Great idea, right up till the point they announced it and later tried to enforce it.
Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
131–140 of 249 posts
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, you are not. Say someone writes a contract saying that they can slap me in the face and each time they do I must pay $100, if I carefully read and then sign that contract, and they then slap me three times — have I been assaulted or do I owe $300, or both?
This is actually a tricky question. Your assault & battery law probably says something like "unconsented or violent touching," so the fact that you consented doesn't matter, so you've been assaulted. And you can't enter a contract to perform an illegal act, so you don't owe $300 -- it's not a good contract.[1] But it depends why you're being slapped! Obviously we can't go prosecuting everyone who intentionally whacks…
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Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#133Yes. 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…
In fairness, I'm guessing a lot of the people virtually stomping on this hotel are doing so in an attempt to nip a potential Overton window shift in the bud. If this hotel were to get away with such a policy, other hotels and perhaps other types of businesses would likely follow suit; that's how changes in what's considered normal behavior come about. Punishing the first defector can be an effective way to forestall that.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#134What a horrible policy, it won't end well for them. http://www.yelp.com/biz/union-street-guest-house-hudson?sort... 10 negative Yelp reviews have been posted today (so far), ouch... http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g47931-d490934-Revie... Their website navigation is a very discrete image map in the middle of the page, http://www.unionstreetguesthouse.com/ obviously this was someone's first website. It's probab…
10 negative Yelp reviews have been posted today (so far), ouch...
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#135I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to work. They say they'll take it out of your deposit. But a review would happen after the wedding has taken place, yes? So by then wouldn't you have paid in full and settled everything? In that case, they shouldn't have any money you would be expecting to get back from them. So what are they taking it out of? Are they just going to send you a bill for $500 per bad revie…
> But a review would happen after the wedding has taken place, yes?
Some people would review on first opportunity - perhaps before having slept the night.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may not. This is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer - therefore we expect you to explain that to them. USGH & Hudson are historic. The buildings here are old (but restored). Our bathrooms and kitchens are designed to look old in an artistic "vintage" way. Our furniture is mostly hi…
I actually kinda see where they're coming from. I'm sure they do get complaints from people who never stay anywhere besides upscale chain hotels. But obviously this is not the way to address the issue. It's mean and ultimately self-defeating.
Perhaps they could have sent a gift voucher to the wedding couple for every negative review, including a message that you wanted a "vintage" inn and we provided the best service we could, but your guests weren't happy. It could probably guilt the wedding couple to request the guests to take the reviews down. And, perhaps led to a positive story on HN instead.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#137Makes sense. Asking for a functional ice machine in the middle of the summer at a wedding is a pretty unreasonable expectation. We're talking about Hudson, NY here. It's practically a wilderness... having an appliance repairman come would be impossible!
http://www.tripadvisor.ca/ShowUserReviews-g47931-d490934-r13...
Ice is of obvious importance, but it sounds like they did get ice, and the complaint was about the attitude concerning it.
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually kinda see where they're coming from. I'm sure they do get complaints from people who never stay anywhere besides upscale chain hotels. But obviously this is not the way to address the issue. It's mean and ultimately self-defeating.
A piece of paper asking guests to keep this in mind when giving reviews would suffice. A company that threatens to fine me for giving them a negative review is much more likely to actually receive a negative review from me.
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Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#139Maybe it's the "star rating" system that's broken. When reviewing rated product/service offerings, I go straight to the 1-star reviews. Skimming those, I differentiate the "valid complaints" from flukes (a small failure rate is understandable), unrealistic expectations (it's a vintage hotel, not a new Hilton), tangential problems (Amazon didn't smash the box, the shipper did), hysteria (political opposition isn't a r…
As bad as the star system is, I'm not sure there's anything better. I think Amazon has the right idea with the "Was this review helpful to you?" buttons, though that may not work quite as well for Yelp if you consider the possibility of review-burying by owners.
Unfortunately, the "helpful" rating on Amazon's reviews are heavily biased: http://minimaxir.com/img/amazon/amzn-basic-helpful.png
Re: Hotel fines $500 for every bad review posted online
#140Maybe it's the "star rating" system that's broken. When reviewing rated product/service offerings, I go straight to the 1-star reviews. Skimming those, I differentiate the "valid complaints" from flukes (a small failure rate is understandable), unrealistic expectations (it's a vintage hotel, not a new Hilton), tangential problems (Amazon didn't smash the box, the shipper did), hysteria (political opposition isn't a r…
As bad as the star system is, I'm not sure there's anything better. I think Amazon has the right idea with the "Was this review helpful to you?" buttons, though that may not work quite as well for Yelp if you consider the possibility of review-burying by owners.
We could have stars for multiple axes, plus a "choose n-of-m" keyword selection, but I wonder if that would be too complicated for users.
Example:
Service: 1-5
Cleanliness: 1-5
Concierge: 1-5
Modernity: 1-5
....
Choose three words to describe the hotel stay:
_ modern
_ rustic
_ rude
_ quaint
_ clean
...