my apologies, of course i should have thanked everyone for their advice.

I decided not to proceed, unfortunately it was a very busy time at work.Unfortunately i think companies such as travelodge are able to to take advantage of this.Although i am completely certain in my own mind that i am innocent, and that they have effectively stolen £150 from my account i've had to accept it, my only recourse is to never book myself or anyone in my company into travelodge again.

i am about to take them to small claims court in the next couple of days. If they come up with something to show that a letter was indeed sent, as would usually happen, as did happen before, you're up the creek without a paddle. i didnt receive a letter from them until i requested a copy.they may well have posted one but unless it was recorded delivery they can't have proof.

I've already sent a letter of intent a while back,giving them until june 30th to re-imburse me.They replied by sending me a copy of the letter they should have sent me within 10 days of my stay.

does anyone think it's feasable for me to take them to small claims court.im really busy at work right now,so dont have much time to devote to it.im thinking of just accepting the fine right now

ive just received this in my e-mail,i assume its an internal travelodge one sent by mistake...its interesting that they refer to it as a smoking fine and not as cleaning charges Hi Helen Please could you provide me with a copy of our letter to this customer re the smoking fine of £150.00 which he claims was not received! Thanks very much

their ts and cs state that they will inform me of charges within 10 days..they failed to do this.to date i have not received detail of charges.had i not checked my bank statement i would still be unaware of any problem.

We will send you (at the address on the Booking) a Breakdown of these charges within 10 working days. We may refuse to accept bookings from you in future they did not send me any breakdown of charges,the first i knew of it was when i noticed they had debited my account

this is from their terms and conditions The terms below apply to your Booking if you are a consumer and book from 5th January 2009. When you make a Booking on our website, you will be asked to click "I accept" and you will not be able to complete your Booking if you do not do this. This confirms that you accept these terms. We strongly recommend that you read the terms before accepting. 5 - Rooms 4 - You must not smoke in any of our hotels or interfere with our fire detection system. If you do so, we will terminate your Booking without refund and require you to leave the hotel immediately. You authorise us to charge you any costs we incur if you smoke or cause damage in our hotel including costs for specialist cleaning (to make the room fit for sale as a non smoking environment) and the cost of the room for any time period it is unusable. You authorise us to charge this amount to the payment card used in your Booking. We will send you (at the address on the Booking) a breakdown of these charges within 10 working days. We may refuse to accept bookings from you in future. i did not smoke in their room or interfere with their fire detection equipment

this is the e-mail i recieved from them after questioning the fine Travelodge reserve the right to apply a charge to the card used to make the booking if there is evidence of either room damage or smoking discovered inside the room after the guest's departure. This is stated in our terms and conditions (Section 5, point 4) that if evidence of the above is found we will charge the relevant card. In this instance the charge refers to evidence of smoking in the room after you checked-out. The incident report we have states that the room smelt of smoke and ash was found on the windowsill. As we operate a strong non-smoking policy I regret to inform you that we would be unable to offer you a refund on this occasion. If you wish to dispute this charge then I have been advised that you will need to take this matter up with your bank

soz,just joined..not sure if ive posted properly,if not please be patient im sure ill suss it out given time. in may i booked a room at travelodge and paid online by card.few weeks later i noticed an unauthorised withdrawl from my account for £150 credited to travelodge SMK.after a few minutes on google i found out this was a smoking fine. i e-mailed them vehemently denying smoking in the room. they replied that my room smelt of smoke and therefore they were sticking to their right to fine me. my room may have smelt of smoke as i am a smoker and had gone outside several times during my stay for a smoke. they have advised me to contact my bank? do i have any redress?