Travelodge new, accurate, sign. Just across from the underground station.

Victory, perhaps, with Travelodge’s naming.

As Travelodge gets closer to completion they’ve started adding some signage, including one referring over its door naming it as ‘London Clapham Junction’. I’m not a Battersea fundamentalist, so I’m happy with that.

I’ve no idea on the timescales involved in Travelodge signage, but would assume it was produced before my recent post on the subject: though it will reflect the efforts of the many people I know had already raised it with Travelodge.

However, their customer services team also emailed me today. I had asked when their facilities team were likely to decide on the naming. Their response is sublime:

I cannot confirm when this decision will be made.

This matter will be dealt with internally and so will not be communicated out.

If the decision is made to change the name, the details will be changed on the website. If this is not changed then the decision has been taken to not make any changes.

I think this is customer service done just right. It probably means they are just ignoring me, but the ‘we’ll think about it, but won’t tell you we’ve thought about it’ approach leaves me with just enough doubt that maybe, just maybe, they are grateful for my “valued feedback”.

Their website (at the time of writing) still lists the hotel as ‘London Clapham’, and still has Clapham Junction on the underground; so maybe they’ve not decided yet. Or perhaps they have decided they are in Clapham, but because it was done internally they haven’t told anyone. Including their sign-makers.

Clapham Travelodge, next to Clapham Junction tube

I recently claimed that I was never grumpy, which someone challenged, telling me that my attitude towards those who mistook Battersea for Clapham was textbook grumpiness. I corrected them. My attitude towards those who make such simple geographical mistakes is best described as righteous anger.

Or maybe righteous wrath.

It is currently aimed towards Travelodge, who are currently completing a new hotel on Falcon Road. Being a building site they have caused problems for their neighbours on Mossbury Road to be sure, but through it all I remained fairly emotionally balanced. But when their new hotel was listed on their website it immediately provoked a fit of righteous wrath.

To be fair, they did make attempts to compensate, cutting through decades of TfL delays and engineering to put Clapham Junction on the London Underground network (with an entrance I assume is in the menswear at Arding and Hobbs Debenhams). Despite that, I decided the only proportionate response was an email to the chain.

Contacting them is quite hard, their webform forces you to answer lots of questions, and only a few allow you to answer them. The Clapham Junction Town Centre Manager was one who managed to get through to them. She was told:

We appreciate that the location of the hotel is in between Clapham and Battersea, however we already have a hotel called ‘Battersea Travelodge’

Apart from being wrong about being ‘between Clapham and Battersea’ (because they are in Battersea), I can see the logic. And it does leave open all sorts of alternative names; I was wondering about Manhattan Travelodge, it is, after all, located between Manhattan and Southend-on-Sea, but they already have a Southend Travelodge.

I was blessed with a slightly more positive response:

your feedback has been forwarded to our facilities for them to make the decision if this hotel should be renamed before its opening

Sadly, I think this translates to ‘we’ll pass this on to someone else to ignore’.

On the upside, the responses at least mean we have an email address for Travelodge which obviates the need for their awful customer service webform, it’s customer.services@Travelodge.co.uk.

In fact, I’ve gone even further. If you think they need to re-think, then here’s a pre-filled email with a few facts that might help convince them to reconsider their name.