Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Luxury. We had to sleep in their septic tank. 25 of us and for breakfust we just got a lump of poisen.
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.
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys