Some hotels have charged visitors for bad reviews | Hacker News Reader

Some hotels have charged visitors for bad reviews

economist.com

50 pointshvo50 comments

Shouldn't this be an easy way to break the hotel? A hotel implements this policy, the person trapped in that contract reveals the terms neutrally. Third party concerned citizens overwhelm them with bad reviews? (They're not bound by the terms of the contracts)

Another viable strategy might be to countersue the hotel for all of the things that were wrong, especially if any of them had health/safety implications, violations of hotel-related regulations, or constituted fraud of any form.

I.e., if the hotel comes after you with the torte-law equivalent of a flyswatter, return the favor with a torte-law sledgehammer.

The problem with that is that the guest is in a very nast power balence. The organization has more resources to defend it's self, the the individual has to cover the cost to sue. Often times it's just suggested to setle.

A torte is a kind of cake.

I think you may mean "tort".

Revenge is sweet, though.

This seems almost calculated to create backlash, yes. Who says that it’s a rational response though? I could imagine being emotionally blind to the situation and instituting this policy out of ignorance. By the time the hotel realizes they made a bad situation worse... explosion sounds. Any large hotel chain will be like most customer facing business, in that they will have a professional social media presence. Hopefully that person or department would dissuade management from this kind of misstep.

After all, a carefully worded response to the review is far better as an option.

Considering the context. It's incredibly rational. The hotel used their legal department to put that language in the contract, and to follow up on it. There are much more efficent ways to handle bad publicity.

I doubt the Abbey Inn, a small bed and breakfast in Indiana, has a legal department.

They do have legal services at their disposal. It may not be in house, but at least they're somewhat prepared for it.

A lawyer’s business card in the Rolodex is not a “legal department” by any definition.

That’s mentioned in the article as happening to a now shut down hotel.

Title is clickbait. This practice was banned in 2016 so should no longer be an issue, at least in the US.

Definitely still an issue in Italy, this [1] is from barely 2 weeks ago. From what the owner said in one of the many interviews on local press, they do it through the tour operator rather than directly: their contracts have clauses that hotels can invoke to be compensated if "offended", and in turn the operators do the same with customers.

Listening to the other side of the argument, apparently hotels are now routinely blackmailed by customers, who explicitly ask for special threatment "or else".

This sounds a lot like a classic "why we cannot have nice things".

[1] [ITA] http://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/bologna/cronaca/hotel-multe-...

The blackmail issue is really just noise though. It's totally unlike traditional blackmail where someone can threaten to ruin your life by revealing crime or adultery or something. Every business has a handful of bad reviews, and it's no big deal.

The only businesses that can be upset by this are (1) those who are taking it too personally and (2) those which are getting no good reviews as counterbalance.

The first quoted instance is still apparently an ongoing case[1] as of this month, so it's not exactly settled.

[1] http://www.bcdemocrat.com/2018/01/04/former-abbey-inn-owner-...

Ok, we'll switch the title above to past tense, which leaves open the possibility that it still happens.

Why was it allowed in the first place especially with free speech being so important and constitutionally protected in the US ?

Everything is allowed unless it's prohibited. Legislators aren't seers, and courts only rule on real cases before them, not hypotheticals. So both the judicial and legislative avenues of lawmaking are mostly reactive.

This is almost always a good thing, as the underlying tradeoffs of a policy are more likely to come into focus once you have examples of real people on all sides of a real controversy, with concrete gains and losses.

What you'll find is that there's typically some very broad law on the books, e.g. banning vague categories of anti-competitive behavior. Then the lower courts will hear a bunch of cases of varying similarity, a few get appealed here and there, and you eventually end up with stronger guidance as to a more specific issue.

In the US, speech cannot be punished by the government. The constitution says nothing about private entities or contracts that limit speech.

There are limits on what contracts can and can't cover in terms of free speech. Requiring silence is a common item, so zero reviews may been an option. However, requiring a specific type of review aka only positive ones is a tricky subject that was unlikely to be legal.

You can contract for people to tell lies even. That's what celebrity endorsement contracts essentially are, for example.

I don't think this has anything to do with free speech, but more about fair business practices.

> You can contract for people to tell lies even. That's what celebrity endorsement contracts essentially are, for example.

I think there are problems with casting it this way. You can get in trouble for making false claims in ads.

Hence the tiny text on the bottom of the screen about "paid actors" or similar. But again, that's about prohibiting unfair business practices, misleading advertising in this case. It has nothing to do with the legal capability of the actors to contract to tell lies, and nothing to do with free speech (except that it's a limit on the free speech of the actors and the company).

Because, in general, you’re free to enter into contracts that limit your rights if you so desire.

Not quite, you can only limit some behaviors, you can't for example sell yourself into slavery.

Obviously. This is why I said "in general".

It's entirely bullshit that they keep your credit card info and can charge you at their whim. It's another reason that payment type needs to be abandoned.

as someone who has had a proper merchant account in the past, my impression is that the customer has a lot more power than the merchant, when it comes to chargebacks. Chargebacks are super damaging to the owner of the merchant account[1], and while you can fight them, and sometimes win, my impression was that at least as a small operator, the end-user had the benefit of the doubt.

I'd bet money that "we made some ridiculous claim to be able to charge you after the fact for doing something reasonable" wouldn't hold up against the chargeback.

This is the thing; in most countries, America included, 'freedom of contract' is constrained by many laws, including 'reasonableness' tests. Personally, I think this is a feature, not a bug.

[1]chargebacks are one of the things that changes how much 'reserve' the merchant account holds back... if you don't have great credit, and/or if you have chargebacks, sometimes the merchant account will hold your money for months before releasing it to you. You really want to avoid chargebacks, as a merchant.

Concur. The only chargebacks I've ever won are when the customer admits something incriminating in an email, or claims "item not received" when they signed for it.

"Item not as described" is a huge loophole to get whatever you want for free. Hopefully the card issuers track repeated abuse. The banks don't even ask for proof the item was returned. Amex is particularly brazen if you want to steal free products.

Isn't the simplest option to cancel the payment with the credit card company, in case they charged more than what was on the bill?

Why would that help? By the time you know it's too late, and they can always send debt collectors after you.

This is terrible for a hotel. Charge back % spikes is a great way to get dropped by a credit card company.

Mastercard is not going to drop Marriot because some manager got a little overzealous with his directive to make sure his franchise has good reviews.

You would be surprised. I've issued chargebacks before after offering every chance for an issue to be resolved with major firms (over the phone) and within 10 minutes of making a chargeback I got a call from the head office offering all sorts of things to remedy the issue. It doesn't take many chargebacks for a provider to can even very large accounts.

The payment processor can drop the client or increase the fees. MasterCard doesn't care that you are the Marriot if you have significant amount of frauds, significant meaning one percent or two.

True, but whoever handles the contract on Marriot's side is going to become extremely aware of a sudden spike in chargebacks and where they happened in short order.

It is possible, actually, if a certain percentage of their credit card charges result in chargebacks.

Chargebacks are an easy countermeasure. Costs them a $30+ fee plus time expended to challenge it. And, if it succeeds, it is perfect evidence for any suit the hotel brings.

What happens if you check out and then someone finds you've trashed the room?

This is what insurance, credit and contract law are designed to handle.

Like the contract you presumably signed that says in the event that your room was damaged they can charge your credit card?

What happens if you check out and you’ve already canceled your card by the time they try to charge you for trashing the room?

In US law iirc libel requires something to be factually false, correct?

So you can only be sued for libel against the hotel if you leave a false bad review with the intent to damage the business? I don’t have a big problem with that.

The idea that I couldn’t review them badly before letting them address the problem, due to some fine print that’s unacceptable.

Even having to tell hotel management about some problem is already a bad experience. You don’t get two chances.

You can be sued for anything. The person suing you is certainly unlikely to prevail but I hardly blame the couple for not wanting to have to go to court to defend their review on TripAdvisor.

Facts are tricky.

Was the construction going on next door really intolerably, or just a bit noisy?

Nobody is going to win a libel case on grounds like that.

Winning a case isn't free. Even if you don't hire a lawyer, there is still missed time from work, stress, etc.

I completely agree, but your comment had nothing to do with that. As the saying goes, you can sue a ham sandwich for being too delicious.

The saying goes, "a prosecutor could _indict_ a ham sandwich"

I've heard both but that particular one doesn't seem to fit the current context at all.

To take the folksiness out of it, anyone can sue anyone at any time for essentially any reason, whether or not the suit has merit.

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