Premier Inn Jersey Charing Cross

The beds were comfortable and I slept well. There's a Coop right next door, you're on the high street, and several restaurants are close by. The rooms are tidy in this modern hotel, and the staff are friendly. Breakfast has plenty of choice, including a full English each day and vegetarian options. You can ask for porridge, and the coffee is good. Some rooms have tea and cups; otherwise, you can pick them up from reception. There's no phone service to reception, so you need to go downstairs to ask for anything. Rooms are cleaned when you request it, not necessarily every day. Check-in starts at 3, but if you arrive early you can leave your luggage securely at reception and head out, or sit in the comfortable chairs nearby. There's also a bathroom by the food area.

The buffet breakfast was excellent, with hot food that suited me because I could help myself at my own pace. The room was clean and tidy as expected, but the bed was disappointing: it was two singles pushed together and uncomfortable. The location is good, so the hotel itself works, but the restaurant was the main problem. I stayed four nights and was tied to the meal deal, so I had to keep eating there. On three of the four nights the order was wrong, the food quality was poor on two nights, and service was really slow on two. My biggest tip is, don't use the restaurant.

It took months and many hours of pursuing the complaint, but we eventually got a refund. That effort probably wasn't worth the time. We had never expected such an established brand to have policies that felt so absurd and customer service this poor. We arrived late on a bank holiday Sunday to a grim room in bad shape. There was a blood stain on the bedding, several pubic hairs on the shower wall, and bits of wood flaking off in a bathroom that badly needed repair. With no phone in the room, we went to reception. We were told Premier Inn had a policy about the size of bedding stains. The receptionist showed no interest when we took a photo to show how gross it was. She said there were no other 'flex' rooms available, but offered fresh bedding. The first linen delivered was wrong, so we had to go downstairs again. When the proper bedding finally arrived, we had to change the bed ourselves after a day of travelling, which was the last thing we wanted to do. We slept badly because the room didn't feel clean and asked to move the next day. Again, we were told there were no 'flex' rooms available there, but there were three for the rest of our stay at the other nearby Premier Inn. We asked to move, but after that hotel's manager was contacted, staff said it 'wasn't an option' without explaining why. They offered to clean our room, but there was no real urgency and we had limited access to it. When cleaning eventually started, it was the nice chap from reception doing it, not a professional cleaner. That may explain why the room hadn't been properly cleaned in the first place, as cleaning didn't seem to be part of his job. We then asked to check out early and get a refund so we could stay elsewhere. Reception said they couldn't handle refunds and gave us a number to call. We were told we couldn't get a refund until we'd formally checked out, and then we'd have to wait about five working days after lodging a complaint to learn the decision. That left us facing having nowhere to stay or putting more money into another hotel. We reluctantly chose the latter, after staff said they'd never seen anyone refused a refund in similar situations. Staff said we could stay checked in and still seek a refund later. But we wanted to let the hotel reuse the room and limit its loss, so we asked to be marked as checked out. Despite everything, Premier Inn later sent a generic rejection email. They said we had no consumer rights because we'd booked a 'flex, non-refundable' room, and ignored the details and photos we'd carefully set out in earlier emails. It felt like a default copy-and-paste reply they could have given us when we first called, before we checked out.

The rooms were a great size, and both dinner and breakfast were good with plenty of choice. We had really attentive service from an excellent service manager, and the staff were helpful, nothing seemed to be an issue. The location is really great. We'll be back.