Dx100uk and Stu007, thank you for your further advice and support. I am not responding to any further correspondence; I have spoken to my bank and instructed them not to honour any payment requests from the chain and have the bank's confirmation of this in writing. Stu007, as for your questions- I stayed at the hotel pre-lockdown. The place was very quiet, very few guests at the time. It had been before the restriction were imposed.

Thank you to everyone here who has replied to my post. I wish I had known about your consumer action group earlier! I would not have gotten involved in any correspondence exchange with CRS. Almost seven weeks after my stay at Travelodge, I got a nasty surprise in the form of a notice of civil claim! I was so angry and shocked. I responded to their first letter to explain that I was not a smoker and therefore I denied all allegations! How naive was I? They did not listen at all! Their first letter said that the smoking incident in my room was discovered the day after I departed! When I pointed it out in my response, they corrected themselves saying that they discovered the incident on the day of my departure but reported it the following day! I feel I cannot keep responding to their letters because I have already told them everything I wanted to in order to solve this but they did not listen. For me , the most important thing is to know that I am not breaking the law by not replying to them, am I? I have already replied to three letters from CRS. I was very clear in my third one and asked them to take it as my final response in the matter. I asked them to stop contacting me with regard to the £150 charge and contacting me further was harassment. Guess what? They did not listen at all. I have received another letter from CRS this afternoon. I have not opened it yet and I do not know whether I want to. I know how angry I was last time. Will they keep pestering me? How much longer are they going to carry on sending me letters? I have also complained to Customer services at Travelodge hoping that they would help resolve it. How naive of me? The day after I had sent the complaint, I received their response! They said that they had conducted internal investigation into the matter and advised me that their stance on this matter was not altered and so any future contact must be made via civil recovery solutions! How helpful! when I asked for evidence, they send me a screenshot of booking with my name on it and the room number allocated to my booking. In all honesty, I cannot remember the room number I stayed in. Who would after so many weeks? I have never seen statements from staff despite several requests made to view them. The photo they sent me was of a toilet seat with some cigarette ash on it- at least they say that. All toilet seats at Travelodge look the same to me so the photo could have bèn taken in any of their rooms. I find it frustrating to say the least. I do not know when they are going to stop pestering me. I have instructed my bank not to honour any payment requests from Travelodge today. Thank you, Stu 007 and dx100uk. Bank Fodder, thank you for your advice. They are a bunch of little nasty leeches and I will not be using Travelodge ever again. Do you all believe that the best I could do right now is to stop getting into any correspondence exchange with them?

Hello HB, thank you for your welcome. I was not sure what forum was best to join and help me with my case so thank you for moving it to the Travelodge forum. Oh gosh! There must have been a lot of others in a similar situation if there is a whole forum dedicated to the matter. I will have a read. Once again, thank you.

Hello, could you please advice and help? I made a booking and stayed at a Travelodge hotel in March. Since that stay ( almost seven weeks later) I have had rather worrying letters from a company called Civil Recovery Solutions (CRS) who claim that there was evidence of me smoking in the room I stayed in. I am a non smoker, I have never smoked and confirmed that I was the only person in the room, and such allegations were unfounded. I categorically denied all allegations but they keep threatening me. After letters between me and CRS we have reached an impasse. They say they have contacted Travelodge and they still maintain I smoked in the room and have written statements from staff. I had asked them for evidence and they sent a photo of some cigarette ash. No date nor time on the photo. I have contacted customer services at Travelodge to sort this out but they said that all correspondence had to be done through CRS. In my latest response to CRS, I asked them to stop contacting me with regard to the penalty charge and contacting me further is harassment. What do I do when I get another letter from them? Has anyone been wrongly accused of smoking by Travelodge?