This is beyond stupid and this is not even untrue.
Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
111–120 of 249 posts
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#112A bride is a business partner, forcing guests to stay at the hotel. How is this different from docking an employees salary for unsatisfied customers?
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#113Yelp is useless anyways.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#114What I wonder is how this is traced. If I leave a review ~6months after would my sisters bridal party be charged or the party that is currently renting the hall? I assume the later since they assume reviews are placed within a short span of time. Which then if there are several books one-day-after-the-next how do you migrate reviews? Or do you split the difference between all parties? Even if the policy is clear, and…
I would presume you'd be safe to leave the review much later as the $500 is withheld from returned deposits. Wait for deposit return, make bad review. All is well :)
Send the bride an invoice, then send it to collections if they don't cough up $500.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet it is. When you attend a wedding, you have absolutely no say in the venue. Yes, the bride and groom may have agreed to the terms, but the attendees did not have a choice. So if they get shitty service and want to post a review about it online, they find out doing so will cost the bride and groom $500. It might not be clear cut extortion - but it is not an acceptable business practice.
The attendees did not have a choice on the venue, but they are not bound to any contract and do not get fined if they post reviews.
Read it more closely and you will see that, yes, the guest will not get fined, but the bride and groom will have $500 per bad review removed from their deposit.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#116Why don't people understand that free-speech protections only means the government cannot throw you in jail for what you say (but they do anyway under the "try to stop us" method http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/12/201422486 ). It has no meaning against other individuals.
They don't because it's not true. The reason civil libel/slander between private parties is more restricted in the US than elsewhere in the common law world is because of the First Amendment free speech and free press guarantees. The idea that it only apples in criminal disputes or where over party is the government is false; it's a limit on government, sure, but on governments power to make law, which applies both to laws governing dispute between private parties and to law governing criminal or civil cases where the government is a party.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#117After reading this article, I'm surprised to see that the guest house still has a high rating on Yelp and Google+. Our immediate response should be to post negative reviews based on the revelation that none of the other reviews are trustworthy. EDIT: Yelp rating is no longer high, but there's still TripAdvisor and Google+.
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Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please take a look at my response to danielweber. I'm not advocating that people post fake reviews. I'm saying that we should point out only what we know: some of the other reviews may be disingenuous because of the $500 fine. This is a public policy posted on their website. It's a simple matter of fact, not opinions.
You specifically called for people to post negative reviews. How can someone review something they've never experienced? Regarding the other reviews being disingenuous or skewed, note that this policy only apparently applies and has ever even been stated for wedding parties. Are wedding parties big users of Yelp? Is it a credible use case for a general hotel? Imagine that you're a sushi place and everyone loves your…
How can someone review something they've never experienced?
I'm calling for people to comment on the facts of a public policy posted by the hotel. No more, no less. If you interpreted this as a call to post dishonest or mean comments, you were reading into it the wrong the way.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#119Yes. And because of this you should definitely go to Yelp and give them a one-star review. And destroy their Facebook page. And maybe go take a shit on their doorstep. That's definitely the answer when a small business makes an error like this. They're frustrated by something they don't feel is fair and made a ham-fisted attempt to fix the problem. Ruin them. (The ice machine thing, though -- that actually seems like…
Sarcasm doesn't always translate well on the Internet.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet it is. When you attend a wedding, you have absolutely no say in the venue. Yes, the bride and groom may have agreed to the terms, but the attendees did not have a choice. So if they get shitty service and want to post a review about it online, they find out doing so will cost the bride and groom $500. It might not be clear cut extortion - but it is not an acceptable business practice.
The attendees did not have a choice on the venue, but they are not bound to any contract and do not get fined if they post reviews.
That's like saying it's not extortion if I threaten your friend unless you do what I say. The Bride and Groom are threatened with a fine unless their attendees do what the hotel says.