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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 "
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.
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.
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.
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.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.