Hotel Fines $500 For Every Bad Review Posted Online

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This crap has to stop. The good news is that the courts have ruled against every business that has tried to enforce policies like this. Maybe they know it is unenforceable but use it as a scare tactic?

“Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our inn, your friends and families may not,” reads an online policy. “If you have booked the inn for a wedding or other type of event . . . and given us a deposit of any kind . . . there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review . . . placed on any internet site by anyone in your party.”
 
No wai this is legal. These people are crazy
 
They're claiming it was a joke now. Still, pretty poor taste.
 
Wow, they just painted a big sign on themselves that says "Sue Me". There are going to be people leaving bad reviews just so they can win a lawsuit and extra damages from them.
 
Make Facebook useful for once and start a campaign to shut this place down! Get the word out so nobody goes there ever again.
 
I don't understand this mindset. Instead of saying don't review us or only publish good reviews or we'll punish you, why not take the customer service route and say "Hey, if you liked us and put up a good review we'll give you a voucher for a free meal or X dollars off your next stay!"

You know, promote people to help you instead of threatening them if they don't.
 
Good businesses take negative reviews as constructive criticism for how they can be better at what they do. Bad businesses do this kind of shit.
 
They're claiming it was a joke now. Still, pretty poor taste.

Yea.... I don't believe that for one minute.... Get caught, explodes online, "Oh, it was just a joke, hahaha". BS.

No one really knew about this place. Now, everyone does - but it's not good.
 
I don't understand this mindset. Instead of saying don't review us or only publish good reviews or we'll punish you, why not take the customer service route and say "Hey, if you liked us and put up a good review we'll give you a voucher for a free meal or X dollars off your next stay!"UOTE]
Even that should be illegal IMO, as its virtually the same as buying a review. Reviews are an extremely important tool for consumer protection, and in Europe they even have consumer protection agencies that deal with BS like this.
 
Yea.... I don't believe that for one minute.... Get caught, explodes online, "Oh, it was just a joke, hahaha". BS.

No one really knew about this place. Now, everyone does - but it's not good.

Maybe it was their plan all along: publicity. Any publicity is good if you're the underdog?
 
rofl within one day they are now a 1 star rank on yelp with 500 reviews.
 
Quote from their Yelp Page.....
I had an issue with my shower, called the front desk, and they sent up a young gentleman named Rodolfo with a case of water. He blew on each of them to warm up the water and proceeded to pour it on me while I bathed. After he ran out of water, he told me he was hydrated enough to finish me off with his urine. I appreciated the customer focus he had while allowing me to finish bathing (he really helped with the lather).

One more business that just got the ire of the internet thrown their way lmao!!!
 
The USGH’s longtime owner, former 3rd Ward Alderman Chris Wagoner, responded around noon to the outrage;

The policy regarding wedding fines was put on our site as a tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago. It was meant to be taken down long ago and certainly was never enforced.

That's the professional business thing to do, put "joke" fines in your policies! :rolleyes: Does this guy seriously think anyone will believe that?

Or8kFMA.png


If it's just a "joke" why did they threaten this couple? Oh, if you think it's just a "pile on", check out the date...

Yeah, fuck this Chris Wagoner guy and fuck his anti-consumer policy hotel.
 
That's the professional business thing to do, put "joke" fines in your policies! :rolleyes: Does this guy seriously think anyone will believe that?

http://i.imgur.com/Or8kFMA.png

If it's just a "joke" why did they threaten this couple? Oh, if you think it's just a "pile on", check out the date...

Yeah, fuck this Chris Wagoner guy and fuck his anti-consumer policy hotel.

Makes me wonder why it took 8 months for this practice to come to light, though.
 
I wonder how many of the 1 star reviews Yelp will remove. I'm not sure if it's Yelps policy still, but I remember when people could purchase to have bad reviews hidden. Yelp had hidden several of my reviews because they were 3 stars. Nothing obnoxious or anything, just honest opinion.
 
I wonder how many of the 1 star reviews Yelp will remove. I'm not sure if it's Yelps policy still, but I remember when people could purchase to have bad reviews hidden. Yelp had hidden several of my reviews because they were 3 stars. Nothing obnoxious or anything, just honest opinion.

Maybe they can bundle? lol

fb8oEqq.jpg
 
I wouldn't worry too much about it. Obviously it's illegal in the first place, but a quick review of their policies indicates only insane idiots would book their services anyways.
 
As others have said, us consumers can simply avoid the place entirely. They won't be in business for long if enough of us do so.
 
This would never work. All you'd have to do is file a chargeback and it would end up costing them even more money, and if that happens enough their payment processor would dump them.

Things like this are why I usually use cash at a hotel.
 
Holiday inns get charged around $150 for every negative review a guest leaves
 
Wow, they just painted a big sign on themselves that says "Sue Me". There are going to be people leaving bad reviews just so they can win a lawsuit and extra damages from them.

Well, if they didn't have negative reviews before, they will now. This is probably the quickest way to the bottom.

I'd say send Hotel Impossible in, but that'd be a gift to these clowns.
 
This would never work. All you'd have to do is file a chargeback and it would end up costing them even more money, and if that happens enough their payment processor would dump them.

Things like this are why I usually use cash at a hotel.

Pretty much. I had a small-town "Inn" manager claim we smoked in a room (I didn't) and charged a $300 cleaning fee. AmEx handled it from there. Short story, I didn't have to pay the fee. The rooms already smelled like smoke. So who knows how many people got charged for it before me.

Some of these smaller inn's are run by schmucks trying to slip things through the cracks on the bill.
 
Holiday inns get charged around $150 for every negative review a guest leaves

This is going in the opposite direction though, right? The corporate office fining franchisees for poor customer service. Don't really have a problem with this one except $150 seems kind of low if you're trying to protect a brand.
 
lol yelp actually has a place where you can signify if the review is funny.
 
I think Yelp will accidentally fail to notice a problem with the ratings on this particular business for a few weeks. "Whoops, we've been really busy this summer, we didn't see that, fell through the cracks, sorry about that, give us a few weeks for this to work its way through our governance processes and we'll fix that right up for ya..."
 
According to Ars.. "Amid backlash, hotel rescinds $500 fines for “negative” online reviews"..

Unfortunately for the hotel, it's running into a variation on the problems faced by other businesses that try to stifle bad reviews: the harder a business tries to crack down, the angrier the masses get.
 
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