Hotel Charges Guests $500 For Bad Online Reviews
njnnja (2833511) writes In an incredibly misguided attempt to reduce the quantity of bad reviews (such as these), the Union Street Guest House, a hotel about 2 hours outside of New York City, had instituted a policy to charge groups such as wedding parties $500 for each bad review posted online. The policy has been removed from their webpage but the wayback machine has archived the policy. "If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500. fine for each negative review."
It looks like "the market" is going to take care of these jokers. You should probably find a better example to make your point.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Except, if you actually read all the TripAdvisor reviews (I had a lot of time to waste yesterday), you do notice a few things:
1. The owners seem incredibly snarky.
2. There's multiple cases of people getting charged even though they tried cancelling half a year in advance
3. They seem to suffer from low staff and debatable accounting practices
4. There's a of positive reviews from people with 1 review, and he accuses negative reviewers of being liars when they have a few reviews on their account
Whether or not they actually charge $500 for bad online reviews is debatable, but they sure seem like dicks and charge for everything else, and have bad business practices.
Isn't the sticking point here not that the person contracting for service agrees to a non-disparagement clause but that person agrees on behalf of everyone in their entire group? Is that realistic?