Careful with Hotel Bookings (Premier Inn Website Issue)

That is definitely not the way the website usually works. I expect they will have it fixed by Monday ev

Oh, I know. I've been hitting that website off and on for at least two days, and it was fine initially. I'm not sure when it went south, because I wasn't being super-cautious all the time.

I had that happen a couple of months ago. Eventually it resolved, but good advice to be vigilant!

It's December 20th and the Premier Inn website is still broken.

A tip I got from my Premier Inn: if the website isn't working well, try the app. Sometimes it works better.

Since I am booking Premier Inns for next Autumn , I have noticed this same anomaly . The solution - place your arrival date for twenty four hours ahead of your true arrival date , it will come out correct on the search . Indeed , keep on checking until confirmation as well . I think this may be due to the time difference between London and New York ( if you are on the US east coast )

This sounds like the problem some people complained about on the SBB website some time ago.
I guess it is to do with the date on your computer being different to that where the website server is. Doesn't affect people in the same country and difficult to detect in testing ('coz testers are in the same country as the server).

I didn't think about looking for an app. That's a clever suggestion.

I'm nervous about falsifying my intended arrival date at the first step for fear of erroneous (as-entered) data in the reservation system that I wouldn't be able to dispute later on.

I can understand why a train or bus website, where folks are often looking for the next departure, might have issues with different time zones. We've seen that with departure hours, for sure. But for a hotel website to botch the arrival date is really inexplicable (to me). They give me a calendar. I click on the date I plan to arrive. I don't see any fuzziness there.

I had a similar problem booking a hotel in Strasbourg earlier this year. I almost booked the wrong date. It kept pushing me one day off, so thank goodness I noticed. The problem in that instance appeared to be that the hotel's website calendar was Monday through Sunday. At least that is the only thing I could figure out. I ended up emailing the booking enquiry rather than using the calendar.

acraven , this is not falsifying your arrival date . The computer on the other end is making the adjustment . If you continue on to the penultimate step , and the entered information remains correct , it is hard to imagine that the final booking would show a discrepancy . In any event , if you are booking a flexible booking rather than a prepay , changing it would be of little issue , particularly if you are registered on the Premier website .

I should also add that I have encountered this issue with other hotels ( across the pond ) on a number of occasions over the years ( Accor comes to mind ) and as long as the dates come up correctly at the end , I have had no difficulties ,

I had similar on booking.com when I searched for a place near something (e.g. near the airport). Without realizing it, the sight shows properties in the area but with different dates than you entered for your search. I might have thought it was just me if a friend didn't have exactly the same problem. It ends up sucking pretty badly when you arrive at the hotel and they don't have your booking, then tell you it was booked for last night. Not only is the reservation you already paid for worthless but now you're stuck finding, and paying for, a last minute booking.

We encountered a problem with booking a room on a web site where the site kept defaulting to a 7 day stay. We'd change it to the number of days we actually needed a room and go on with the process and the next thing we knew it was showing a reservation for 7 days again. The lesson learned: we had to double check everything at every step of the process. Just because we entered the information once wasn't enough to trust that it carried over to a later screen.

This is just a reminder to check, double-check and triple-check your
hotel bookings at each stage of the process. With assistance from
other posters here, I've just decided where to stay in Edinburgh and
Glasgow next July, only to discover that the Premier Inn website has
some sort of technical glitch. It keeps changing my arrival date! I've
tried multiple times with two different browsers, so the issue is
clearly on PI's end.

Even with the Premier Inn's perpetual computer glitches, if you received a confirmation email from both properties with your accurate travel dates, aren't you all set? You have your reservations in writing.

Just to make others aware again, I have had a similar issue just this morning (1/24/2019) like acraven. I kept in putting my May date and it kept putting it to the day before. I tried the put the next day in trick and it had my date but I still have misgivings putting in an incorrect date first just to satisfy some bug in the system so I tried my Date again and it worked but not sure how many times I tried.

Always check before you hit the "Buy" button no matter what site you are using because you never know and it can save a headache later on.

Consider an email or telephone call in lieu of the Internet problems.

I had this experience a few months ago. The problem is the computer server you are using. I tend to use Firefox ( which was problematic), but I had to use Chrome or IE....I can't remember which....then it worked fine.

Thanks for the tips, just wanted to remind folks here to double check since it seems to be an ongoing issue.

I use Chrome so I checked with a dummy booking with IE and it still changed it.

I use their app. Nice and easy.

Good advice for ANY booking site -- I made a non-refundable reservation that evidently changed month as I was switching between screens -- only found it when I forwarded the confirmation to Tripit and the trip dates changed (hotel as booked was earlier than my flight reservation.)

Premier's website is still changing the dates, midway through booking, on my laptop. The app worked fine, though.

Still my experience as well. It's pretty mind-boggling for a large chain like Premier Inn.

It’s happening to me as well and it’s getting annoying!! I am very familiar with the time difference between the USA and UK and the glitch happens even when it’s the same day in the USA and UK.

I remember that happening to me back in November. I kept trying and the problem kept happening. I would try different dates, and the website would literally change my dates! I finally got lucky and the dates I needed stayed put without changing. It was extremely weird.

And what I find odd and disturbing, is the Premier Inn site still has the problem acraven 1st described in December.

Has no one told them? Do they not care? Have they no techie to fix it?

I've reported the problem at least twice, maybe three times. That was back in December or very early January. I believe I did receive an acknowledgement after one of those reports, but what I really wanted was for them to fix the website. It's frustrating and time-consuming to do price comparisons of multiple hotels when your dates don't stick.

I'm so glad I came across this thread! I was trying to book 2 rooms at Premier Inn near Heathrow for 1 night in September. I had the same problem with my date always changing. So frustrating! I finally decided they must be booked up for that night & moved on to book another hotel. After reading this thread yesterday, I was able to book the rooms I needed from the app (& saved some $ compared to the other hotel I booked). I will now cancel the 1st rooms booked. Thanks for bringing this up, acraven!

I have never had this happen while booking on the Premier Inn Website. I wonder if part of the challenge of “fixing it” is that it is not always broken. Could this be a browser vs. website issue?

I've tried both Internet Explorer and Chrome. I think the bug must be on the website end.

The app does work, but I don't have Wi-Fi set up in my apartment and it's much more convenient (when I'm at home) to do my trip-planning while sitting at my desk with a real keyboard.