Canadian Hotel Sues Guest For $95K Over Bad Review, Bed Bugs 432
An anonymous reader writes "A guest at at Quebec hotel was bitten by bed bugs, brought some down to the front desk and asked for new room. While the fully booked hotel offers to get him another room in a different hotel, he stays out the night then leaves — telling people at the hotel — some of whom also check out. When he wrote about it on Trip Advisor, the hotel demanded he take it down and when he did they sued him for $95,000."
You know the Hotel Quebec? (Score:4, Informative)
I read somewhere that it is shit.
is it true that the Hotel Quebec is shit?
Could it be that it's full of cockroaches, and that the waiters ejaculate into the food?
Has anyone said that the manager hurls racial abuse at his staff and non-white customers?
Did anyone find any reports about guests having their personal property stolen by the room cleaners?
mistake in editorial entry (Score:5, Informative)
"the hotel demanded he take it down and when he did they sued him for $95,000.""
should be
"the hotel demanded he take it down and when he didn't, they sued him for $95,000.""
Re:mistake in editorial entry (Score:3, Informative)
This is the review and it is still up (Score:5, Informative)
"At first this hotel looks ok....until you wake up in the middle of the night at 3:00AM because you've been scratching all over and realize your bed is infested with BED BUGS!
What a nightmare! When I reported the situation to the managing stuff, there were no emergency to handle the situation because the decision maker was not available during the week end and it was a Saturday.
Instead they offered to transfer my son and I to a hotel nearby where a room was available because they were concerned I was going to cause Mayhem
They finally offered to investigate the room despite the 4 BED BUGS I had contained in a glass and pictures and videos I had showed them.
I was supposed to stay one more night but instead chose to move to a hotel nearby; turned out to be cleaner-up to date-bigger room- and cheaper rate and that was the Holiday Inn Express down the road at 3145 Avenue de Hotels.
Beware of BED BUGS! If you are looking for a scratch free night sleep, stay elsewhere, you will be doing you and your loved ones a favour! Trust me...and that's why the Internet is a great tool!
Stayed April 2013, traveled with family"
And this is the link to the review... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:mistake in editorial entry (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free speech (Score:2, Informative)
Just plain wrong.
Link [wikipedia.org]
"Freedom of speech in Canada is protected as a "fundamental freedom" by Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
Quebec is NOT bilingual.
Re:New insecticide (Score:5, Informative)
SLAPP (Score:4, Informative)
Quebec has an anti-SLAPP [wikipedia.org] law.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
New Brunswick is the only bilingual province. Quebec is uni-lingual.
Re:How can you win over facts? (Score:5, Informative)
In many places, truth is not a defense. If it harms someone, it did harm. You can't badmouth certain industries in TX or FL, for example, regardless of the truth of the statements. Too bad free speech doesn't exist in the US anymore. We should move to some place more free, like Soviet Russia.
That is plainly incorrect. As a constitutional matter, truthful negative statements are protected speech in the United States. You have misinterpreted the precedent.
Re:New insecticide (Score:5, Informative)
For all practical purposes there's no way, I repeat, no way to "heat the whole apartment block" to eradicate bed bugs. It's a myth perpetuated by the eradication industry. It's physically impossible unless you'd raise the building off the ground, isolate from all utilities, wrap air-tight with an insulating air gap between the plastic cover and the walls, and then heat up from inside. That's how I've seen someone get rid of a horrible infestation in a trailer home, and it's about the only way to pull it off. It did work, too - a year later, still no bed bugs. For normal buildings - forget it.
You see, bed bugs scamper away from heat, and when you're heating a building up, there are always gradients that let the suckers find the way to the basement, the attached car garage, whatever. Good luck heating the concrete basement or other adjoining walls to 45C, as that would be necessary to really kill them. Never mind that most heat treatments do not isolate the walls from outside air, so the walls never get hot enough.
The way heat-based bed bug eradication is normally done is you bring in a high-power space heater system that heats the air in the building. This is about the best scenario for bed bugs: due to slow heat exchange between hot air and the walls, the latter heat up slowly and let the bed bugs get out of the way before anything bad happens to them. That method doesn't kill any appreciable numbers of bed bugs, they simply go away for a while -- all the way to cracks and crevices in the foundation, if need be. It's then only a matter of time for the infestation to recover, as the suckers simply come back. Yes, their numbers will be reduced, but they'll come back all right.
There is a big problem with how the heat-based methods are evaluated: the test methods don't address the issue of bed bugs simply relocating elsewhere.
AFAIK, there are exactly zero pesticides that are approved for non-professional use the U.S. and that work against bed bugs. I repeat: ZERO. None. Nada. You're not buying anything unless you're licensed professional. The "higher test stuff" is not some nebulous thing either. There is exactly one category of insecticides that do work against bed bugs: organophosphates [usyd.edu.au]. Out of a whole lot of stuff, only one category. One that's highly regulated and universally toxic to pretty much anything with a nervous system, including humans. For all I know, if organophosphates came to be widely used against bed bugs, it'd be only a matter of time until those suckers found a way to cope with it, or even becoming totally immune. Perhaps whatever mutations would be responsible for it would also be of some use in humans - one can only hope.
Re:Summary is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
There is a seriously major bed bug infestation going on right now on the east coast of North America. There hasn't been this large of a problem with bed bugs in this area for more than 60+ years.
If the person is being bit it is most likely bed bugs. They are parasites that suck blood and because of this they are far worse than cockroaches, they also tend to breed as fast as roaches. The very presence in one room indicates they are present or will soon be present everywhere in the building. Standard treatment protocol for bed bugs is to spray not only the dwelling they are in but every adjacent dwelling area. In an apartment building this would mean the apartment in question plus all the surrounding apartments including above and below. Its not unusual to require treating the entire floor they are found on but the floor above and below as well.
Bed bugs are nasty business.
Re:Other posts? (Score:5, Informative)
Because bedbugs are the ultimate venereal disease of hotel chains. They are very difficult to get rid of, and even if the hotel manages to wipe them out, once word gets out no one will touch them. Basically, the hotel chain feels the guy cost them real money. Though in truth, the hotel cost themselves the money by having the infestation in the first place; this guy just happened to be the patron who spoke out about it.
Re:How can you win over facts? (Score:3, Informative)
While it isn't guaranteed to keep bed bugs from my luggage I generally travel light, if I stay in a hotel hang my bag in the bathroom preferably where it doesn't touch anything (shower door track works well) and leave the light on.
Bed bugs prefer darkness, if they have a dark area and a light area they will stay to the dark most of the time, they also typically move in 'protected' areas such as the crevices where carpeting meets the wall, under mattresses between couch cushions and such.
That leads to the bathroom which is typically tile or linoleum being the place they are least likely to hang out, check your bag and clothes before you leave as well. If the bathroom has its own heating control you can also turn that up a little, apparently they aren't too fond of heat either. While none of these steps will actually eliminate the chance of bring a bedbug home, they all can help to decease the chances.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
The very first paragraph of that document also states clearly that the government only protects those freedoms so long as it deems reasonable to do so. There is no definition of what they think is reasonable.
Not quite. The specific formulation is:
"the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"
So they have to demonstrably justify every instance of restricting the freedoms. This is subject to judicial review, and the Supreme Court of Canada has established a test [wikipedia.org] for it. It is still subjective, but it is not something that is decided unilaterally by the legislature.
His original complaint - in English (Score:5, Informative)
Quote: [tripadvisor.fr]
âoeBed bugs in our bedâ 1 5 étoiles Avis écrit le 27 avril 2013 Google Traduction At first this hotel looks ok....until you wake up in the middle of the night at 3:00AM because you've been scratching all over and realize your bed is infested with BED BUGS!
What a nightmare! When I reported the situation to the managing stuff, there were no emergency to handle the situation because the decision maker was not available during the week end and it was a Saturday.
Instead they offered to transfer my son and I to a hotel nearby where a room was available because they were concerned I was going to cause Mayhem
They finally offered to investigate the room despite the 4 BED BUGS I had contained in a glass and pictures and videos I had showed them.
I was supposed to stay one more night but instead chose to move to a hotel nearby; turned out to be cleaner-up to date-bigger room- and cheaper rate and that was the Holiday Inn Express down the road at 3145 Avenue de Hotels.
Beware of BED BUGS! If you are looking for a scratch free night sleep, stay elsewhere, you will be doing you and your loved ones a favour! Trust me...and that's why the Internet is a great tool!
Séjour du Avril 2013 - voyage en famille
Officially bilingual but not by choice (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Informative)
DDT kills bed bugs (Score:4, Informative)
As I understand it DDT was used in matresses specifically to kill/prevent bed-bugs, and was very effective. This is part of the reason that the US/Canada has had many decades of being reletively bed-bug worry-free (or at least it has been uncommon). The problem with DDT was that it was found to persist into the environment, would get into the fish, which were then eaten by birds, which resulted in soft egg-shells and the decline of species such as the California condor and bald eagle. This is why it was banned in 1972.
It has taken 30-40 years, the eagle population has returned, but so have the bed bugs.