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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."

16 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Free speech by MooseTick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Free speech is for those people who know how to keep their mouths shut!

    1. Re:Free speech by GrBear · · Score: 5, Funny

      It was more likely he was sued because his review wasn't bilingual. This IS Quebec we're talking about afterall.

    2. Re:Free speech by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as "only one room infested with bed bugs" in a hotel. (Think about how they're serviced.) This could be an entertaining lawsuit. The problem I see is that the hotel taking him to court puts even more media attention on the hotel being infested.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    3. Re:Free speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Free speech by LifesABeach · · Score: 5, Funny

      Did the lawyer represent the bed bugs, or the hotel owner?

  2. mistake in editorial entry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "the hotel demanded he take it down and when he did they sued him for $95,000.""
    should be
    "the hotel demanded he take it down and when he didn't, they sued him for $95,000.""

    1. Re:mistake in editorial entry by gweilo8888 · · Score: 5, Informative

      He hasn't taken it down. It is still online: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g155033-d183336-r158988363-L_hotel_Quebec-Quebec_City_Quebec.html Therefore the summary is demonstrably wrong.

    2. Re:mistake in editorial entry by Mitreya · · Score: 5, Funny

      Mod parent up. Article summary is wrong.

      But that's why we come to slashdot -- Two stories for the price of one!

      The summary is usually different from the article and two separate discussion (one about summary another one about article) are carried out in the comments section. I assume this is intentional, because no editor would allow it otherwise, right? :)

  3. I will avoid this place like the bedbug plague by generic_screenname · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I will never stay at a hotel that responds to a complaint on the internet with a $95k lawsuit.

  4. This is the review and it is still up by davebarnes · · Score: 5, Informative

    "At first this hotel looks ok....until you wake up in the middle of the night at 3:00AM because you've been scratching all over and realize your bed is infested with BED BUGS!
    What a nightmare! When I reported the situation to the managing stuff, there were no emergency to handle the situation because the decision maker was not available during the week end and it was a Saturday.
    Instead they offered to transfer my son and I to a hotel nearby where a room was available because they were concerned I was going to cause Mayhem
    They finally offered to investigate the room despite the 4 BED BUGS I had contained in a glass and pictures and videos I had showed them.
    I was supposed to stay one more night but instead chose to move to a hotel nearby; turned out to be cleaner-up to date-bigger room- and cheaper rate and that was the Holiday Inn Express down the road at 3145 Avenue de Hotels.
    Beware of BED BUGS! If you are looking for a scratch free night sleep, stay elsewhere, you will be doing you and your loved ones a favour! Trust me...and that's why the Internet is a great tool!
            Stayed April 2013, traveled with family"

    --
    Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
  5. Yesterday vs. Today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:How can you win over facts? by gp824 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't assume that civil law suits will be treated how they are in the US or in any other provinces in Canada. Quebec treats civil suits under French civil law.... a complex different system that we are used to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_law

  7. Interesting Anecdote by wbr1 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My girlfriend and I take weekend trips often during the summer, and we use hotels.com to book lodging. While in Ohio earlier this summer, one of the places we stayed was terrible. No bedbugs, but poor repair, smelly room, bad service, the list goes on and on. IN addition, thier entry on hotels.com stated that they offered contentinal breakfast, which they did not.

    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.
  8. Re:New insecticide by suutar · · Score: 5, Informative

    no, it's because DDT worked really well against bedbugs while it was legal. It's taken a while for the survivors to repopulate.

  9. Re:New insecticide by tibit · · Score: 5, Informative

    For all practical purposes there's no way, I repeat, no way to "heat the whole apartment block" to eradicate bed bugs. It's a myth perpetuated by the eradication industry. It's physically impossible unless you'd raise the building off the ground, isolate from all utilities, wrap air-tight with an insulating air gap between the plastic cover and the walls, and then heat up from inside. That's how I've seen someone get rid of a horrible infestation in a trailer home, and it's about the only way to pull it off. It did work, too - a year later, still no bed bugs. For normal buildings - forget it.

    You see, bed bugs scamper away from heat, and when you're heating a building up, there are always gradients that let the suckers find the way to the basement, the attached car garage, whatever. Good luck heating the concrete basement or other adjoining walls to 45C, as that would be necessary to really kill them. Never mind that most heat treatments do not isolate the walls from outside air, so the walls never get hot enough.

    The way heat-based bed bug eradication is normally done is you bring in a high-power space heater system that heats the air in the building. This is about the best scenario for bed bugs: due to slow heat exchange between hot air and the walls, the latter heat up slowly and let the bed bugs get out of the way before anything bad happens to them. That method doesn't kill any appreciable numbers of bed bugs, they simply go away for a while -- all the way to cracks and crevices in the foundation, if need be. It's then only a matter of time for the infestation to recover, as the suckers simply come back. Yes, their numbers will be reduced, but they'll come back all right.

    There is a big problem with how the heat-based methods are evaluated: the test methods don't address the issue of bed bugs simply relocating elsewhere.

    AFAIK, there are exactly zero pesticides that are approved for non-professional use the U.S. and that work against bed bugs. I repeat: ZERO. None. Nada. You're not buying anything unless you're licensed professional. The "higher test stuff" is not some nebulous thing either. There is exactly one category of insecticides that do work against bed bugs: organophosphates. Out of a whole lot of stuff, only one category. One that's highly regulated and universally toxic to pretty much anything with a nervous system, including humans. For all I know, if organophosphates came to be widely used against bed bugs, it'd be only a matter of time until those suckers found a way to cope with it, or even becoming totally immune. Perhaps whatever mutations would be responsible for it would also be of some use in humans - one can only hope.

    --
    A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  10. His original complaint - in English by sabri · · Score: 5, Informative
    Bilingual or not, he posted in English:

    Quote:

    âoeBed bugs in our bedâ 1 5 étoiles Avis écrit le 27 avril 2013 Google Traduction At first this hotel looks ok....until you wake up in the middle of the night at 3:00AM because you've been scratching all over and realize your bed is infested with BED BUGS!

    What a nightmare! When I reported the situation to the managing stuff, there were no emergency to handle the situation because the decision maker was not available during the week end and it was a Saturday.
    Instead they offered to transfer my son and I to a hotel nearby where a room was available because they were concerned I was going to cause Mayhem
    They finally offered to investigate the room despite the 4 BED BUGS I had contained in a glass and pictures and videos I had showed them.
    I was supposed to stay one more night but instead chose to move to a hotel nearby; turned out to be cleaner-up to date-bigger room- and cheaper rate and that was the Holiday Inn Express down the road at 3145 Avenue de Hotels.
    Beware of BED BUGS! If you are looking for a scratch free night sleep, stay elsewhere, you will be doing you and your loved ones a favour! Trust me...and that's why the Internet is a great tool!

    Séjour du Avril 2013 - voyage en famille

    --
    I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.