UK Hotel Adds Hefty Charge For Bad Reviews Online

Bizzeh writes: A British couple has been "fined" £100 by a Blackpool hotel for leaving critical comments on Trip Advisor. The UK's Trading Standards organization is investigating the incident, saying it may breach regulations. The Broadway Hotel's booking policy reads (in small print), "Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and family may not. "For every bad review left on any website, the group organizer will be charged a maximum £100 per review."

Comments

Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

The card charges 30 pounds fee to refund it, and the hotel loses the money and the fee.

Do that often enough and the hotel will lose the right to take credit cards, because the card companies don't want scams like this.

A hotel that can't take credit cards will lose most of their business very quickly.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

The couple have sought a refund via their credit card company.

FTA

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

The card charges 30 pounds fee to refund it, and the hotel loses the money and the fee.

Apparently the couple have asked for a refund from the card company, although I'm sure they're more worried about bookings drying up now that this has hit the national news.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply not true. The charge-back answer is a myth. The hassle you have to go through makes it a almost impossible to achieve. Furthermore, you only need a "manager" from the company that shafted you to write two coherent sentences disputing your claim, and that's your charge-back rejected.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[cheater512]

I can do charge backs from within my internet banking. Seems pretty straight forward to me?

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is fishy here. This exact same thing happened at the union street guest house in NY six months ago, even the wording of the terms and conditions is the same. I smell a hoax.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Dahamma]

No, YOUR statement is simply not true. Chargeback can be a pain but if you have a case it is accepted the majority of the time. And in THIS case (when it's literally used as a "fine" for restricting free speech) it's almost a no-brainer it will go through.

For a GOOD credit card customer they make more money on the customer than some single shady hotel transaction in the long run. And when it's dozens of customer (who will probably have legal standing if they care to take it beyond simple chargebacks) it's just not worth it for the credit card company to resist. And in this actual incident they actually got a quote from a cabinet minister saying it was uncalled for, so if they would basically be batshit insane f-you to the British government refusing to reverse the charge...

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your question?

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[michelcolman]

For my software, I've had chargebacks from people just saying they didn't want the software anymore, without any further explanation (after they had already received their registration code and could use the software with no restrictions). I was told there was nothing I could do. Instead of a $15 sale, I had to pay a $15 chargeback fee. All I could do was disable that registration code in future updates. Fortunately it was a relatively rare occurrence.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

With businesses acting like this all over the place, communism ain't lookin' so bad these days.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Thanshin]

WTF?! Change bank now!

Refusing payments is one of the most basic interactions you have to be able to do with your bank.

You have money, they are a bank. It's you two against "the evil criminal merchant subclass".

If I didn't have absolute confidence in that my bank will always be on my side when we're talking about my money, I'd never buy anything online.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done it without much 'hassle'...Perhaps you should have gone to small claims court.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

you only need a "manager" from the company that shafted you to write two coherent sentences disputing your claim, and that's your charge-back rejected

It sure helps if you can string a coherent sentence together when you file your claim!
Do that and the CC companies will be on the side of the customer.

This goes for any complaint, not just with CC companies!

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[rvw]

With businesses acting like this all over the place, communism ain't lookin' so bad these days.

In Soviet Russia, these days ain't looking at communism!

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite what the Republicans are trying to tell you regulating businesses is not the same as communism.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I was told there was nothing I could do.

It looks like you need to use a better card payment service. Although the chargeback system is certainly horribly biased against honest merchants and vulnerable to abuse, you can still dispute any chargeback, and any serious card payment service will surely provide for this.

Also worth knowing:

1. Some payment services these days will waive the chargeback fee if you successfully defend the charge.

2. If you use 3-D Secure to authenticate the buyer, then chargeback liability shifts to the financial companies rather than you as the merchant under most circumstances.

So the situation here is at least a bit better for honest merchants than it used to be.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[gl4ss]

a) you can get chargebacks

and b) deducting the fine from the card without notifying/permission from the card holder(or perhaps even just because the card wasn't present at the transaction) is probably against the rules of the said credit card provider and the provider of the charging services to the said hotel.

the cc processors should just drop the stupid hotel - it's giving a bad vibe to using credit cards, they're not supposed to be some magic "we'll charge whatever we want from the card when we feel like that" for the companies.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Barny]

More than likely the owners of this place saw it and thought it was a great idea.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[cbhacking]

Yep. One of the few times I issued a chargeback (HP laptop repair by manufacturer due to a non-functional video card; the service request explicitly did not include the hard drive but they took it out, (supposedly) destroyed it, and replaced it with an OEM imaged one; fortunately it was a dual-drive laptop and all my data was on the second drive which I'd removed prior to sending it in) the vendor (HP) tried to contest it. After an annoying phone call with my CC company (Visa through Wells Fargo, which I do not recommend) I faxed them the repair order (clearly stating not to touch the HDD), repair receipt (which clearly stated what they'd done to the HDD), and a printout of the IM transcript where their service agent had assured me they wouldn't touch the hard drive. Not *quite* the only time I've had to send a fax in the last ten years, but close.

Anyhow, got the charge for the service reversed, but I did have to prove they had failed to uphold their service agreement to the terms that I'd paid for.

Incidentally, this was after going through numerous complaints with the service center itself (where they used the laughable argument of an analogy to car repair. I had recently had a significant amount of car repair, which by law includes a very detailed statement of what things are and are not to be replaced, itemized costs, and a stipulation that all replaced parts must be available for return to the owner (i.e. no destroying them without the owner explicitly asking you to). I also filed a report with the BBB. This is all from back in 2008 though, and the laptop actually still works so I have no other significant complaint about HP.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[MitchDev]

A-fucking-men!

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[r.freeman]

Yes, it seems pretty straight forward to you.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[ShanghaiBill]

With businesses acting like this all over the place, communism ain't lookin' so bad these days.

Instead of receiving a fine, complainers will be sent to the Gulag.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "regulating business". Nothing to do with speech or substances.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially after you visit trip advisor and read the *many* bad reviews, and see the photos past customers have posted there.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[ShanghaiBill]

This is simply not true. The charge-back answer is a myth. The hassle you have to go through makes it a almost impossible to achieve.

It depends. If they paid online, a charge-back is easy. For "card not present" transactions, charge-backs are almost automatic, and the merchant has little recourse. If the physical card was used at the hotel, then it will be much harder.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[rickb928]

This isn't a fraud case. There isn't any reason to shift liability to the processor or acquirer. This is a pure dispute.

Assuming the cardholder isn't trying to claim a deceptive practice. Which doesn't seem sustainable.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[rickb928]

FTFA:

"The Broadway Hotel's booking policy reads (in small print), "Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and family may not. "For every bad review left on any website, the group organizer will be charged a maximum £100 per review."

I'm betting these nice patrons read that as carefully as you did. The first time.

They may not be able to claim ignorance.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but taking over healthcare is....or are you one of those people Gruber talked about. I suppose people want everything regulated. What you can eat, or drink, smoke (liberals), who you have sex with (conservatives).

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

By that logic, without regulation there would be people kicking in your front door, raping your daughter and taking your shit.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[rossdee]

What have Republicans got to do with it? This is in the UK, they don't have Republicans there.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Those particular examples are of regulation being used to subdue the public. Regulation can also likewise be used to benefit the public. For example, putting nutrition info labels on food, regulating which side of the road you are allowed to drive on, etc.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[MrL0G1C]

Wow, it's 2014, the cold war ended decades ago, the 'red scare' was half a century ago and yet some slashdotter can't take a light joke about communism without modding it as flamebait!

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Luckyo]

Slashdot + american sense of overwhelming self-importance = result you see.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

ACA must be meta-communist as health insurance stocks are at their highest levels and the cost has fallen. I'd consider the old way - a single plan offered by an employer - to fit your definition of 'communist insurance'. But then again, you're probably under 26 and still covered by your parents plan (thanks Obama!)

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[TapeCutter]

This is the comment section of slashdot, WTF has the article got to do with anything?

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[whereiswaldo]

Without regulation, your body wouldn't function properly: Breathing, blood sugar level, metabolism, sleep, etc. Not all regulation is bad.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

For my software, I've had chargebacks from people just saying they didn't want the software anymore, without any further explanation (after they had already received their registration code and could use the software with no restrictions). I was told there was nothing I could do. Instead of a $15 sale, I had to pay a $15 chargeback fee. All I could do was disable that registration code in future updates. Fortunately it was a relatively rare occurrence.

Heh... I wonder how many called afterwards to complain that their registration code had been deactivated?

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

The card charges 30 pounds fee to refund it, and the hotel loses the money and the fee.

Do that often enough and the hotel will lose the right to take credit cards, because the card companies don't want scams like this.

A hotel that can't take credit cards will lose most of their business very quickly.

In the past, I'd have agreed with you, but not any more. Things have really changed in the credit card industry since what we call "the Great Recession" in the USA. In the past, I successfully protested several charges and one time got almost $400 taken off over a dispute with a Hong Kong hotel. Approximately 6 years ago, I bought 2 tickets on a European based airline. I don't want to name them, but let's just say it's not a major carrier and they aren't particularly well known unless you happen to live in the country where they are based. My at the time girlfriend was supposed to go with me on a trip. Her mother had to have emergency surgery and being an only child and her mother having divorced her husband many years ago, my girlfriend had to stay and help and miss the trip. I did not want to go by myself, so I contacted the airline. They said that the tickets were non-refundable. I then asked if I could just get a credit towards a future flight and they said no. So basically their position was that those tickets were only good for the exact flight I booked them and for no other flight. I was not advised of this at the time of purchase, so I protested it. It went on for months. I printed out copies of their entire website, showing the ticket buying process and showing that nowhere on the site did they state their policy about no-refunds, no credits. I provided copies of the email the airline sent me when I bought the tickets, showing that at no point did they mention no refunds, no changes, no credits. The airline's response to my submission was to simply say "We told him he couldn't have refunds" and offer no proof to back it up. After months of wrangling, my credit card company essentially told me that because the airline refused to refund the charge, I was stuck with it, despite my submission that they never told me their refund policy. The bottom line was that my credit card didn't want to eat the charges of the airline tickets and they were unwilling to rule in my favor because they would have had to eat the charges since the airline refused to do a refund. Granted, a hotel charge is a lot less, but I have to warn from my experience that if the hotel puts up even a half assed fight like that airline did against me, that may be enough to prevent you from getting the money back.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

The cabinet minister is from a local council, not the UK government.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[xaxa]

FTFA:

"The Broadway Hotel's booking policy reads (in small print), ...."

I'm betting these nice patrons read that as carefully as you did. The first time.

TFA says they booked through Booking.com -- on their page for the hotel I don't see any fine print with those words. They may have changed it today. They have a note about disabled access.

It's clearly an unfair contract term anyway. Would you agree to it if it was explicit? No -- it's intentionally hidden away in the small print.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[xaxa]

It depends. If they paid online, a charge-back is easy. For "card not present" transactions, charge-backs are almost automatic, and the merchant has little recourse. If the physical card was used at the hotel, then it will be much harder.

Since it's a British card, so has a chip, even if the owner authorised (using his PIN) the cost of the room at the hotel using the card, they won't have authorised the subsequent £100 charge.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Right; they probably both belong to the "Old Dump Hoteliers Association of Evil" or some such and they shared this as a "best practice" or something...

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[sribe]

Assuming the cardholder isn't trying to claim a deceptive practice. Which doesn't seem sustainable.

You really think the practice is legal? I highly doubt that.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[omnichad]

or perhaps even just because the card wasn't present at the transaction

Standard practice in hotels to keep a card on file to charge damages/incidentals. And when you check out in the morning, nobody's seen your room yet.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Europe but in the US there is a time limit on how long you can wait until asking for a chargeback. If you really spent "months of wrangling" then you almost certainly overshot the 60 day limit you would have had here for your sort of issue.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Applehu Akbar]

No, that's because when this happens in Britain, victims are not allowed to shoot back.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Applehu Akbar]

Actually they do, but in the UK it's spelled with a small R and they are considered terrorists.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

My out of pocket costs have increased tremendously, and I now have to pay a surcharge because my SO does not use their employer's insurance coverage. True, there are more choices now. They all increase my actual costs though.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[agentgonzo]

If you've already paid the bill for the hotel room and they then charge your card again for the £100 because they kept your details on file, can't you then just say to the credit card company that it's a fraudulent payment on your card rather than a dispute? Afterall, they don't have your authorisation to charge your card a second time for the £100.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do charge backs from within my internet banking. Seems pretty straight forward to me?

What's your question?

I thought it was obvious, but I'll spell it out for you. You claimed that to initiate a charge back is a hassle. I said that I can initiate a charge back right from my internet banking portal. Or put another way, to initiate a charge back is as simple as clicking a button. That seems pretty hassle-free, but perhaps you disagree.

Or for the tl;dr version, do you disagree that being able to initiate a charge back with the click of a button is hassle-free?

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[dywolf]

No worries, since it doesnt happen that way anyway.

Not only is the rate of it lower in the UK, but its also more likely to be committed by a family member already in the house than a stranger kicking in the door.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[jsepeta]

Irish Republicans are a totally different thing

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[dywolf]

no, regulation is not inherently bad.

without regulation you also wouldnt have clean air, clean water, and safe food.
you wouldnt have a safe workplace.
you wouldnt have a safe car.
your bank accoutnants wouldnt be protected by insurance.
your bank wouldnt be restricted in what it can do with your money.
your grandma out in the country wouldnt have phone or even electricity.
and now, most recently, your insurance cant kick you off your plan when you get sick.

i can go on.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[dywolf]

thats because its typically cheaper for your spouse to get insurance through her employer, because her employer recieves hefty tax incentives to do so.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

So you disagree that it is hassle-free then. I had no idea that some people consider clicking a button to be such a hassle, but then, that is why I asked the question, to learn.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

restricting smoking is reasonable.
your smoke can give me cancer, which means your actions potentially are affecting me negatively (very).

i really dont care if you smoke. go ahead, light em up.

just dont do it near me where im forced to breathe your carcinogens without choice or in a way that impeeds my ability to make that choice or carry on with my life.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

It could have been worse. He could have mentioned Islam. The mods then would have had a coronary.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[JosKarith]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea well at least the reviews of the Gulag will be accurate.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[s.petry]

I don't believe it was not the part about communism that got the post marked negatively, it was the other part relating to a certain political party.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they do, but they're Irish.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[phorm]

Some payment services these days will waive the chargeback fee if you successfully defend the charge

Some? If you've defended that the chargeback is not legitimate in what would should the associated fee still stick?

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[phorm]

The hard drive thing must be fairly standard for HP. The last time I had a laptop sent in it was due to a known defect (bad Northbridge resulting in crashes if you had dual DIMM's and applications using more than a certain amount of RAM).
They acknowledged the issue, but of course there was no replacement board so instead they fixed a supposedly loose power connector and the hard drive. The funny part was that - knowing their tendency re-image OS's - I'd taken out the 120GB HDD and put in a 30GB so that they wouldn't kill my data. When the laptop came back they'd plunked a new 120GB HDD in there. I guess they just had a bunch of pre-imaged stock drives and that was easier.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is the rate of it lower in the UK, but its also more likely to be committed by a family member already in the house than a stranger kicking in the door.

You have a point, Jimmy Savile was already in everyone's house (who paid a TV license).

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Forgefather]

Very true that the companies benefit more from your continued business.

Another key part is that credit card companies also make money from the funds that they have frozen. All of that cash is sitting in their accounts accruing interest, and in that sense they are incentivised to hold the money as long as possible, not to cave to the merchants.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Applehu Akbar]

This is how the British press views the situation:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com...
As Americans we tend to focus on the narrow issue of gun rights as an explanation for the lower home invasion rate in the US (10% of burglaries) vs the 50% rate in the UK, but it's a deeper problem than that. While in the US there is a generally accepted right to self defense, the legal theory in the UK is that fighting crime is the police's job. In Britain, retaliating with a knife or even an incidental household object is likely to result in legal trouble for the homeowner. Thugs know this, which leads to home invasions not being just a problem in bad neighborhoods. The article above refers to an invasion in one of the finest sections of London.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Cederic]

Trading Standards (an official body with some fairly severe powers) have been involved and commented publicly on the matter. This is legit.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't know that there is an international hoteliers association, eh?
You didn't know that there are lawyers/attorneys/barristers/solicitors in Europe as well as the USA, eh?
People of the same [trade/religion/nationality/color/people group/language group/on and on] talk to each other and share ideas.
Please try to keep up.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[kilfarsnar]

restricting smoking is reasonable. your smoke can give me cancer, which means your actions potentially are affecting me negatively (very).

i really dont care if you smoke. go ahead, light em up.

just dont do it near me where im forced to breathe your carcinogens without choice or in a way that impeeds my ability to make that choice or carry on with my life.

You seem to live under the illusion that it's possible to live your life unaffected by the choices of others. You likely inhale, ingest or imbibe carcinogens every day. Yet you are concerned about standing next to a smoker and inhaling a minute amount of smoke, which will have no measurable affect on your health. You are not forced to breathe anything. If a smoker is near you, you are free to move away.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[kilfarsnar]

Wow, it's 2014, the cold war ended decades ago, the 'red scare' was half a century ago and yet some slashdotter can't take a light joke about communism without modding it as flamebait!

Witness the power of propaganda.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[WCMI92]

Yep. A chargeback in the answer. They get enough of them the hotel either won't be able to take credit cards anymore or will pay so much to do so they won't make money.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[sexconker]

You're a retard. Here's how it works:

I go to my credit card's website.
I log in.
I click on the support link.
I click on the claim link.
I file a claim stating that a charge was unauthorized.
I get a letter in the mail.
I sign it.
I send it back.
I get my money back in a few days.
The merchant eats it.
The merchant has the option of taking me to court.
The merchant won't take me to court.
If the merchant takes me to court, I'll win.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot, sexconker.

'Anonymous Coward' - October 2014:

Triple cases in 3 days. That's 9 cases by October 25. 27 by November 1. Over 2000 by the end of November. 170,000 by the end of the year. 14 million at the end of january and well over half the country by valentine's day.

Keep trying, sexconker.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Karmashock]

yep.

On top of that, update your bad review to point out that the fucking hotel had the gall to try and censor reviews with a fucking bullshit thieving fee.

Seriously? Give us bad reviews and we'll steal your money? What a bunch of fucking assholes.

I've dealt with people that have this mentality before. Otherwise nice people. But they have this blank space when it comes to some things. Fucking incredible.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

It might not seem fair, but the fact is that levying a fee for any claimed chargeback was the industry norm for a long time, regardless of the final outcome. Remember, the card payments industry is fundamentally and systemically screwed up, and approximately 99.9% of the time it's the merchant who is the screwee when things go wrong whether or not they have actually done anything wrong.

As far as I'm aware, it's only relatively recently that some card payments services have been more fair about this and started imposing the fee only for successful chargebacks.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

While in the US there is a generally accepted right to self defense, the legal theory in the UK is that fighting crime is the police's job.

Not sure what theory that is, but anyone can use reasonable force to prevent a crime. In many circumstances this would involve calling the police.

In Britain, retaliating with a knife or even an incidental household object is likely to result in legal trouble for the homeowner.

Of course retaliation is likely to be illegal.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should have checked if you could get a refund before you bought the tickets.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[xaotikdesigns]

I don't know, if I could drive on the other side of the road during rush hour, I wouldn't be stuck in traffic for nearly as long...

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to live under the illusion that it's possible to live your life unaffected by the choices of others.

I don't know about the AC, but I'm under the illusion that people don't have the right to do something that will potentially cause harm to those around them.

Since the 1964 Surgeon Generalâ(TM)s Report, 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers died because they breathed secondhand smoke.

You are not forced to breathe anything. If a smoker is near you, you are free to move away.

Ah, so it's my responsibility to react to someone else's harmful action. If I start swinging my fists for personal enjoyment while standing next to you, you aren't forced to be punched. You are free to move away. Sucks for you if you lose your place in line, have mobility issues that make it difficult to move away, etc.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[BitterOak]

With businesses acting like this all over the place, communism ain't lookin' so bad these days.

Until you write a negative review of the government, that is.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[jimbolauski]

Don't complainers in communists countries get trips to reeducation camps?

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you missed this part: "...nowhere on the site did they state their policy about no-refunds, no credits"

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

You're overstating it.
It's not that there is no right to self-defense in the UK.
There very much is; indeed our own is based on the common origin of our laws within British Common Law.

First we need to remember was self-defense is. Self defense is not merely the act of defending oneself. We care about it in the legal sense. Which is that tt is a legal defense used at trial to excuse one's actions. Essentially the defendent admits to having broken the law, such as law agianst homicide or assualt. But they claim they essentially had no choice but to break the law, as they were acting in their own defense (or someone else's for whoms they could reasonably claim the privilege). As part of not haivng any choice, you cannot have had any possibilty of retreating or de-escalating the situation. If it's possible to leave the area and break off the encounter, then it's not self-defense, traditionally, as you did have another choice. That is known as the duty to retreat. Stand your ground laws however remove that concept, and thus muddy the thing as now self defense is no longer a matter of last resort legally.

In the US anything up to and including homicide can be excused by a claim of self-defense. we theoretically have limits about reasonableness of force used, and rules against going beyond defense into retaliation, but in many jurisdictions these are rarely enforced as many defenses are fatal in nature. Part of this stems the higher prevalence of guns in out nation, which could be reasonably expected to lead to a higher fatality rate resulting from acts of self-defense, and our acceptence of that as a society, instead of resisteance.

As for the UK, there very much is an established right to self defense in the UK.
The key idea though is that while the US tends towards unlimited force in practice, the UK actually enforces its rules about the reasonableness of the level of force used. It can happen that deadly force was required, but it can also happen that a person, when he goes befoe his peers in the jury, is deemed to have gone too far and beyond mere self-defense. For ex, the man who went after his attacker with a sword was deemed at trial to have gone too far and recieved prison time.

We say that self defense doesnt protect you from killing someone who shoves you.
And it definitely isnt meant to protect you from the consequences of your own actions.
ie, you start a fight, you kill someone, and now you claim self defense when you instigated the whole thing.

But in the US, there's actually a decent chance at making just that claim, as self-defense laws have been loosed around the country.
Which has resulted in the example of person A following an Person B, getting into a fight, and then killing B. And getting away with it.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Darinbob]

That situation sounds very un-American. Maybe congress should look into it.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the gov be-it local, state or federal can take your belongings and bank accounts without recourse to you and without due process if you are suspected of earning your income from criminal activity.
 
Again this is simply from being suspected. How'd you like all your bank accounts seized simply for making a large deposit into your bank account?

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[budgenator]

With businesses acting like this all over the place, communism ain't lookin' so bad these days.

<sarcasim>Yeah buddy it's so much better to have your Government, that controls the police and military acting like that!</sarcasim>

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[budgenator]

The "Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and family may not." made me wonder if most of their customer rent rooms by the hour, with clean sheets extra.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[mjwx]

The card charges 30 pounds fee to refund it, and the hotel loses the money and the fee.

Do that often enough and the hotel will lose the right to take credit cards, because the card companies don't want scams like this.

A hotel that can't take credit cards will lose most of their business very quickly.

Actually, the credit card company rings the hotel and says "Did Mr A Cowards stay there on the 3rd of November", the hotel will say "Yes, we have his signature and footage on the CCTV" then the credit card company will turn around and say "Righto, sorry for bothering you" and cancel your card.

It is actually quite hard to fool a bank.

Besides this, if enough people start playing funny buggers with credit cards, hotels will just add a 30 pound surcharge for accepting your card. You think you might avoid it by going elswhere, but it'll be everywhere soon enough.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[ncc74656]

While in the US there is a generally accepted right to self defense, the legal theory in the UK is that fighting crime is the police's job.

This brings up a question. It's well established in the US that the police have no responsibility to protect your life; if you call 911 when the Bad Guys show up and get killed before the police arrive, your next of kin don't get to sue the cops. (Look up Warren v. District of Columbia for an example.) It's not that much of a problem here as you have the right to defend yourself, with deadly force if necessary. In a legal environment where that right to self-defense isn't guaranteed, as it isn't in the UK, does that then imply a potential liability if their police don't do what has been decided is their job? (I suspect it doesn't, but I could be wrong.)

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Aaden42]

Start with http://consumerist.com/

It’s a big jump to communism for a couple of lousy hotels. Shame them into better behavior or out of business. Either way, the market’s working properly in this case.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[kilfarsnar]

You seem to live under the illusion that it's possible to live your life unaffected by the choices of others.

I don't know about the AC, but I'm under the illusion that people don't have the right to do something that will potentially cause harm to those around them. Since the 1964 Surgeon Generalâ(TM)s Report, 2.5 million adults who were nonsmokers died because they breathed secondhand smoke.

You are not forced to breathe anything. If a smoker is near you, you are free to move away.

Ah, so it's my responsibility to react to someone else's harmful action. If I start swinging my fists for personal enjoyment while standing next to you, you aren't forced to be punched. You are free to move away. Sucks for you if you lose your place in line, have mobility issues that make it difficult to move away, etc.

If you think something someone else is doing is harmful to you, and you have the ability, I think moving away is a valid choice. Your health is your responsibility. But at the same time, we are all interconnected. Our decisions and actions affect other people all the time; sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. If a chemical company is dumping in your back yard, you should get them to stop. But if someone is smoking next to you in line, it's really not hurting you.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[rioki]

I don't get it. I have seen the health care system in the US(before obamacare), France, Germany and the US (now with obamacare) and can conclude, socialized health care is always cheaper. Free market self corrects* many things, but health care is not one of them. For example in Germany, I am above the highest income bracket and I pay less than I would in the US. That is less than when I would be single, but I am not my insurance covers my child and wife. You may pay less, because you are young, but wait until you are older.

* In the case of healthcare there is no free market, it is an inelastic market. If there is treatment that can save your life, no mater if it costs $7 or $70000 you will find the money to pay for it. As a result normal free market dynamics do not apply. With socialized healthcare the insurances negotiate on your behalf and they have leverage because the span the entire population or large parts. They pit different providers against each other, which reintroduces free market forces.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the obvious point here is that there are substantial freemarkt measures you can take that allow you to defend yourself effectively in these kinds of situations. Actually, the only important criteria is whether the Law allows corporations to get away with defrauding people. As long as the government regulates fairly, people will be able to recover their losses at court.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Methadras]

Sure, you could go on, but in reality what you are advocating for is control and government control at that. Targeted regulations and how they are applied have an inherent benefit if the system by which they are created was objective in that application. It isn't and therefore, regulatory practices and control are simply emplaced to do one thing and one thing only, control you and what you do.

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[wolja]

What have Republicans got to do with it? This is in the UK, they don't have Republicans there.

They do have right wing whackers who think small government will result in Business acting responsibly. /lolz

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Zeinfeld]

Its more than that, without regulation you end up with a lemon-law market.

Lots of times the difference between an honest product and a dishonest one only becomes apparent years later. If the product is safety equipment you only find out if the hard hat works when someone drops the brick on your head.

The libertarian theory that self interest will drive people to make honest products has turned out to be utterly false. In fact it turns out to be quite difficult for a company that intends to do the right thing to do so. I once had to get a guy fired after I found he had goosed his response rates for customer support calls by deliberately setting the phone tree up as a maze.

People do all sorts of idiotic short sighted stuff. This hotelier for example got his pants in a twist over a bad review and now he has probably sunk his business completely.

Rational choice is not an empirical fact of human behavior. It is a modelling assumption that tends to give good results in certain cases. But it does not hold for corporations because the interests of the corporation are not identical to those of the employees. All those banks who go belly up because the traders get big rewards for raking in profits and face no consequences for a loss. I don't gamble with my own money but if you want to give me $100,000 to gamble with I am happy to take it to Vegas, find a roulette wheel and let you take 100% of any losses and 90% of any gains.

Re:Ask the credit card for a refund

[Dahamma]

Also apparently if a chargeback is due to bad practice on the merchant side (which in this case it clearly is) they charge an additional fee/fine to the merchant when doing the chargeback. Is anyone surprised VISA, etc set up the system so they make money either way?

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Nehmo]

In Soviet Russia, you find the hotel.
In the the UK, the hotel fine YOU!

(So, it isn't that bad. Anyway, it's the best I could come up with.)

Re: Ask the credit card for a refund

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Retaliation =\= self-defence.

Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackpool

[itsme1234]

BROADWAY HOTEL SUCKS

Come and take your 100 pounds for this.

Streisand Effect anyone?

Last review from tripadvisor:

"I spent two nights for my son's 18th birthday at this hotel, but had I read the reviews 1st I wouldn't of stayed at this hotel. The breakfast was disgusting, the tables and cutlery were filthy and the dining room looked as it hadn't seen a hoover in months. In our bedroom the shower head was useless cause you had to hold it yourself as the holder on the wall was broken also I don't think they clean the showers regular cause it was filthy, we couldn't turn the TV on, the floor was dirty. In my son's room he couldn't turn the heating off so had to be too hot all night "

Meet Streisand

[whoever57]

The owners of this hotel are no doubt becoming familiar with the Streisand effect right now. OTOH, £36 for a hotel room? What did they expect? I know it's Blackpool, but still, no one should expect much for £36 pounds.

Re:Meet Streisand

[lsllll]

I agree. The other thing, though, is that IT'S A CONTRACT. Read, read read! I don't know why people who don't read the contract try to get out of it later. I know it's not kosher to put things like this in the contact, but contracts are like that. They're usually one sided in favor of one party or another. The question is, whether this was illegal (extorting money for negative reviews). If it wasn't, then I don't see how one should be able to get out of it.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is: nobody reads contracts. 95%+ of the people agree to anything. If you say no to every contract that has a clause you disagree with, you can not do anything in modern society.

Re:Meet Streisand

[tehcyder]

I agree. The other thing, though, is that IT'S A CONTRACT. Read, read read! I don't know why people who don't read the contract try to get out of it later. I know it's not kosher to put things like this in the contact, but contracts are like that. They're usually one sided in favor of one party or another. The question is, whether this was illegal (extorting money for negative reviews). If it wasn't, then I don't see how one should be able to get out of it.

This was a simple retail transaction, not a commercial negotiation.

Luckily, I doubt that this hotel will be seeing many of the latter until they come to talk to their liquidators.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Business policies are not law and the sooner people realize that the sooner we can pass laws to punish those who attempt to produce bogus contacts that break the law.

In other words, wake the fuck up dude! lol

Re:Meet Streisand

[Panoptes]

The 'charge' for a negative review is a 'minimum of pds 100'? I'd like to see this stand up to legal scrutiny.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Chrisq]

Problem is: nobody reads contracts.

The good news is that this works both ways. A number of times I have crossed out bits I don't like, and photocopied the contract before sending it back and nobody said a thing. Only once did I get a letter saying that they would only do business if I accepted all terms.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

" IT'S A CONTRACT. Read, read read! I don't know why people who don't read the contract try to get out of it later."

But it's impractical to read every single contract that retailers try to foist on you for things that really should be simple transactions. That's why in many jurisdictions a term like this would be considered unconscionable, and therefore unenforceable. Besides most hotel transactions are actually covered by specific laws that govern the responsibilities and liabilities of both parties.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Iamthecheese]

>Only once did I get a letter saying that they would only do business if I accepted all terms. My own story is that I get rejected more then half the time when I don't accept all terms.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't read this kind of "contract" because doing so would take up a significant chunck of their lives. In the case of a hotel, the hotel could have taken weeks writing every kind of fishy clause into the contract. As a customer staying for a single night, you just don't have the time reading through something like that.

This is why standards and regulations are needed. It's insane to allow every hotel you visit to write individual contracts having different sets of rules regarding things such as reviews. In order for a business to work well, customers needs to know what to expect.

Re:Meet Streisand

[ruir]

The point is that you should not sign any type of contract without reading it. Many people do not imagine the legal power a signature has on a piece of paper, no matter how absurd is the text there.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Richard_at_work]

Such "contracts" hold little to no water in the UK, which is why Trading Standards is involved - this hotel is going to get buttfucked from here to Singapore by quite a few government bodies over this, and quite probably lose their merchant status for accepting cards.

Re: Meet Streisand

[TheDarkMaster]

Illegal clauses are null and void by default, and unforceable on a jury.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I know it's Blackpool, but still, no one should expect much for 36 pounds.

You say that, but there are plenty of local B&Bs and some of the big national chains like Premier Inn that would charge little more than that for a night off season and still offer decent accommodation and a good breakfast. Short stay accommodation is a fiercely competitive market in Blackpool, and prices really can be much lower than similar places in most of the UK.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a problem in some countries, though. I don't know about the UK, but in many European countries clauses like the one by the hotel are simple not legal and thereby void (actually, the whole contract can be void in this case).

In Germany, for instance, this is the case for practically all software EULAs - nearly all of them are void, because they habitually contain clauses that breach law,, and it doesn't matter whether you read them or not. (Moreover, most of them are imposed upon the user after having purchased the software, which makes them even more futile.)

Re:Meet Streisand

[thegarbz]

In many parts of the world you're not required to read contracts. Items that are not part of a standard contract are not enforceable unless separated and signed on their own.

So: It is expected that a hotel charges me for the minibar and damage to the room. It is unexpected and not even remotely standard practice that they charge me for leaving a bad review. Hence when I sign on the dotted line I agree to standard terms. This is backed by case law in several parts of the world, and I think the UK included.

In Australia it was to do with a postal worker having people sign over the deeds to the house when dropping off a package.

Re:Meet Streisand

[iapetus]

I applied this back in the early days of Java development, when the giant list of terms and conditions for the SDK download was displayed in a text field.

An editable text field.

This has two main effects that I can see:

1. I, unlike most people, am allowed to use old versions of Java to run nuclear power stations.
2. Sun owes me $1m for each JDK I downloaded back in the day.

To date I haven't received payment.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantastic! Do you've some reference for that postal worker scam? I'd like to read more about it!

Re:Meet Streisand

[bsolar]

It's also true that agreeing with a clause doesn't make it automatically enforceable: it could still be declared null and void.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Hotels website is already offline.
The news about the hilarious practice is second hit on google if you search for the hotel name.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about your laws, but around here we have rules for making contracts also. You can't, for example, waive away your freedom of opinion with a contract. You can't make one sided contracts that clearly favor one party ( the idea is that a contract should always include two or more parties that are in even negotiation position, so you can't force a contract on anyone ). Also trivial contracts such as this you can usually just sign away, because they cannot contain things you wouldn't expect them to contain. If, for example, a car rent contract included a clause in which you gift your house to the car company it would definetely be null and void. This, in turn, doesn't negate the rest of the contract if it makes sense, so you can't use some ridiculous clause as a trojan to get out of the contract.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Justpin]

£36 can get a weekday travel lodge / premier inn type room. Decent bed, clean sheets working bathrooms. Walls are a tad thin as they are all prefabricated dropped in on a crane on the back of a lorry. But the parking is free. Food is bad though as it is all microwaved. Minimal staff. Years ago you could stay in an F1 hotel in France. Private rooms but shared bathroom facilities. Favourite of bikers and truckers. 15Euro + 3 for breakfast. You got a double bed and a bunk bed above it, TV, sink + 3euro for wifi

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Punitive damages are not legally enforceable under UK contract law.

Re:Meet Streisand

[dywolf]

contracts are only binding for people who cant afford enough lawyers.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Translation Error]

I'm pretty sure that if you modify, sign, and return a contract that was given to you, you need to get explicit approval of the changes (generally by having the other party initial them) for them to be binding.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Alioth]

You should expect a basic, clean, functional room though with what was advertised to come with the room.

I've stayed in a £35 a night Blackpool B&B (Windsor House or something it was called) and it was perfectly acceptable. The room wasn't huge but it was clean and comfortable, the shower worked fine, it had free WiFi, and a full English breakfast included and was much better value than most so-called "low cost" hotels like Premier Inn. I stayed recently in a 25 euro a night hotel in the centre of Zaragoza in Spain and this was similar - no way could you describe it as "luxury" but it was clean, the bed was comfortable, the shower worked just fine and so did the WiFi. It is perfectly possible to have an entirely acceptable hotel room for this price.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick is to retype the contract without the struck phrases, not just strike them out. Less obvious that way.

On the other hand, that does raise your risk a little, as the law tends to favor the party who did not draft the contract.

Re:Meet Streisand

[ChrisMaple]

Location, location, location.
You can get a quite nice motel room in rural Nevada for US$45 a night. Suburban Pennsylvania, $60 for a mediocre room. Downtown Boston, figure over $150 for a roach-infested dive. Location drives price far more than any other factor.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Z00L00K]

It depends on how reasonable the contract was beforehand.

If you strike out something that might not go well in court then you are probably fine anyway.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Since people shouldn't expect much, the purpose of such reviews is to let potential patrons know how low they are setting their sights if they stay there. Is it a 2, a 1.5, or a 1, and WHY? For example, I might be OK with peeling plaster, but won't put up with cockroaches. Even at the low end, information is power.

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck trying to get blood from a stone (aka Oracle).

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

" IT'S A CONTRACT. Read, read read! I don't know why people who don't read the contract try to get out of it later."

But it's impractical to read every single contract that retailers try to foist on you for things that really should be simple transactions.

And in such cases. you should say "no, I don't sign anything without reading all of it first. And this item is not worth reading 3 bloody pages for! So I'll go shopping somehwere else - where there aren't long contracts. Even if they are more expensive!"

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what the pen with disappearing ink is for. When they point to their unjust contract, you calmly say 'I don't see my signature there, you can't do this...'

And they cannot counter by refusing your stay, you have already stayed the night!

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

Autocad 2004 used to display an empty box with licencing terms when running under Wine. (probably becouse it count'd handle a missing font). I have acepted those terms, and will stick to them forever. (I saved a printed copy)

Re:Meet Streisand

[orgelspieler]

At work they made me sign a contract that included some language I knew would make the contract unenforceable in my state. So I helpfully revised it. They threatened to fire me if I didn't sign it as is. So now not only is it unenforceable, but I signed under duress! Yay! Big international corporate takeovers are fun!!

Re:Meet Streisand

[orgelspieler]

Just say no to the clauses you disagree with. I had an apartment owner let me lease there despite disagreeing to the big fine for keeping a Weber on the balcony. If you're signing a contract with a real person instead of a corporate "person" you'd be surprised at how reasonable they can be.

Re:Meet Streisand

[whoever57]

2. Sun owes me $1m for each JDK I downloaded back in the day.

To date I haven't received payment.

You are not so naiive as to think that contracts actually apply to big companies when being sued by ordinary people do you? Contracts only work the other way round in the USA.

Re:Meet Streisand

[whoever57]

£36 can get a weekday travel lodge / premier inn type room

Which makes me wonder why they stayed in Blackpool? It's some distance off the direct route. Did they want to see the tower? The illuminations?

Re:Meet Streisand

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Australia it was to do with a postal worker having people sign over the deeds to the house when dropping off a package."

      I hope that postal worker didn't survive the lynching. Or was it more civil and they just arrested, charged, and hung'um. Or really civil, charged him with various offenses, run him through the court, and disappeared him in the gulag.

Re:Meet Streisand

[mjwx]

Such "contracts" hold little to no water in the UK, which is why Trading Standards is involved - this hotel is going to get buttfucked from here to Singapore by quite a few government bodies over this, and quite probably lose their merchant status for accepting cards.

And this is why anyone in the UK or an understanding of the UK isn't worried.

No need to do a chargeback, just go to Trading Standards.

However having some understanding from the other side of the desk, hotels have a serious problem with fake reviews on sites like Trip Advisor (not helped by the fact Trip Advisor will put bad reviews at the top unless you pay them). In time this will devalue sites like Trip Advisor to the point where no-one even reads the reviews but there are still a lot of idiots who blindly trust it.

Not defending this mind you, I just understand why they're frustrated (also, it's in Blackpool... that may be half the problem).

Re:Meet Streisand

[thegarbz]

No I don't. It has been over 10 years since I did Contract Law subjects as part of a worthless Business degree. But I'm willing to guess that any Australian contract law textbook will cover it.

Re:Meet Streisand

[MPBoulton]

Pretty sure the F1 chains around the Uk-French ports still offer the same facilities for that price - it's like spending a night in prison!

Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

While crap like this is obviously bogus, one easy way to short-circuit it is to simply never use your real name on any of these review sites.
If they can't identify you, they can't extort you. Especially if you use a pseudonym that is really common like say William Brown or John Williams.

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to get me into trouble!

Sincerely,
William Brown.

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, this guy is terrible, isn't he? I will know no peace now!

J Williams

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just happy he did not mention me.

John Smith

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[just_another_sean]

Smart of him, leave The Doctor out of this.

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

This is open for abuse or Joe Job. Use the desk clerk's name that gave you a bad time. Mention the reviw fee in the review. State the review is a Joe Job and why.

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Only cowards use pseudonyms...heh

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

or go one better, never use real currency.

Re:Never Use Your Real Name

[Anonymous Coward]

The contract was for a group booking for a wedding or something. The organizers got charged if any guests left a negative review, so they would try (probably unsuccessfully as discussed in other comments) to charge you if:
  - the review mentioned when the stay took place, and no rooms were occupied except by your guests at that time
  - the review mentioned "I was here for a wedding" and they assumed it was yours
  - they just assumed it was probably one of your guests because most people staying around this time were your guests, and fuck you sue us.

You're right though that "real" names increase fraud on review systems. It works well the other way, too: offer customers freebies for good reviews.

Make it cost them more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make it cost the company more that they "fined" you. Any means necessary.

Newsflash!

[Tablizer]

Sociopaths exist!

(As do blunt trolls)

Surprisingly TripAdvisor ...

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't have any regulations in place to prevent this type of actions by hotels?!
Well, next time I'll just ignore TripAdvisor...

Re:Surprisingly TripAdvisor ...

[Luckyo]

UK itself does. In law.

If this goes to court, hotel has snowball chance in hell of winning. The problem is court costs. However now that this made it to top of BBC, consumer protection agency will likely take over and hotel will fold like a pro poker player who drew nothing and sees opponent pop up a maximum bet.

Re:Surprisingly TripAdvisor ...

[Luckyo]

Which already happened:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...

As I said, hotel folded instantly.

Re:Surprisingly TripAdvisor ...

[Dragonslicer]

Have you stayed in this hotel? Tell us about your experience.You can share your experience by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

Wow, talk about unintended consequences for the hotel.

Already has 147 'Terrible' ratings

[j-b0y]

So maybe this couple should have checked Trip Advisor before staying there...

Nonetheless, I think this hotel has pretty much fucked itself now. If anybody wanted to stay there before, they surely won't now.

Re:Already has 147 'Terrible' ratings

[91degrees]

It's a devious ploy to step people from mobbing the review site with bogus 1-star reviews.

Although I checked yesterday and ther were 150 negative reviews, and the three newest ones looked fairly legit. I think Trip Advisor is deleting any review added since this story hit the interwebs.

Business Policies are not Law

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this, if the Sun rises tomorrow, you all have to pay me whatever I tell you to pay to me or face the full extent of the law.

Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Dahamma]

I can't imagine a credit card company would approve of their card being used to "fine" customers. Accept an IMMEDIATE chargeback (which I assume they will, as the charge is insane) and tell the company one more violation and their contract is cancelled.

And then, good luck with a hotel accepting payment "cash only"...

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[cbhacking]

Checks (cheques, this being a British hotel) do still exist, but yeah, that would still be pretty much a death knell. The only time I don't pay for a hotel online (with my credit card) is if I'm in a place so remote I either don't get cell signal or they aren't listed on the online booking sites. Even in most of those places, though, I pay with my card. The only time in the last decade I've paid cash for lodging was a few "tea houses" in the Himalayas, most of which didn't even have electricity (maybe one solar panel, battery, and a light over the kitchen/dining area).

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

Car rental companies have sort of "fines" included in their contracts. They're just more established and people have accepted this practice as a standard unlike what we're seeing here.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Dahamma]

Are you trying to compare the two? Like, damaging a rental car is somehow the same as the rental car company jerking you around and you publicly describing your bad experience? NOT THE SAME.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Richard_at_work]

Pretty much no larger business accepts cheques these days in the UK, and hasn't for several years - cheques have essentially been relegated to inter-personal transactions or smaller business (single person style businesses) because of the cost of handling them as a business.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[cbhacking]

Ah, I didn't realize. I assume they're still used for major transactions like buying a car or something?

I live in the USA, but aside from rent and occasionally paying a friend for something expensive I haven't used a check since graduation except to pay rent and buy my car.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

Bought my last car on my debit card. £25 fee but dealership were very happy with that.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Richard_at_work]

Cheques are notoriously bad for guaranteed payment - businesses would only accept a cheque if your bank also issued you with a cheque guarantee card (usually just a different design on your debit card), which means the bank would guarantee to cash the cheque up to a certain amount, taking the matter up with the writer of the cheque if it bounced. If you tried to cash a cheque without a guarantee (or a cheque over the guarantee amount) and it bounces, you are SOL and have to take it up with the writer yourself.

And cheque guarantees usually only went up to a few hundred quid.

Car dealers would typically want a bankers draft, which is a bit of paper issued by your bank for a specific amount and is treated as cash - the value is held on the paper, its not an instruction to transfer money, its an actual promissory note just like paper note cash is. Lose the bankers draft, and the money is gone, you can't get it back.

Bankers drafts cost you money to buy, and you have to go to a bank to have one issued.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Barny]

Where I used to work we had a cheque underwriter. Basically, when we got a cheque we would need to call up and feed all the details off it into the phone-service, they would give us an auth number to write on it. If the cheque bounces or is otherwise bad, we still got our money and THEY would undertake the hunting of the person.

Downsides:
3% processing fee
Takes about 10 mins
Customers who pay regularly by cheque are usually arseholes and will complain bitterly about the above two downsides, while holding up other people.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Richard_at_work]

Is that in the UK? Never heard of that before, and certainly never came across it in the UK - if you don't have a guarantee card, the cheque would be refused, it was that simple.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

Not usually. Cash, for the kids' pocket money; card for pretty much everything else up to a few grand (so including used cars); bank transfer or escrow services for really huge stuff like houses.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Justpin]

Cheque guarantee was worthless. I had a bounced cheque about 7 years ago with a guarantee card. He had closed his account yet not surrendered his cards to the bank on closing. Was only £22 but I was quite annoyed.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I didn't realize. I assume they're still used for major transactions like buying a car or something?

I live in the USA, but aside from rent and occasionally paying a friend for something expensive I haven't used a check since graduation except to pay rent and buy my car.

Well I don't know about the UK but here in the USA when I recently got a new car I had the option to put the downpayment on my credit card. Of course that option may only have been available to me due to my excellent credit.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[xaxa]

Ah, I didn't realize. I assume they're still used for major transactions like buying a car or something?

I live in the USA, but aside from rent and occasionally paying a friend for something expensive I haven't used a check since graduation except to pay rent and buy my car.

I switched banks a couple of months ago, and it's just occured to me that I didn't receive a chequebook. Perhaps I would need to request it. The previous account (opened ~6 years ago) sent me one automatically, though I only used three of them. This time, all my direct debits, saved accouts (mostly friends I've sent money to) were transferred automatically, and a redirect to the new account made for my salary.

I would use a debit card to buy a car. It's far more secure for both me and the vendor. It's less clear what the best way to buy a used card from an individual is.

Rent is paid electronically, set up either online or by filling in a form at a bank.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[omnichad]

Checks (cheques, this being a British hotel) do still exist

That sounds great. I could raid the minibar and trash the place. Not having a credit card on file is a wonderful thing.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Barny]

Australia. Basically, if you ever bounce a cheque or make any kind of fee appear as a result of cashing one, they wont approve it.

Reason we started using them was a guy came into one of the other stores (who our owner owned) and had a bank cheque from his own, named, account. Buys a laptop and other stuff with it. Then goes to the bank and cancels the bank cheque. Used to be once issued they were practically legal tender.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Alioth]

Last time I bought a vehicle (a motorcycle) I actually bought it with my debit card! The bank called back to make some security checks, but other than that, buying a motorcycle was just like buying the groceries - insert card, enter PIN, ride home on new bike.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Whorhay]

I actually had a bank refund me the dollar amount of a teller's check once. I had mailed it to another party as payment for something and they never bothered to cash/deposit it. My bank eventually sent me a letter saying that it had been 18 months or something and since it hadn't been cashed they were voiding it and refunding the money to me.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[xyra132]

I used to come across this quite regularly. In general banks don't (didn't? This is going back 10 years) offer cheque guarantee cards to (small) businesses, so paying by cheque was a pain. Quite a few of the high street retailers used services like this (such as buying stationery from WHSmiths)

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

Both cars I recently bought from a dealer (£9000 and £19000) were purchased with a debit card without problem.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[ruir]

I stayed to a lot of hotels when in business over several years and always refused to give them my CC. Never had a problem, and never trashed the place too. I also stayed in some parts of the world where I would not trust them with my CC details.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[oobayly]

You'll be lucky if you find a car dealer accepting a bank draft as cleared funds nowadays. I know of several companies that have been burned that way. Same goes for debit cards - we always assumed that they were cleared funds, however after one of our clients paid for a Bentley (trade transaction), some Muppet in the back cancelled the transaction, which meant that the seller was down £60k, the buyer wasn't even at fault.

As a result, we advise people to only release a car when the money is actually in their account, however that's not even guaranteed as we've encountered scams where people attempt to reverse bank transfers.

Short story, there no such thing as cleared funds.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[mjwx]

Ah, I didn't realize. I assume they're still used for major transactions like buying a car or something?

I live in the USA, but aside from rent and occasionally paying a friend for something expensive I haven't used a check since graduation except to pay rent and buy my car.

Australia is pretty much the same.

Personal cheques are a thing of the past. No one even needs a "we dont accept cheques" sign any more as no-one uses them.

However we have bank cheques where the bank holds the money in escrow until the recipient cashes it. Basically its a cheque with it's value guaranteed up by a bank. If you buy a car in Oz, often you'll use a bank cheque as direct debit can take up to 3 days here (still).

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Dahamma]

You'll be lucky if you find a car dealer accepting a bank draft as cleared funds nowadays

Well, that's both vague and incorrect. Even if it applied to your individual case, it's still the norm in many transactions.

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[Richard_at_work]

Bankers drafts *are* cleared funds - the drawer pays the bank the sum of money, and the bank issues a cheque for that amount in its own name - once the recipient is in possession of the bankers draft, the original drawer is out of the equation, all interactions are then between the recipient and the bank. Unless something very very very unusual happens at the banks end, its a guaranteed transaction. Without the bankers draft, the drawer has no way to cancel the transaction - even if he loses it.

Debit card transactions have never been cleared funds however, as they occur based on one of several basis and can be reversed.

BACS transfers can also be reversed (had a once major UK supermarket do this with my wages back when I had just quit - deposited my wages in the morning as normal, so I drew some cash out. Came to pay something by debit card later that day and it was refused - odd as I should have had a lot of money in that account, but it had all vanished. The supermarket employer had reversed the BACS because they had "miscalculated" my end wage - infact they had undercalculated it, but instead of just giving me the difference they reversed the entire payment and ... sat on it.)

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[david_thornley]

Last time I bought a car, I had the money for it. The easiest way to pay turned out to be to sign up for their financing, making sure that I could just pay it off with no penalty. (My excellent credit score might have helped there.)

Re:Could be solved be VISA, etc. immediately

[oobayly]

Ok, one qualification - dealers won't take drafts for trade transactions.

The problem is that bankers drafts can be faked and it does happen. Piston Heads - Fraudulent bankers draft update!!!. The problem is that you'll find out the draft is a fake after releasing a car, calling the bank is useless. As far I can see, fake cash is easier to check than a fake draft.

For example, when I was buying my flat, I had to move money from my Irish account to my UK account, by my bank Ulster Bank (part of RBS) were being a bunch of idiots and wouldn't tell me how long the fast transaction would take. My sister, who luckily works for another bank (I'm not going to mention who), told me to have get a draft, pay it into her account and she'd do the international transfer. However, because the draft would take a couple of days to clear, she however had to act as guarantor.

If a couple of days to clear is "cleared funds", then by that logic, so is a cheque. Go get a draft and try cashing it in a different bank and see how quickly it happens.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Anonymous Coward]

BROADWAY HOTEL SUCKS

You were lucky! Instead of breakfast they gave me a green paste of dubious origin. The room had no shower, if you wanted to get clean you had to stand under the rain. On the bright side, the holes in the roof helped do that while staying in. On the other hand, there were no windows, just holes in the wall (on one of the three standing walls, the fourth one was just a hole into the abyss.

Of my two sons, one disappeared after going to the kitchen for dinner. We had to sell the other to pay the fine for this review.

Not quite true

[Anonymous Coward]

The chargeback processing fee is charged regardless. I use to be on the receiving end of chargebacks and my credit card processor would charge this no matter what. The hotel can challenge it, but the money remains frozen until resolved.

What the hotel is trying to do here is create a 100 pound fee that can get around the UK Chargeback rule, that limited the automatic right to a chargeback to items costing less than 100 pounds.

However the automatic right within law isn't why you get a chargeback, its the credit card company discretion that gives you it. The law was an extra protection added, but chargebacks were prior to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback

So ask, the credit card company will refund, this is clearly an unsustainable charge, and they should also raise it with the major hotel booking companies, because their review system is being attacked here, and their conditions of inclusion for the hotel are being broken.

Get the hotel kicked from Booking.com Apodo and the rest and it will be gone from memory quick enough.

Re:Not quite true

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm guessing from your comments on the £100 figure that you're referring to the protections under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act (the one making your credit card company liable along with the retailer under certain conditions, if you buy something using your card). That's a useful law to know, but in this case it doesn't seem necessary.

The small print supposedly enabling the "fine" here is almost certainly a straight-up unfair term in a consumer contract, and as such it would not be binding on the consumer according to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

In practice the quickest way to get the matter resolved might be to ask the card company to charge the "fine" back, and given that the chargeback system is heavily loaded against merchants this seems likely to succeed.

If that doesn't work, a small claims court action might be entertaining, but as with any low value legal action there is unfortunately a high probability that the time and hassle of finding your way around that system and going to court if necessary would far outweigh any financial benefit you might gain by the end of it, unless you've done this sort of thing before and so already know how it works.

(I'm not a lawyer, so obviously check that the above is still correct if this affects you, but this situation is so clear-cut...)

Re: Not quite true

[rickb928]

They may have a harder time than we think. If the hotel can offer their terms and conditions, with disclosure of the potential fine, and prove this was known by the cardholder, these patrons may be denied their claim. Indeed, add on any statements by the cardholders they they knew and made the complaint anyways, and the merchant should press this vigorously.

Mind you, this is sharp practice by the hotel, but that's their business.

Re: Not quite true

[queazocotal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
'The Act renders terms excluding or limiting liability ineffective or subject to reasonableness, depending on the nature of the obligation purported to be excluded and whether the party purporting to exclude or limit business liability, acting against a consumer.'
In short - any provision trying to do this is probably not legal.

Re: Not quite true

[TapeCutter]

There's also an expectation of "common business practice".

Re: Not quite true

[Zeinfeld]

Whether the term is enforceable or not is debatable and almost certain to be rendered moot. Unlike US Republicans, UK Conservatives do actually believe in the rule of law and honest business practices (sort of). There isn't any party who believes that screwing the consumer is a constitutional right. There will be a bill passed.

A rather more direct question is whether the hotelier was entitled to collect the charge under the credit card agreement. And that is unambiguous, he isn't. A credit card merchant cannot use a charge card to recover a disputed charge. It does not matter what the purported contract term was or if it is enforceable. The credit card agreements are designed to prevent cardholders from dishonest merchants. So the consumer will get their refund and the hotelier will find themselves facing a 30 quid chargeback fee.

The only option for the hotelier to recover would be to take the matter to court. The most he could win is the hundred pounds, if he lost he would likely be out the legal costs which could be a couple of thousand. Small claims courts don't usually award costs but they might well do so in this case. Judges tend to detest bullies.

Re: Not quite true

[queazocotal]

What the government believe is largely irrelevant to the judiciary - or at the most only a slight influence.
The feelings of the government in interpretation of legislation are at best advisory.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Vintermann]

The reviews of the hotel are almost certainly being outrage spammed already. What's interesting is the reviews before this.

SHit tip

[Anonymous Coward]

The Broadway Hotel is an unmitigated pox infested scab ridden crap can hole with staff with the manners of a turd and appearance of a similar description ..

That should wind the pox infested feckers up a little ...
 

Credit card

[Anonymous Coward]

The couple have sought a refund via their credit card company.

Credit cards are always a risk for everyone involved. Had they paid by bank card, the hotel would have had no way to charge after the visit other than sending a bill and hoping for it to be paid.

Contracts

[Etherwalk]

I agree. The other thing, though, is that IT'S A CONTRACT. Read, read read! I don't know why people who don't read the contract try to get out of it later. I know it's not kosher to put things like this in the contact, but contracts are like that. They're usually one sided in favor of one party or another. The question is, whether this was illegal (extorting money for negative reviews). If it wasn't, then I don't see how one should be able to get out of it.

This was a simple retail transaction, not a commercial negotiation.

Luckily, I doubt that this hotel will be seeing many of the latter until they come to talk to their liquidators.

Retail or not, contracts are binding.

Contracts tend to be binding even when both parties don't read--most contracts are not read but are binding. Even lawyers don't usually read the contracts they sign for everyday things--they only do it when a lot is at stake or when it is for a client.

In commercial transactions in the United States, there are default rules that vary from state to state (generally slightly modified from the Uniform Commercial Code), but almost all of the terms can be changed by a contract between the parties, so a lot of places will change them on an order form or receipt or the like.

There are exceptions--contracts can't violate the law, for example. But they can still be written to unreasonably favor one party, and usually are.

Re:Contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in the UK, and in the wider EU, 'unfair' or 'unreasonable' contract terms are unenforceable. You just have to get a judge to agree in your characterisation of the terms. It sounds in this case as if the local Trading Standards officer does not think that term is likely to stand up.

Re:Contracts

[danielr7z]

There are exceptions--contracts can't violate the law, for example. But they can still be written to unreasonably favor one party, and usually are.

That's the point. I don't know British law, but in Spain only public Administrations are allowed to set fines (by application of existing law). I understand a hotel can only charge you for any service thay have provided, mini-bar, etc., which is not the case.

Even if the hotel says you broke something in your room it is quite arguable they could charge it to your credit card. That's what lawyers (and insurances) are intended for.

Re:Contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

Retail or not, contracts are binding.

Invalid contracts aren't binding.
In this case it's just a booking policy that the hotel has, no-one signed it so it is not a contract at all.

To sum it up: The hotel has in writing that its policy is to engage in illegal behavior.

Perhaps it would have been smart to not have anything to do with them whatsoever but hey, one can't just expect a hotel to do something illegal either.

Re:Contracts

[meerling]

(ianal) A variety of countries, even the USA, have laws that limit the b.s. people can slap in contracts. Especially if there appears to be an attempt to obfuscate or hide it, either by using very torturous and esoteric wording (other than standard legalese of course) and small print.

Re:Contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

Retail or not, contracts are binding.

Contracts tend to be binding even when both parties don't read--most contracts are not read but are binding. Even lawyers don't usually read the contracts they sign for everyday things--they only do it when a lot is at stake or when it is for a client.

In commercial transactions in the United States, there are default rules that vary from state to state (generally slightly modified from the Uniform Commercial Code), but almost all of the terms can be changed by a contract between the parties, so a lot of places will change them on an order form or receipt or the like.

The hotel is not located in the U.S.

In countries with a sensible legal system, consumers are protected against surprising and unfair terms when doing everyday transactions.

Re:Contracts

[itsdapead]

Retail or not, contracts are binding.

In the UK, national trading standards laws trump point-of-sale contracts in retail transactions.

...because otherwise you'd need to take a lawyer with you every time you bought groceries.

Re:Contracts

[Overzeetop]

Even in the US negotiation must be handled in good faith. If the contract can't be negotiated, it isn't a contract. The "take it or leave it" stance has fallen before when a simple transaction has been involved (no, don't have the cite; too lazy to look it up). There is also a danger in overly strict contracts which attempt to be inforced as the burden of the contractual language is on the writer and the benefit is *always* given to the receiver. If there's a slip anywhere, the contract can be nullified or accidentally generous terms provided to the second party.

Re:Contracts

[psmears]

Retail or not, contracts are binding.

Contracts tend to be binding even when both parties don't read--most contracts are not read but are binding

Are you sure about that? Note the following (from the American Law Institute):

Where the other party has reason to believe that the party manifesting such assent would not do so if he knew that the writing contained a particular term, the term is not part of the agreement.

i.e. if you put terms into a contract that you know your customers aren't likely to agree to, then they're not binding, even if the contract is signed.

Re:Contracts

[camperdave]

In the UK, national trading standards laws trump point-of-sale contracts in retail transactions.

Laws trump contracts pretty much everywhere and in every circumstance.

Re:Contracts

[Luckyo]

In most of Europe, law specifically requires contracts in common situations like booking a stay with a hotel that have "unusual terms" for the terms to be specifically and carefully explained. The burden of proof that explanation was delivered and appropriate lies with the one inserting these clauses (in this case hotel) and even if this was found to be true, court would still likely strike it down as illegal because of power balance in this case (customer arriving with expectation of a place to stay, hotel in a position of power because it holds the room guest has expected behind unreasonable contractual terms).

Reminder: Most of Europe is far more consumer-centric than wild west capitalism of US.

Re:Contracts

[omnichad]

take a lawyer with you every time you bought groceries.

But that would make a great Bit of Fry and Laurie sketch.

Re:Contracts

[sudon't]

Where the other party has reason to believe that the party manifesting such assent would not do so if he knew that the writing contained a particular term, the term is not part of the agreement.

i.e. if you put terms into a contract that you know your customers aren't likely to agree to, then they're not binding, even if the contract is signed.

Great! So I can continue to ignore all this hooey I'm always "accepting" when I install apps, and register at sites. Because I would never agree to any of that jive.

Re:Contracts

[itsdapead]

Laws trump contracts pretty much everywhere and in every circumstance.

Yes, but the laws need to exist first. UK, EU, Australia etc. tend to have stronger consumer protection laws than the US (which, AFAIK, vary state by state) and often have authorities that enforce them rather than leaving it up to individuals to sue. You'll notice that big firms like Apple are often getting slapped by the authorities in these countries (e.g. for selling extended warranties that partly duplicate statutory rights) c.f. in the US (where they get hit with class-action lawsuits instead).

NB, looks like Trading Standards have had a little chat with the hotel in TFA.

Re:Contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! So I can continue to ignore all this hooey I'm always "accepting" when I install apps, and register at sites. Because I would never agree to any of that jive.

Not quite. I know you are trying to be funny, but there is a difference between clicking agree and not meaning it, and clicking agree where you are assuming the legalese is the standard type boilerplate for that industry. In the first case you are claiming that while you knowingly clicked you didn't mean it and that won't fly - you are legally on the hook. In the second case you applied reasonable expectations that the contract provider didn't abide by, and then the issue becomes arguable - note that it is arguable, not automatically in favor of the consumer, since what is reasonable is subjective.

Imagine a scenario like someone mentioned earlier that a retail clerk give you a few things to sign when buying product X, and one of them had a clause about you owing $50K to them to be collected at a future date, or that you are transferring ownership of your house or car to them, or granting them the right to use your likeness in advertising ads which they are secretly capturing. You had the chance to read it and still signed it; do you think you are bound by those conditions? Now picture you walk in and buy a car and sign all their documents, then later tell them you aren't paying since you now feel you don't like the terms and you are not bound by what you signed since you didn't bother reading it until now. Do you think the courts will be on your side?

For online and app license terms the previous rules are similar. If it contains a clause that is unreasonable, as in would shock the conscience of a normal person, then it would not be enforceable. Short of that, you're stuck.

Re:Contracts

[houghi]

Also not if some other law overrides what you signed. Even if BOTH parties agree, it might still not be legal.

Re:Contracts

[Another, completely]

Standard contracts for routine purchases can't contain completely unexpected things in the fine print. If the contract said check-out is 9:30 in the morning, that would be surprising, but wouldn't be out of place. If it said that checking out later than 9:30 would automatically add a day to your billed visit, that would be completely unexpected, and the hotel would have trouble enforcing it unless it was in boldface and underlined so it couldn't be missed. There is a difference between a contract negotiated between lawyers, and something that the client has reason to expect is boilerplate standard. Isn't the legal term "an idiot in a hurry" or something similar? IANAL, but the Trading Standards office seems to think the contract was of questionable validity.

Re:Contracts

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminder: Most of Europe is far more consumer-centric than wild west capitalism of US.

Um, ok. Except that another reply to this post (posted before yours) explained that the same is true in the US. Also, this story occurred in the UK.

But no need to let facts get in the way of a little gratuitous US bashing. It's drawing attention to your lack of self-confidence.

Re:Contracts

[david_thornley]

Even in the US, the contract would be looked at suspiciously. Since it's something you're supposed to sign to get a good or service, and it's not actually negotiated, it's in a special category (I believe "contract of adhesion"). Clauses that are non-standard and abusive are not likely to be upheld by the courts. (Actually, if it gets that far, both sides have lost. You do not want to get into an unnecessary lawsuit.)

My experience with contracts of this sort is that they're usually fair. If I found that some company had a practice of trying to sneak unfair contracts on me, I'd be very reluctant to deal with them.

A contract that is fully negotiated between two parties, with no duress or undue influence, can indeed do almost anything that's legal*, but this isn't the case here.

*The only exception I'm coming up with is sex. It's legal for two consenting adults to have sex with each other, but it can't legally go into any sort of contract.

The answer is...virtual credit cards

[ruir]

We have had them for years here. They are tied to my account, and in and every need, I create a separate one with the limit of the value I want to pay. You can create one for single use, or one with a validity of one year for being charge by a single merchant. The advantage of the process is that you place a roof on the limit. Yeah, I am paying a 50 euro charge, maybe I create a card with 51 euros. Last time a big hotel here asked a VISA card just to book my parents, but on the conditions said "this will be only used if the guests do not show up"...well, I created a virtual VISA with 5 EUROS. First thing my parents heard from the idiots "Your VISA card is not working". Even my Apple account is tied to a virtual VISA card with a small amount..The scheme has existed here for almost decade, and it well tested and proven to work.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[ruir]

Before VISA cards do existed, when I went on bussiness trips with everything pre-paid by the company, was by the standard request of asking for a credit card for expenses at the reception desk "I dont have one". Probably as I was foreign and young, it worked beautifully.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's really practical. No one is going to create a virtual card for every single transaction, lest some merchant do something like this.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[smallfries]

Did you know that cards can be validated for an amount as well as charged?

When I book a hotel stay for $x and give them a card to hold it the first thing they do is validate with the CC company that the card can be charged $x. When I check out they ask how to settle the bill including charging the amount to a different card.

So if a hotel wants a card to book a room (guaranteeing payment on no-shows) and you provide a dummy card that they could not charge for the amount then over here we call that fraud. But I guess you call them idiots...

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[HnT]

They are not idiots for saying "your card was declined". Hotels and car rentals are notorious for blocking amounts on your card, just in case. When they tell you the card was declined what really happened was that at minimum they tried to block whatever amount they felt is justified to rip you off in case your parents would not have shown, more likely they tried to block the whole amount for the stay up front. Car rentals do the same even after you brought the car back, for potential overlooked damage or tickets.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[Mr_Silver]

"this will be only used if the guests do not show up"...well, I created a virtual VISA with 5 EUROS. First thing my parents heard from the idiots "Your VISA card is not working".

Hotels typically do a pre-authorisation on your card which essentially checks to see if the card is active and that you have enough balance to cover the amount they are pre-authing. It does this by placing a hold on that amount until the transaction is settled or the authorisation falls off (usually a couple of days, but could be longer)

Since you only loaded on 5 euros, it'll naturally fail if they attempt a pre-auth above that. People who hand over a card to a hotel with not enough money on it are commonly trying to rip the hotel off.

TLDR; version: The hotel weren't "idiots", you just didn't understand how card payments work. Next time, create a virtual card with enough funds to actually cover the bill.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[AmiMoJo]

There are a couple of companies that offer virtual credit cards in the UK, but it isn't clear if you get the same level of protection that you would if you used a real credit card.

We have something called Section 75, which basically says if you pay (or part pay) for a product worth over £100 on a credit card the card issuer (bank) is jointly liable with the vendor for any issues. As an example a guy paid a £500 deposit for a £27,000 car on credit card and the rest in cash, then the dealer went bust and the bank had to refund the entire £27,000. Similarly if the car turns out to be a lemon the bank is equally responsible for getting it sorted out, even if the dealer won't.

With virtual credit cards it seems like you would fall foul of the PayPal loophole. When you buy stuff on eBay with PayPal the transaction is with PayPal themselves, not the vendor, so your Section 75 protection only covers PayPal's actions and you basically lose all your legal protections against the seller.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[coofercat]

I like the sound of these, but I've never had one, and never felt like I needed one either. I've never been ripped off in any way that I couldn't resolve entirely with one (or at worst, two) phone calls to my bank.

Visa/mastercard/Amex are all ways of reducing my risk, not increasing it. Even if I drop my wallet on the floor outside right now, any money spent on my cards is not my concern - it's the bank's problem, not mine. I guess if the bank could prove I was negligent with my cards, they might not pay up, but that's a pretty hard thing to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Plus, if their fraud filters haven't caught the problem quickly enough, then that again is their problem not mine. At worse, I might get left with a couple of hundred quid of "negligence fine" - but as I say, they'd have to try really hard to make it stick, and they would, without fail lose a customer that same week (well, within the 28 days or whatever it is that they have to allow my account to be transferred out by).

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Except... Once the guests are at the hotel and checking in, the hotel will ask for their credit card and pre-auth the amount. Why would you pre-auth a card marked not to be used except if the guests do not show up? This card you should reserve the cost of a single night at the time of booking, and clear once the guests arrive.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[omnichad]

First thing my parents heard from the idiots "Your VISA card is not working

Well of course - because why would they accept a card that doesn't at least pre-authorize for the expected amount? That's not the same as a charge. You were attempting fraud, and you failed.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[Anonymous Coward]

If the hotel said the card would only be used if they didn't show up, and they showed up, in what way could the card have not worked?

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[rjstanford]

Except... Once the guests are at the hotel and checking in, the hotel will ask for their credit card and pre-auth the amount. Why would you pre-auth a card marked not to be used except if the guests do not show up? This card you should reserve the cost of a single night at the time of booking, and clear once the guests arrive.

Because that's the only way to tell that its a real credit card instead of a bunch of made up numbers that happen to look like a credit card number. The whole reason that pre-authorizations exist is to allow people to show that they're "good for the debt" without actually paying for it (yet).

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[ChrisMaple]

It's only fraud if his parents don't show, and he fails to cover the shortfall.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[Frosty Piss]

Before VISA cards existed...

When was this? I'm 51 and when I was a tiny child, my folks had a Visa card...

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Someone please mod parent up as Informative. Grand-parent is completely misleading.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[ruir]

before virtual cards existed, thanks for pointing it out.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[ruir]

Mind you I was not attempting any kind of fraud. It is just that around here people do not usually ask your CC for booking, I did not trust them, and plus, the site is very explicit the card wont be used IF the customers show up. Cutting the story short, nowadays my parents stay at a more sensible place or at my new home.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[ruir]

I do agree that while I could swear I do have some kind of protection (read the conditions some years ago), it is not entirely clear I enjoy the same protection of a real credit card.

Re:The answer is...virtual credit cards

[hawk]

No, they didn't.

Bankamericard didn't change its name to Visa until 1975, when you would have turned 12 or so.

hawk, who remembers the old commercials set to Beethoven

Related story:

[PhilHibbs]

Hotel Charges Guests $500 For Bad Online Reviews

Re:Related story:

[PhilHibbs]

Also: Trip Advisor bad review 'fine' scrapped by Blackpool hotel

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[korbulon]

BROADWAY HOTEL SUCKS

You were lucky! Instead of breakfast they gave me a green paste of dubious origin. The room had no shower, if you wanted to get clean you had to stand under the rain. On the bright side, the holes in the roof helped do that while staying in. On the other hand, there were no windows, just holes in the wall (on one of the three standing walls, the fourth one was just a hole into the abyss.

Of my two sons, one disappeared after going to the kitchen for dinner. We had to sell the other to pay the fine for this review.

"Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!"

"Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! Hotel? Huh."

So... wait until you get home...?

[Wootery]

To avoid this 'charge', would it be enough to just wait until you've checked-out before posting your review? Or would they charge your card even then?

Re:So... wait until you get home...?

[mrbester]

The card details have been taken so a charge could be applied anywhen. However, as you can't arbitrarily charge a card, they put this clause into the terms to "justify" a possible charge in the future. The trouble is it's bollocks and illegal.

Re:So... wait until you get home...?

[omnichad]

If they didn't keep your transaction open, they wouldn't be able to charge you for damage or incidentals. It's why hotels require credit cards for bookings in the first place. Usually they haven't seen your room when you check out.

Re:So... wait until you get home...?

[Wootery]

What if you report your card as stolen? Does that invalidate it for such transactions?

Re:So... wait until you get home...?

[rjstanford]

If they didn't keep your transaction open, they wouldn't be able to charge you for damage or incidentals. It's why hotels require credit cards for bookings in the first place. Usually they haven't seen your room when you check out.

Unless they saved the credit card number, either directly or through vaulting at their provider. Both of those are easy and common, and the second one is even safe (since it only allows that particular merchant to charge the card at will, it doesn't appeal to thieves like an actual credit card number would).

Re:So... wait until you get home...?

[omnichad]

Directly is way too much trouble to do in a retail setting without going out of PCI compliance. Hotels usually just authorize at the beginning of the stay, and then capture after checkout at the final price. One transaction in most cases.

Slashdot just fixed notifications. Apologies for a random late reply.

The TripAdvisor URL

[Wootery]

Maybe I just missed it in the comments, but: here is the TripAdvisor page for the hotel.

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[cbhacking]

Thanks! Already commented or would mod you up.

Somehow, the place is ranked 858th of 894. Considering that their reviews (going back months) are mostly terrible - it's not just the recent wave of them, and the photos are damning - plus the recent wave of awful reviews in the wake of this news breaking, I have to wonder how there are 36 hotels that are ranked even *worse*...

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[jeremyp]

147 terrible reviews, I think the £100 charge must be part of their business model.

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you havent been to Blackpool, or you wouldnt ask about how 36 could be worse.

Consider yourself lucky...

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! Already commented or would mod you up.

Somehow, the place is ranked 858th of 894. Considering that their reviews (going back months) are mostly terrible - it's not just the recent wave of them, and the photos are damning - plus the recent wave of awful reviews in the wake of this news breaking, I have to wonder how there are 36 hotels that are ranked even *worse*...

Those are the ones with complementary venomous insect 'pets' in every room.

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[rfrenzob]

I am a developer who dabbles in entomology as such I was simply thrilled to walk in and see a roach scurrying across the lobby floor. This set my hopes high for the room and I would not be disappointed! Some people read, watch the telly, play games, etc before bed. I enjoy getting out my equipment and studying insects. What can I say, we all have our hobbies.

While visiting the States for a conference in Chicago last year, I had the pleasure of eating at Ed Debevics. If you have never eaten there, the servers are a bit on the rude side for comedic effect. Based on my conversation with the desk when attempting to get a new light bulb for my room I'm assuming the attendant worked at Ed's while studying abroad in Chicago. "There is a shoppe down the way. Go get one yourself."

As far as the breakfast, it was simply delicious. The powdered eggs were served at a perfect 22C (72F). Not so hot as to burn the tongue but not so cold as to be crispy with a layer of frost. The pastries had a new green flavor enhancer on them. I have forgotten the name but it was excellent. Highly recommend.

Don't believe the negative reviews! I definitely feel I got more than my £36 worth out of my stay at this fine hotel!

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[Wootery]

Those are the ones with complementary venomous insect 'pets' in every room.

Here in the UK, there are essentially zero venomous insects in the wild. You could buy them and release them into people's rooms, if you really wanted, but I doubt this hotel has that sort of initiative.

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[T.E.D.]

Actually, if I had mod points, I'd mod parent down for providing this link. Normally its kind fun to read lots of bad reviews, but these just made me nauseous. Unless you are on a diet (or better yet, bulimic), don't click that link.

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[sociocapitalist]

Maybe I just missed it in the comments, but: here is the TripAdvisor page for the hotel.

"Ranked #858 of 894"

Let's see how long until it's at 894 of 894

Re:The TripAdvisor URL

[flopsquad]

new green flavor enhancer

Those croissants.... couldn't keep em down but they cured my syphilis!

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[yooy]

Luxury. We had to sleep in their septic tank. 25 of us and for breakfust we just got a lump of poisen.

Make it as public as possible

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing is absolutely ridiculous. They should be spammed with as many bad reviews as possible that detail their illegal (or at least unethical) practice for the world to see, especially from people whom they can't retaliate against (i.e. whose credit card numbers they don't know). This business practice is extremely unethical and businesses who do this sort of thing need to be snuffed out.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Barny]

And you try and tell the young people today that and they wont believe you!

Nothing new here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone likes to say "you get what you pay for" when things go wrong. Well, you may be upset with what you got, but what you paid for hasn't ended yet...

In fact, rather than an exception, that is the norm: new products are less expensive than traditional ones, which end up even charging you a plus for being... traditional (i.e., old).

A competent company not only provides the best product or service, they'll manage to do it with less resources and will offer a relative price advantage to customers. That doesn't mean things will be cheap, but they will be less costly than the alternatives -- and this doubles as a barrier to entry from competitors.

If you paid less, you can't know whether the product or service will be good or bad -- better get references beforehand.

If you paid more, now you can be sure of one thing: you are a sucker and your nightmare has just started.

See M$ for an example. Just imagine how better life would be if we could use open formats like odf instead of that moving target that is ooxml (docx, xlsx etc.). But they won't charge the ones who make bad reviews... they charge everyone.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[bazorg]

One of the reviews starts with "Words fail me", I hope they all started taking photos so that this doesn't all end up in a nasty case of slander/libel.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Peter Simpson]

is the owner's name Fawlty, by any chance?

Make it cost them more.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think being on the front page of the BBC news is going to cost them a fair bit in lost bookings....

I have a solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Suspension" of listings by TripAdvisor / Yelp / et. al. for places that try this. Leave the page up, but grey out all the reviews and put a message on there saying "We have received complaints of this establishment charging "fees" or fines for bad reviews. As we believe you have the freedom to speak your mind honestly without fear of charges, we have suspended this listing for 2 years from the date of the most recent complaint."

That will solve the problem.

(irony: the CAPTCHA for this post was "coercion".)

money making racket

[dr_blurb]

They must do it on purpose: set up a crap hotel, put the 100 pound fine in the small print: profit!

At http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/H... the place has 147 "terrible" ratings and 24 "poor" == 17100 pounds (about $26800) (!)

If they're smart they'll diversify: Bad review on tripadvisor: 100 pounds. Badmouthing tweet to 1000 followers or more: 500 pounds. Negative letter to paper: 500 pounds and 20 lashes. Bad review in paper: you forfeit all your bank accounts.

All hotels should do this. The Great Hotel Vengeance of 2015. In fact all reviews of any book, film, hotel, ebay seller, etc. should be included. Ah well anybody who says anything bad about anything ever. 100 pounds please.

Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations1999

[tomxor]

In UK contract law Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 in conjunction with Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 Which apply to standard consumer contracts regardless of custom and explicit terms Imply this should not be enforceable:

In the UK, these 1999 Regulations work to render ineffective terms that benefit seller or suppliers against the interests of consumers.

This term effectively misleads consumers and is clearly against their interest. Implied law is no sure win, but in my amateur opinion it looks like there is a strong case to contest this. Not that it'd be worth it for £100...

Let's see some Slashdot effect.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a little slashdot effect ?

Find a hotel review site (TripAdvisor being an obvious good starting point) and say exactly what you thik about this hotel.

Should be fun :)

Re:Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations1

[Luckyo]

Hotel already folded and agreed to drop charges for these and all future customers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...

Why stop at a hundred?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are free to charge £100 GPB they might aswell charge £1.000.000 GBP. That would be even more "novel" and then they would own most people the write a bad review for life.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, of course, we had it tough. We didn't get time to sleep in our septic tank because we had to clean it wit' tongue from 8am to 12pm just to pay for t'room. For breakfast we got a glass of hydrofluoric acid IF WE WERE LUCKY, but it was only available from 7am to 7:00:01am, and you had to book it with the front desk 72 years in advance.

Insensitive clod

[TapeCutter]

What you can eat, or drink, smoke (liberals), who you have sex with (conservatives).

The last lot to increase taxes on my smokes here in Oz were the right wing jesus freaks currently in power, $4/pack = ~20% increase. I'm a left wing smoker (both kinds), have been for ~40yrs, I started back in the 70's when the Marlborough Man was still cool and you could smoke anywhere except places that were likely to explode after striking a match.

Re:Insensitive clod

[Chris Mattern]

I'm a left wing smoker (both kinds)

You smoke cigars *and* cigarettes?

Re:Insensitive clod

[operagost]

No, smoke comes out of his ears.

Re:Insensitive clod

[kilfarsnar]

I'm a left wing smoker (both kinds)

You smoke cigars *and* cigarettes?

Country and Western!

Re:Insensitive clod

[fahrbot-bot]

Dude, seriously, stop smoking - it's bad for you.

Re:Insensitive clod

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn that's got balls. You may die with tubes going down your neck and tumors the size of pot-bellied pigs, but you'll go with your boots on and your middle-finger extended. Hats off to you, man.

Re:Insensitive clod

[Anonymous Coward]

so YOU are whats wrong with this country!

I hope all of you....

[Lumpy]

Everyone is heading to trip-advisor and posting scathing reviews of this place right?

This is the internet, this hotel should be buried by now.

Re:I hope all of you....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unless I've personally patronized that establishment. I've done a great many reviews for Tripadvisor, and in order for me to have any confidence in the reviews as a user (with appropriate judgement), I try to keep my own reviews as truthful and and valid as I can. That means that if I haven't been there, I'm not going to say anything, regardless of how much they might deserve it.

If it's truly a bad business, as this one seems to be, the valid reviews that are there should be sufficient. It's more about protecting the integrity of the review model than anything else.

Re:Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations1

[fnj]

That's not good enough. Not by half. The hotel manager should be charged criminally, found guilty, and sent to prison for flagrant fraud.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[xaxa]

There are plenty of photos on Tripadvisor, and they're not nice. (e.g. mouldy socks left in a drawer, chunks of damp plaster falling off walls.)

Re:Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations1

[tomxor]

Tony and Jan Jenkinson have not been told whether they will get the £100 charge refunded, following the withdrawal of the charge

Good that the trade regulators stepped in however it seems like the family are still owed their £100. The point is not that it's a massive amount of money, more that they should never have charged them at all, so they should give it back.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[hodet]

Indoors? Must be sweet, I have never been indoors.

TFA: "what happened to freedom of speech?"

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Your in the UK, that's the problem. The UK's "freedom of speech" law is far more complicated than the US's. They have a "negative right" under Common Law, seems like a list of more what you can do as opposed to what you can't. Show's the origin comes from the monarchy having absolute power and slowly dolling out rights as opposed to the US's that started out almost absolute and has slowly been restricted.

It's quite possible the hotel might have recourse to do this under the UK's defamation laws. It's very complicated, probably involving the phase of the moon and such from the 1500's.

Re:TFA: "what happened to freedom of speech?"

[ledow]

For a country "without free speech", we do pretty well and I can get away with ten times more than I could ever do in the US.

The hotel were talked to by Trading Standards, and have immediately revoked the policy (because it was legally dubious right from the outset). They are currently being spoken to also about refunding this "fine" despite the idiots signing a piece of paper that says they agreed with it (which is also legally dubious). And there doesn't need to be any change in the law because already, by the laws that exist, including by default many EU laws that do include free speech, the area is more than well enough covered, thanks.

The reason it makes news is not because it's legal to do what the hotel did. It absolutely is not legal. It's because it's OUTRAGEOUS to even try, given the current laws. And they are quickly finding that out in more ways than just the Streisand Effect as they now have a lot of lawyers and government departments breathing down their necks.

There is nothing whatsoever in law that gives the hotel the right to do this, only the opposite, and no need for explicitly stating this beyond the existing laws. UK laws do not explicitly enshrine a number of things, like the "official" language of the country, the rights of free speech, etc. because they are just automatically entrenched in the law and the case law.

We don't have a "You have the right to say anything" law because we haven't needed one. You have pretty much the same rights as anywhere else in the EU, and a damn sight more rights than the US.

Remember the UK "super-injunctions" that supposedly stopped people talking about the very existence of another court injunction? It went down the pan because the media basically ignored it, made it front-page news for several months and then exposure of their existence meant they were dead - legally speaking - from that point. I can't imagine US media fighting like that for a second.

And the UK's defamation laws? We gave them to the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

They've been through changes, and a number of high profile cases lately have resulted in changes, but asking someone who says you're a paedophile to prove so (and not be unchallengeable in court unless you can prove you're not) is not the end of free speech. And all those laws have been fixed for quite a while now.

You cannot, and cannot ever have been, successfully sued for your reasonable opinion, in any first-world country in modern times. What you can have been is defamed with absolute untruths and then had the defamer hiding behind "his opinion". That's always been true in any system.

Hence, as a Brit, I've never been one to hold back on forums, or otherwise. The threat to me is zero. I'm either clearly expressing an opinion or stating fact, and you cannot ever have been successfully sued for that.

The problem with the US is that they think they are a free country. However, whenever I've been there people are shocked at the opinions I express, the way I express them, and friends have honestly believed that I would get into trouble for expressing them. Yet, in the UK, if anything I'm considered quite passive.

The UK defamation laws give this place NO RIGHT whatsoever to block reviews of their business, nor to charge for them. Hence why the policy has been revoked on the same day and why government departments are "in discussions" with the hotel. That's English politeness for "We're currently explaining the law to them, and won't stop explaining it until we have to take them to court or they stop doing it of their own 'free will' ".

Re:TFA: "what happened to freedom of speech?"

[davecb]

Vote this up, folks!

Re:TFA: "what happened to freedom of speech?"

[Cederic]

The bit that makes me laugh is that although this has caused media interest, although Trading Standards have become involved, although the reviews are probably going to cause the hotel to get serious attention from health and safety bodies, the local council and other government bodies, the stupidest thing of all is that the reviewer didn't even do anything that might incur the £100 charge.

Their review was relevant, accurate, succinct, informative and useful. I'd say it's a bloody excellent review, and that means it doesn't fall foul of the 'bad review' clause in the first place.

Hotels Making $ on Bad Reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they want to excel at sucking.

Fuck that hotel, will never visit them now.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Anonymous Coward]

Fawlty Towers would have been like the fricking Hilton hotel by comparison!

What happens when a post is not really from them?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I post "I hate Broadway Hotel" as John, would they get "Fined" another 100?
What happens when a few thousand people post as John? Could the fine go into the Millions?
If they guy is bragging about his vacation, post a bad review in his name and take a little shine off that vacation.

"Dear Ms. Streisand ...

[Rambo Tribble]

"... we love your effect."

Good Indicator

[amiga3D]

I'd never stay in a place that had such a policy. The fact that they have that policy tells me all I need to know about them. I'd thank them for letting me know ahead of time that they suck.

What a great way to make money

[Anonymous Coward]

Just write a bad review of yourself, sign your guest's name and collect 100 Pounds. No doubt, soon there will be an app for that.

Somewhat criminal, old chap!

[davecb]

It's arguably obtaining money upon a false pretense, which is criminal. The false pretense is that such a fee is lawful, much like a clause in a contract that says "you agree to spin straw into gold or provide Rumplestiltskin your first-born". Illegal since, well, fairy-tales.

Fun Photos Of the Place

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG

This appears to be a legit (non-troll) review.

It looks truly horrendous.

The answer is violence

[Anonymous Coward]

Return to the hotel. Stab all the employees in the face. Light the building on fire. Problem solved.

greedy hotel

[Anonymous Coward]

just read the reviews and fix the problems, managent. Jeez. sometimes life is too hard for big corporations. *steps off soapbox before she causes any more drama*.

Duress

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Sign your name as "Duress".
2: act normal
3: ???
4: profit

Basil? BASIL!?

[dbc]

Fawlty Towers was a documentary, not fiction.

Re:Broadway Hotel, 2-4 Burlington Road West Blackp

[Anonymous Coward]

and then to get to the hotel, we had to walk uphill in the rain without a proper brolly or mack. When we left, it was the same thing!

Old Story?

[cstacy]

Isn't this story from a year ago? Or did it happen again?

File a criminal complaint.

[jcr]

If someone tries to push a bogus charge on your credit card, you call the issuer and dispute the charge, and you also call the cops and file a fraud charge.

-jcr

its interesting..

[Anonymous Coward]

i find this interesting,
I am curious to know if this happens anywhere else in the animal kingdom..
I mean, it seems that only our species is capable is fucking one and other with a high level of intelligence. It seems contradictory to what we teach our young with regard to honesty, integrity, and a mature interaction with regard to others in our society. We all know this issue is bullshit, but yet those in power still perpetuate the dishonesty. Those whom teach, we are taught to respect, and lead through their actions.
i wonder, is it going to be a cosmic event, disease, natural planetary destruction (as a natural course of evolution), or ARE WE JUST GOING FUCK OURSELVES OUT OF OWN LIVES, WELL BEING, ECT?