Premier Inn Durham - Newton Aycliffe

our stop was just a journey break on the way to London

Found a room on the Hotels.com app but stopped by the hotel to check it out before booking. The front desk initially said no rooms were available, despite the app showing otherwise. After some persistence and a 10–15 minute discussion involving another staff member, I was shown a room I liked. Due to system issues, I was told to book through the app. I did so, paid, and received confirmation, which the clerk also saw—but they still couldn’t assign the room due to aforementioned system issue. I agreed to return later while they sorted it out. When my husband and I came back, they claimed we hadn’t paid, despite us showing proof of payment (both on hotels app and our credit card transactions). We left again to give them more time. After four hours, we returned and were told there had been a Hotels.com payment issue that took 3.5 hours and a manager’s help to resolve. Informed daily room cleaning stopped during covid. We booked a week, so asked how towels were replaced & advised I'd have to ask at desk. As it turned out, they had an 'on demand' room service option which I later used to empty baskets and replace towels. No air conditioning in this hotel that is operable from the room itself. The TV's have volume controls (25 specifically). We couldn't hear some channels from the bed & requested our controls be moved to 27. Informed that there were no TV controls. Next day asked another clerk who shared that there were controls that couldn't be changed.