Premier Inn admits to website anomaly which may be overcharging thousands since June 2009

Dear Steven

We know that Travelodge customers also use other hotel brands, so we were keen to let you know about some news which might affect you.

On Tuesday 24th November 09, following a complaint by Travelodge to the ASA, The Times reported that budget hotel operator Premier Inn has potentially been overcharging thousands of customers trying to book a Premier Offer £29 room since June 2009. Their television and newspaper advertising, featuring Lenny Henry, proudly claimed that the chain were offering 1,000,000 rooms for £29, but The Times reported that when customers arrived at the Premier Inn website those using the Quick Book on the homepage were not being offered £29 rooms when they were still available. Instead customers would only be able to find these advertised rooms by clicking on a different part of the website.

Independent price checking revealed that customers had a less then 1% chance of finding a £29 room if they used Quick Book compared with a 24% chance for those clicking on a Premier Offer banner.* This means thousands of customers may have been charged as much as double the price they should have paid. At no time did Premier Inn advise customers that lower prices were available in other parts of their website and encourage them to check for £29 rooms. There could be thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of customers affected.

Incredibly after being challenged by The Times, Premier Inn stated that "the anomaly of higher prices being offered through the quick bookings facility would disappear next week (1st December 2009)" but so far have not offered ANY refund to Premier Inn customers who were overcharged by this problem.

The purpose of this email is to build an online petition to encourage Premier Inn to offer a full refund to any customer who has booked a more expensive room when the same room was available on another part of their website for £29.
Regards

Travelodge