I’m interested to see this post because we had a similar issue back in August while trying to book a room at a couple of Premier Inn hotels in Dublin. Except we got messages that said they couldn’t complete the booking just then and someone would be following up. Of course nobody ever followed up after a couple of weeks. So we used the Contact Us section of the website and received an unhelpful auto-reply type response. Worried about possible double-booking and getting charged, we made a very expensive overseas call to straighten it out (40 minutes). After being on hold for a few minutes we were connected with a real person, but it took a very long time for the gentlemen we spoke with to confirm that our reservations were correct (apparently he had to input all of my husbands contact information into the computer for every question we asked-quite tedious!). He did confirm that the PI website had been experiencing technical concerns. None of the error message reservations had gone through. But the gentleman was friendly and helpful.
Anyway, we still had one additional night to book at the PI at Dublin Airport which didn’t go through on the website and he was helping us to do that. We got as far as giving credit card information. We had to input the credit card number using the number pad on the phone, but for some reason the PI system didn’t accept it (at least twice and our PI representative consulted with another employee). It was not possible for the employee to manually enter it on his end. As the minutes ticked away on our $$$ international call!
Finally my husband apologized and ended the call, since it was now costing about as much as one night at the PI! We booked elsewhere, since we weren’t eager to try booking online and get another error message and then have to go through this whole thing again! A shame because we had previously stayed at the Premier Inn in London and found it a good option. I hope by the next time we want to book there, their website will be working better!
As an aside, we then contacted AT&T and were able to negotiate a way to lower the cost of that overseas call so it wasn’t as painfully expensive. So overall a bit frustrating but a learning experience.
