No refund for ‘filthy’ hotel

My wife and I booked a two-day break.

On arrival we were told the hotel was not expecting us as it had not received the booking but that it had plenty of rooms available.

The lady hurried ahead of us, opened the door to our room and did some quick cleaning. The room was a disgrace, in a filthy condition. There was not even fresh linen. We left our cases while we found another hotel. We returned to collect them, telling the owner why we were not staying. She shrugged and said “OK”. GRAHAM BASKOTT, WARWICKSHIRE

Despite this, the full £160 for the stay was debited to your Halifax credit card.

The hotel disputed that anyone would have escorted you to a room that hadn’t been cleaned. The online agency you had booked through argued that the cancellation deadline was two days before the date of arrival. However, you could not have complied with that time frame as you discovered there was a hygiene problem only when you arrived.

You asked Halifax to reverse the transaction, either as a “chargeback” or as a claim under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. The latter covers card payments of between £100 and £30,000 where misrepresentation or breach of contract has been proven. The bank turned this down on the grounds that the cancellation terms were stated clearly on the booking form.

My involvement led to the bank after all accepting your version of events and paying you £160 plus interest.

You went back to Halifax to say that the matter had been outstanding for a number of months and you had spent a great deal of time trying to sort it out yourself. It now also paid £85 for the trouble and upset caused and £15 for your costs.

Halifax says it is sorry for the inconvenience.

You say you would never have had any of this redress had I not taken the matter up.

You did not notice the absence of the money until several months later. This of course indicates that it was not as urgently needed as it would be for many others who are unemployed. You were, however, genuinely entitled to it.

Your determined efforts to get the money reimbursed were unsuccessful.

However, within a day of my involvement, the Department for Work & Pensions apologised profusely, said there had been a mistake and arranged for the payments to be made forthwith.

A spokesman says: “We have clarified that Mr S was eligible to claim [the money] and apologised for the error.”