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.
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 "
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Just make it cost the company more that they "fined" you. Any means necessary.
Sociopaths exist!
(As do blunt trolls)
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
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"...
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.
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.
The reviews of the hotel are almost certainly being outrage spammed already. What's interesting is the reviews before this.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
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.
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.
Hotel Charges Guests $500 For Bad Online Reviews
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."
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?
Maybe I just missed it in the comments, but: here is the TripAdvisor page for the hotel.
Luxury. We had to sleep in their septic tank. 25 of us and for breakfust we just got a lump of poisen.
And you try and tell the young people today that and they wont believe you!
...
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.
is the owner's name Fawlty, by any chance?
I think being on the front page of the BBC news is going to cost them a fair bit in lost bookings....
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.
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...
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.
Which already happened:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...
As I said, hotel folded instantly.
Hotel already folded and agreed to drop charges for these and all future customers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...
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.
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.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's not good enough. Not by half. The hotel manager should be charged criminally, found guilty, and sent to prison for flagrant fraud.
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.)
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.
Indoors? Must be sweet, I have never been indoors.
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.
"... we love your effect."
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.
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.
davecb@spamcop.net
Fawlty Towers was a documentary, not fiction.
Wow, talk about unintended consequences for the hotel.
Isn't this story from a year ago? Or did it happen again?
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."