Paisley & Glasgow; Tuesday, 06 November, 2007

Having worked a late shift, I leapt straight onto a train at East Croydon, and headed over to London City Airport. The flight was due out at 9am the following morning, but that meant that check-in would be a 7.30, which in the tortuous logic of my mind meant getting up at 5am. Given that a room in the Travelodge by the airport was only £26 I thought this was good value for the 2 hours extra sleep.

Sadly, I had calculated all this without the help of Travelodge, their tiny fine print and their money grabbing! By the time I arrived at the Travelodge it was a little after 10pm, but I didn’t think this was going to be a problem. I was wrong. It appeared that they had managed to do a little overbooking on their rooms, and consequently had left themselves with very few rooms for sale on the day. By the time I arrived, they had already made the decision that I wasn’t going to arrive (according to the very small print I eventually managed to track down several days later on their website, the price I had was a non-refundable price and I had to let them know if I was going to be later that 21:30, my understanding would be that if I had pre-paid for the room, and they have a 24 hour reception, the time I arrive should be pretty irrelevant).

The upshot of it was at 10pm I found myself being told that I didn’t have a room, wasn’t going to get a refund and there was nothing I could do about it. A quick call later (by me, on my mobile, at my expense) to the telesales team got a small conession out of them. They had been a bit quick in reselling the room I had paid for, and therefore they were refunding my £26, but that still left the issue of not having a room for the night, and being stuck a good 2 hours from home, and a very early wake-up call, if I decided to head back home.

Thankfully, ETAP stepped into the breach. I had walked down to the ETAP on the grounds that if they didn’t have a space, I was most of the way back to the previous DLR station, and I could if need be head back into town. They had one room left, which they let me have for the rack rate of £39 (the additional £13 having to be paid for by me!). After grabbing some food from the next door petrol station I turned in for the night.