I've always found Travelodge very easy to deal with.

I've been into them when they've over booked and they shunted me to another hotel and paid my transport all the time I was there, as the venue I was attending was next door to the original digs. The manager couldn't have been more helpful.

You may have just caught htem on a bad day.

I have never had trouble sign travel lodge until I stayed in one at the start of December. Ignoring the awful breakfast - which you half expect for the price - the room was filthy. 4 weeks later and still no response to the complaint!

I had the same trouble with a Travelodge in London a year or so back. Awful, dirty room with a substandard breakfast and completely overpriced. I complained and never heard back. Used a Novotel for the 4 Nations game at Wembley this time around about 300 yards from the Travelodge I used previous. Far superior in everyway and only about £10 a night dearer. Will stick to using them or Ibis hotels where I can from now on.

I only have breakfast in a hotel if it's a work stay and the corporate travel agent have booked it. Otherwise, I go and find a cafe and get something there – far cheaper and usually far better too.

The trouble is that the OP booked into a hotel that isn't finished yet, it will not have a manager assigned to it and therefore they will be being dealt with by Travelodge central customer (dis)service.

Spot on.
On business, I am often (always in fact) booked to stay in corporate hotels and am always booked Room-Only ... and I simply won't pay an extra £17.50 on the bill for breakfast, even if it's the company (or the client) that's paying.
Especially in London, there's always a much better breakfast, for a lot less money, somewhere nearby.

Same goes for dinner.

I save my clients a small fortune.

Does anyone actually ever pay ridiculous hotel breakfast rates? I won't - if I'm not B&B, even when work are paying, I'll find a decent cafe somewhere.

Travelodge. Stayed with them twice last year after getting a couple of £10 rooms, once for my birthday and once near Xmas. Clearly aimed at the stag/hen market, facilities are about as basic as you can get, designed for functionality and low costs rather than comfort. The bed during my last stay was literally solid - no give at all. But then for £10 it's not bad when you're only there to get changed and sleep. Would never pay full rate and would happily pay more to stay elsewhere.

The T&Cs seem to provide15. If a room is unavailable on arrival (except due to an event beyond our reasonable control (see paragraph 26 below)), then, we will eitherand pay the reasonable cost of transport to that hotel; OR

at your request, or, if in our reasonable opinion there is no suitable alternative hotel accommodation available, cancel your booking and refund you the money you have paid for the unavailable room(s) including related extras.'"

I wouldn't stay in a hotel that charged a stupid amount for breakfast.
Premier Inn and Innkeepers Lodge have decent breakfast offers that are more than good enough.

I stayed at an Innkeepers Lodge last year and declined their additional fee for a cooked breakfast but was overwhelmed by their standard "continental breakfast", and when I'm overwhelmed you can bet that I gave it a damn good go, in fact there were 12 of us in the middle of a 120 mile bike ride and we were ravenous but even after we'd finished the breakfast buffet still looked bloody good.

But for the hotel breakfast to beat all breakfasts you need to visit The Paragon in Birmingham, a former workhouse/workmans lodgings for Irish immigrants in the 1920s it serves for £7.50 a self service cooked brekkie that you will simply not manage to make your way around, believe me I have tried to eat everything on their menu and been defeated by the sheer quantity.

PS - its a proper hotel now, wouldn't like you thinking I'm staying in a workhouse or anything...

I had two and a half Wetherspoon's breakfasts once instead of one Travelodge (or similar) breakfasts. It was cheaper too. I would have had three, but the person I nicked the half off had to have their share first.

Not a fan of big breakfasts if I'm honest, just makes me sleepy and wanting to go back to bed.

A fantastic hotel breakfast I had was at the Royal Park Radisson Blu on the outskirts of Stockholm a few years ago. A lovely hotel and the food was plentiful and to a high standard, but what made it was sitting on the veranda in the sun, overlooking the gardens and lake, and accompanied by my colleague and several of our Swedish uniformed airport girls, who had come to meet us for breakfast.

Most pleasurable.

Yup I've stayed there loads of times it used to be the Bass Taverns hotel of choice, great to see it still going strong too. Both Bass and my current employer would never book a hotel that didn't have a good breakfast offering, and trust mke my current employer wouldn't be paying fancy money for it either.

£35 a night corporate rate inc breakfast