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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.
I'd be so tempted to write a positive review that damns them with faint praise. "I was delighted to discover that the toilets on the first floor do flush adequately, and that the water stops rising eventually and goes back down!" Or "the cheap fake strawberry air freshener reminds me of my best year in college."
without posting anything bad. For instance:
- This hotel definitely has 8 rooms, and all of them have beds.
- The hotel's owner is very dedicated to ensuring your bill is correct when you leave.
- Checkout time is strictly enforced, so you're sure to find your room empty when you arrive.
- Staying at this hotel is much better than camping on a landfill.
- This hotel is much less expensive than the George V, and much more comfortable than a Texas motel.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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?
A good review can be just as effective: "I really loved the cold soup, the dirty sheets, and the rude staff attitude - it made me feel just like home."
Read the link. It looks like you are agreeing if any of your guests posts a review, you will be fined. You won't be fined if you convince them to take down the negative review. Crappy idea and awful PR? Sure. Enforceable if you enter into it willingly? Presumably
http://www.bbb.org/upstate-new...
Just looking through the BBB complaints from years before this whole ordeal began, it's pretty apparent that the business has very little regard for its customers and does everything it can to leverage its policies so that it can keep the money. One quick example from the BBB complaints:
I made a reservation that I then had to cancel. They advised [ed. note: in the policy] it would take up to 60 days to processes the cancellation less a $25 cancellation fee. I contacted them 9 months in advance of the reservation. I have not heard back. I have emailed the cancellation email address twice as well as the general information email and have received no response. On Yelp, you can see there are others who have had this issue where they do not return funds if the reservation is cancelled. They charged me the full value of the reservation up front, even when they say that they are only going to charge half at the time of the reservation and half at the time of the stay. The full price that they charged me was $812.00
All she asked the BBB to help with was to get them to honor their policy and refund her the $812, less the $25 cancellation fee, which she figured was still reasonable, since at that point they were still 5 months before the reservation date. The business responded to the BBB by claiming that it never received the e-mails from the customer...and that was it. They didn't offer to go ahead and honor the cancellation request. So, since they had claimed they never received the request (and apparently the BBB complaint didn't count as a request either), she posted timestamped logs of all of the e-mails she had sent. Their response to that was:
Once again. This person is not reading our "Cancel at your own Risk" policy despite the fact that she has cut and pasted it. It can be found again at:
http://unionstreetguesthouse.c... [ed. note: the policy has obviously changed since then]
After having the chance to read it she agreed to it by clicking the box and agreeing to a contract with us. That said if said cancelation was made AND accepted by us there would have been a refund.
The customer pointed out that their policy doesn't mention anything about the cancellation needing to be "accepted" by them and that she perfectly followed the policy, giving them months of advance notice and contacting them via the one-and-only means that they make available. She repeated her request that they simply honor their own policy.
The business never responded again and the BBB had to close it as an issue that the business failed to resolve. The business has since changed its cancellation policy to include that they need to accept the cancellation, which is utterly ludicrous, which is nearly as bad as having a no-cancellations-allowed policy for rooms booked for more than three days at a time, regardless of when you try to cancel them.
Ah yes. The good old 'We were just joking' defence. AKA 'The smiley at the end of the insult'.
Dear guests of Union Street Guest House,
Yesterday Union Street Guest House went viral for all the wrong reasons. News articles, blog posts and social media posts were published about our policy to charge wedding parties a $500 fee for every negative review.
Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed. This indeed was a policy of the Union Street Guest House. It was originally intended as a joke and never something I told employees to enforce. However, since it was listed on our website it did represent an official policy. I now realize this joke was made in poor taste and not at all funny. This is no longer a policy of Union Street Guest House and we have taken it off of our website.
I’ve also read the reviews from guests saying we tried to enforce the negative reviews policy on them and for that I apologize. It was never my intention for anyone to pay this fine. The instances where an attempt was made to collect the fees were a breakdown in communication between my staff and me, and for that I accept full responsibility.
Including the fine for negative reviews as part of our policy was a mistake. That’s not the type of business that we run. It was a case of a joke gone very, very bad. The internet, social media and review sites are very powerful platforms and this situation has taught me valuable lessons about them. Feedback from our guests is very important to us. I admit that at times it can be tough to see a negative review and I could do a better job of taking that criticism in stride. We value each and every one of you and want to hear about your experience with Union Street Guest House, even if it’s a negative experience. Your reviews give us an opportunity to improve our service and make the Union Street Guest House experience better for everyone.
I’m a novice when it comes to the internet and digital communication. My background is in music and hospitality. That’s by no means an excuse, but a realization that I need to learn and continually educate myself on technologies that affect my business. I vow to do that moving forward to avoid mistakes like this in the future.
All of the team here at Union Street Guest House invites you to come visit us in Hudson, New York, and give us a chance to show you who we really are – a group dedicated to making your stay in the beautiful Hudson area a positive and memorable one.
Please also accept my offer of a 10% discount on a visit to Union Street Guest House within the next three months as further apology. Just mention this letter. And I encourage you to leave a review about your experience (positive or negative) after your stay.
I hope we see you in Hudson in the future.
Best,
Chris Wagoner
Owner
Union Street Guest House
I really loved the COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT they have committed by stealing the images they use on their web site. See here:
Their site and the source