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