you are correct that the payment as made to the phone company some of it was presumably forwarded to PI so the OP was 100% charged to receive a refund albeit not £5.85
Why would anyone be surprised that PI give out an 0871 number and not the 0330?

eskbanker

Jumblebumble said:

eskbanker said:

HurriKane91 said:

HurriKane91 said:

Premier Inn charged me twice for my room, once when I booked and then the day after the booking. I called up guest relations and they apologised and issued a refund. However, their phone number charges 13p per minute and I was on the call the 45 minutes. I asked for this charge to be refunded as it's not fair to get charged for a refund which was Premier Inn's mistake in the first place but was refused. Do I have any rights here? Seems absurd to be charged £5.85 for a £79 refund. 

The £5.85 wasnt a fee, it was the total cost of the 45-minute phone call to get my money back. I called the premium rate number because that is the number the hotel gave me.

So you weren't really "Charged £5.85 by Premier Inn to get a refund", but paid that money to your phone provider as a result of choosing to call Premier Inn on a premium number, albeit one they'd supplied - was the cost of calling that number shown on the email (or however Premier communicated it to you)?

As I understand it  0871 a revenue sharing number so while you are correct that the payment as made to the phone company some of it was presumably forwarded to PI so the OP was 100% charged to receive a refund albeit not £5.85
Why would anyone be surprised that PI give out an 0871 number and not the 0330?

Yes, it's largely a semantic point and there's no doubt that at least some of that money would ultimately have reached Premier Inn - the point is though that if OP was unhappy with the cost of calling via a premium rate number then it would have been better to have avoided using it rather than doing so and then attempting to reclaim it back.

prowla

Alderbank said:

The ECJ ruling above might well have been part of the reason why Premier Inns makes available a basic rate (0333) phone number for each of its hotels as well as for its guest support and reservations phone line (0333 003 8101).

The OP chose to contact the trader via a premium rate line but was not bound to do so because basic rate lines are published and available during office hours.

Except the hotel told him to use that number.

movedto03

prowla said:

Except the hotel told him to use that number.

Indeed, and in my previous post in this thread, I explained the misconceptions around "bound to pay", and how the hotel has in fact, in its actions, failed to comply with two sets of decade-old regulation.

eskbanker

Seems a bit pointless to be resuscitating an old thread where the OP hasn't been back for six months?

movedto03

eskbanker said:

Seems a bit pointless to be resuscitating an old thread where the OP hasn't been back for six months?

My posts aren't just for the original poster, but for anyone else who might have the same problem in the future and finds the thread through a Google search, a forum search, or by any other means. The contact numbers for this particular hotel chain appears to have been an issue for the best part of two decades.

eskbanker

movedto03 said:

eskbanker said:

Seems a bit pointless to be resuscitating an old thread where the OP hasn't been back for six months?

My posts aren't just for the original poster, but for anyone else who might have the same problem in the future and finds the thread through a Google search, a forum search, or by any other means. The contact numbers for this particular hotel chain appears to have been an issue for the best part of two decades.

But the posts added today don't introduce anything new beyond what was already covered in the thread's first incarnation?