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Canadian Hotel Sues Guest For $95K Over Bad Review, Bed Bugs
An anonymous reader writes "A guest at at Quebec hotel was bitten by bed bugs, brought some down to the front desk and asked for new room. While the fully booked hotel offers to get him another room in a different hotel, he stays out the night then leaves — telling people at the hotel — some of whom also check out. When he wrote about it on Trip Advisor, the hotel demanded he take it down and when he did they sued him for $95,000."
Yesterday: I figured there were hotels in Canada, but I never really thought about it.
Today: If I ever go to Canada, I'd better avoid the Hotel Quebec, because those bastards have bedbugs and sue people out of house and home rather than fix their problems. Either that, or the place attracts crazies with some pathology that causes them to make things up. Regardless, I'll just avoid it.
The hotel is not denying that this guy had bedbugs in his room on the night of his stay. Apparently the hotel's justification for suing comes down to them believing that only his room was infested, and that this was an isolated incident.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Upon returning from our trip, we decided to rate and write a hotels.com review to warn others. We were not disrespectful or profane. We stated the facts and our displeasure with them only. A week or so later, my GF noticed the review still had not posted. Then she received an email stating that it would not because it violated the TOS of hotels.com. No explanation of how, just that we had. There were no names given (except the name of the hotel), and as I stated earlier, nothing but facts about ther visit, and our displeasure (admittedly and opinion).
I know where hotels.com gets its bread buttered now, and it is not from us customers. A chain hotel can exert much more fiscal pressure than a single customer.
I am owed a free night from them, and I am thinking of booking hotels using another source after that, but will the result be any different? My cynical brain says no.
Silence is a state of mime.
What about diatomaceous earth? It's fossilized algae, and a natural insecticide, absorbing the lipids from the exoskeletons of insects.
I've read that if you pull your bed from the wall, take 4 empty/clean tuna cans with diatomaceous earth in them, and put one under each leg of the bed, you can get rid of them. They crawl in and out of it on their way to feast on you.
If I had them, in addition to the cans-under-legs, I'd be dusting the floors, the sheets, the bed-frame, the bed-boards, the electrical sockets, etc, to get rid of them.
There was also a BBC show, either Edwardian Farm, or Victorian Farm, where they showed the housewife scrubbing bed frames down twice a year with lye to keep them under control.
I worked in 3 hotels for about 6 years, big names, one was a Bestwestern. In all three hotels, we got bed bugs on a regular basis. We have protocols on how to put the room and the linens in quarantine as soon as this is discovered. Then we call someone to spray something ll over the room to kill the bed bugs. It's also common thing to put in quarantine the rooms beside the affected room.
So there is such a thing as "only one room infested", I also think that the guest over-reacted... Was it it's first time in an hotel ?
I still agree that the hotel should not sue the guest, maybe just explaining to the public what I just said... Informing them.