Hotel Charges Guests $500 For Bad Online Reviews 183
njnnja (2833511) writes In an incredibly misguided attempt to reduce the quantity of bad reviews (such as these), the Union Street Guest House, a hotel about 2 hours outside of New York City, had instituted a policy to charge groups such as wedding parties $500 for each bad review posted online. The policy has been removed from their webpage but the wayback machine has archived the policy. "If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500. fine for each negative review."
So... in addition to the bad reviews... (Score:4, Informative)
How much will the class action lawsuit cost them, when they're brought to court for deceitful contracts?
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How much will the class action lawsuit cost them, when they're brought to court for deceitful contracts?
Probably legal, just stupid. e.g. look here for a 1A specialist's take on it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/08/04/volokh-conspiracy-marketing-genius-award-goes-to-the-union-street-guest-house-hudson-new-york/
Apparently if you are aware of them, entering into a "non-disparagement" agreement isn't all that rare and is usually enforceable. Mind you, still an epic PR move in this particular case.
Re:So... in addition to the bad reviews... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't the sticking point here not that the person contracting for service agrees to a non-disparagement clause but that person agrees on behalf of everyone in their entire group? Is that realistic?
Re:So... in addition to the bad reviews... (Score:5, Informative)
Read the link. It looks like you are agreeing if any of your guests posts a review, you will be fined. You won't be fined if you convince them to take down the negative review. Crappy idea and awful PR? Sure. Enforceable if you enter into it willingly? Presumably
I wonder if Barbra Streisand has ever stayed there (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe she could have warned them what happens when you try to bury the truth.
so, in essence... (Score:2)
Sensational headline is sensational... (Score:5, Informative)
Except, they didn't actually charge anyone, they just threatened it.
As usual, a good breakdown at Fatwallet:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forum... [fatwallet.com]
They've been spammed with bad reviews, Streisand effect and all...
Re:Sensational headline is sensational... (Score:4, Interesting)
They did more than threaten. They actually withheld money from wedding parties and then buckled after people got pissed and kicked up a serious fuss. As for the spamming, it's what they deserve.
Re:Sensational headline is sensational... (Score:4, Informative)
I am not defending their stupidity but there is ZERO evidence that they have actually done this. They said it was a 'joke' and that they have never used that clause. Whether or not it is a 'joke', there is no real examples of people being charged for bad reviews.
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Maybe they were just threatening not to return the money at some indeterminate point in the future unless they took it down :)
Re:Sensational headline is sensational... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The owners seem incredibly snarky.
2. There's multiple cases of people getting charged even though they tried cancelling half a year in advance
3. They seem to suffer from low staff and debatable accounting practices
4. There's a of positive reviews from people with 1 review, and he accuses negative reviewers of being liars when they have a few reviews on their account
Whether or not they actually charge $500 for bad online reviews is debatable, but they sure seem like dicks and charge for everything else, and have bad business practices.
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The word 'debatable' does not mean what you think it means.
From other comments, they threatened and backed down. But that's not the point either. Just having it in your policy is bad enough, that's not on any side of the word "debatable". Actually withholding money is likewise not "debatable", even if they cave.
We could debate, but it would serve no purpose.
Yes they've charged someone (Score:2, Informative)
This guy posted on Yelp last year that the hotel fined his friends for his review:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/union-street-guest-house-hudson?hrid=_p-R59VY-c19Nmxt4r9X9w
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Ahh well, that's that then. If it's posted on the internet, it is definitely true.
yelp is deleting negative reviews?! (Score:2, Informative)
When I looked last night there were more than 700 reviews. When I look now, there are only 100.
The real story here is Yelp deleting negative reviews for this crappy hotel.
Re:yelp is deleting negative reviews?! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's no-win for Yelp.
Leave hundreds of fake angry reviews or clean them up?
Neither bodes well for them.
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You can't stop the signal, Mal.
Re:yelp is deleting negative reviews?! (Score:5, Informative)
Does anybody believe yelp and angieslist are anything other then paid advertising sites anymore?
It's common knowledge that they extort business' to hide the bad reviews. Not trustworthy, simple as that.
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Or maybe they started out with good intentions but got corrupted like everything else in this world.
Or stay uncorrupted and then get stomped on by all the people who went to the Dark Side I suppose.
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I don't think Yelp started with good intentions, from my perspective, unless they were really naive.
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That's Yelp's entire business model: pay to remove bad reviews. They win the more bad reviews they collect.
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Thats because the fine people at Reddit decided to post fake reviews without having been a customer, which jacks the system up for everyone.
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Contract binding third parties (Score:4, Insightful)
I know that you can enter into a contract with a company essentially saying "I won't post a negative review online." That would be sleazy but legal. How legal would it be, however, to have a person sign a contract that binds a third party into not posting a negative review under penalty of the signing party (not the bad review posting party) being fined? I don't know about you, but if I throw an event, I'm not usually in total control of my guests once they leave the event. If a guest leaves the party/wedding/ete, goes home, and posts a negative review of the hotel, how would that be under the control of the person who hosted the event/signed the contract?
I wonder if they ever tried implementing this policy and, if so, how many lawyers fired off letters warning the hotel to back down or else.
Re:Contract binding third parties (Score:5, Funny)
I sign those contracts all the time.
Sometimes my contract says that I believe a group of people will perform better than another group of people, and if my chosen group of people perform badly, I have to pay a penalty to the other party.
The other party is my bookie.
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Sign?
Betting is legal a lot of places where you suspect it might be. In my state (not Nevada or Jersey), any two private parties can be on pretty much anything they want (provided no 3rd party takes a cut), and the results of those bets are enforceable.
Much like many of the contracts we enter into regularly -- they're rarely written.
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People agree to pay for things outside of their control all the time. Consider the contract you have with your auto insurance company, for example, in which they agree to pay in the event that you get into an accident. If you agree to the terms of your own free will, in the absence of fraud or duress, you should assume that they're binding, at least morally if not legally. The real problem would be if they were trying to fine the people posting negative reviews directly, when they weren't a party to the con
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Insurance, though, is strongly regulated, precisely because of the sort of difficulties discussed here. You can't form an arbitrary insurance contract; the insurer must be licensed and the contract must conform to a whole slew of extra rules not applicable to contracts in general.
Re:Contract binding third parties (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.bbb.org/upstate-new... [bbb.org]
Just looking through the BBB complaints from years before this whole ordeal began, it's pretty apparent that the business has very little regard for its customers and does everything it can to leverage its policies so that it can keep the money. One quick example from the BBB complaints:
I made a reservation that I then had to cancel. They advised [ed. note: in the policy] it would take up to 60 days to processes the cancellation less a $25 cancellation fee. I contacted them 9 months in advance of the reservation. I have not heard back. I have emailed the cancellation email address twice as well as the general information email and have received no response. On Yelp, you can see there are others who have had this issue where they do not return funds if the reservation is cancelled. They charged me the full value of the reservation up front, even when they say that they are only going to charge half at the time of the reservation and half at the time of the stay. The full price that they charged me was $812.00
All she asked the BBB to help with was to get them to honor their policy and refund her the $812, less the $25 cancellation fee, which she figured was still reasonable, since at that point they were still 5 months before the reservation date. The business responded to the BBB by claiming that it never received the e-mails from the customer...and that was it. They didn't offer to go ahead and honor the cancellation request. So, since they had claimed they never received the request (and apparently the BBB complaint didn't count as a request either), she posted timestamped logs of all of the e-mails she had sent. Their response to that was:
Once again. This person is not reading our "Cancel at your own Risk" policy despite the fact that she has cut and pasted it. It can be found again at:
http://unionstreetguesthouse.c... [unionstree...thouse.com] [ed. note: the policy has obviously changed since then]
After having the chance to read it she agreed to it by clicking the box and agreeing to a contract with us. That said if said cancelation was made AND accepted by us there would have been a refund.
The customer pointed out that their policy doesn't mention anything about the cancellation needing to be "accepted" by them and that she perfectly followed the policy, giving them months of advance notice and contacting them via the one-and-only means that they make available. She repeated her request that they simply honor their own policy.
The business never responded again and the BBB had to close it as an issue that the business failed to resolve. The business has since changed its cancellation policy to include that they need to accept the cancellation, which is utterly ludicrous, which is nearly as bad as having a no-cancellations-allowed policy for rooms booked for more than three days at a time, regardless of when you try to cancel them.
Damn them with faint praise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn them with faint praise (Score:5, Funny)
John J. on Yelp [yelp.com] beat you to it:
Apparently we are not allowed to write negative reviews, so I will write a positive one.
I very much enjoyed my stay at the Union Street Guest House, which met or exceeded every expectation! Everything felt authentic and vintage, like the bathroom, which did not have working toilets. ("Just like olden times," noted the concierge.) Similarly, the beds were very uncomfortable, just like in the days of yore, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had taken the trouble to obtain several hundred bedbugs to place in the bed, for the sake of authenticity.
The food in the dining room was similarly amazing -- totally inedible! One bite of the cold porridge and my wife said, "Wow, this stuff is unbelievable!" So true.
I can't recommend this place enough. It is by far my favorite plague-infested parasite haven in Hudson, NY.
Please don't fine me $500; I spent all my money getting rid of the bedbugs I brought back with me.
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Many Bothans died to bring us this infestation!
Don't they realize... (Score:2)
Don't they realize that a policy like this is more likely to SCARE potential customers away than to help their reputation?
Do these idiots think this through at all before coming up with crap like this?
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Well, I guess you have to be already very desperate to attempt something like that. I doubt they'd even consider doing something like that if they didn't already drown in negative reviews. It's more a "we're going under anyway, can as well try something desperate" thing, I'd say.
There are ways of posting bad reviews (Score:5, Funny)
without posting anything bad. For instance:
- This hotel definitely has 8 rooms, and all of them have beds.
- The hotel's owner is very dedicated to ensuring your bill is correct when you leave.
- Checkout time is strictly enforced, so you're sure to find your room empty when you arrive.
- Staying at this hotel is much better than camping on a landfill.
- This hotel is much less expensive than the George V, and much more comfortable than a Texas motel.
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i.e. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw... [tvtropes.org]
Which works, though I would have had more fun going the other direction, being like "This was a FANTASTIC HOTEL. Its food was DEFINITELY NOT TERRIBLE, and when I went to check in, the guy at the front desk definitely did NOT spend half an hour ignoring me to instead post pictures on facebook. There was NOT a roach problem, and the toilet in the bathroom definitely did NOT stop up a bunch of times."
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Or how about "staying in this hotel reminds me of a Song from a French Broadway Play"
the song in question of course being Master Of the House from Les Mis
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Because the subjects of the review (the number of rooms and presence of bed, the owner being a stickler for correct bills) are peripheral to what normal would-be visitors expect to read, and that's usually enough of a clue to tip them off.
It's used all the time: when you want to tell people your business is under an NSA gag order, to clue in a potential employer they should not to hire one of your former employees who's incompetent... without saying so explicitely because you can't.
Consumerist covered it as well (Score:4, Informative)
The internet has spoken: very funny reviews (Score:3)
Palmer vs Kleargear (geeky website) (Score:3)
Palmer vs Kleargear [wikipedia.org]
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Kleargear was even worse. They charged the "fine" when
1) The person who posted the review was not the person who agreed the the contract (the contract, unlike USGHs, did not say anything about third party reviews)
2) They'd already breached the contract by not delivering the item.
3) They'd actually added the language to the contract AFTER the person who ordered it did so.
USGH seems to be a bunch of reasonably honest dirtbags, at least; they do indeed mention that the fine applies for other people's reviews,
How much do they charge for good reviews? (Score:2)
$500 for a bad review is pretty terrible until you learn that good reviews are $200 each.
The real issue (Score:3)
This gets even worse when we consider the nasty culture of anti-confrontation where people instead of bringing an issue appropriately to management and getting it fixed, just spout vitriol and become oversensitive over minutia.
Sure, lots of bad service exists in the various service and product industries. The simple fix is to clearly ask for what you want and then not pay (demand a credit / refund) when things are not made right. Too bad the majority of people willing to go to such lengths are usually the self-absorbed assholes who have unreasonable requests and expectations.
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I guess the same charge could be leveled at
My Review of the Union Street Guest House (Score:5, Insightful)
I had my wedding reception catered at the Union Street Guest House last Saturday.
The Union Street Guest House required me to sign an agreement stating that I would forfeit a $500 fine to them if I post a negative review of their establishment.
Rather than lose $500, let me just say that I had my wedding reception catered at the Union Street Guest House last Saturday.
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I had my wedding reception catered at the Union Street Guest House last Saturday.
The Union Street Guest House required me to sign an agreement stating that I would forfeit a $500 fine to them if I post a negative review of their establishment.
Rather than lose $500, let me just say that I had my wedding reception catered at the Union Street Guest House last Saturday.
Why would you sign such an agreement? Wouldn't this wording have tipped you off that the place was a bit dodgy?
And, of course, all the best to you and partner.
Give us a good review, or else. (Score:2)
So if you don't leave a positive review they keep your money. That's extortion, and very very illegal.
Know how to work with this one... (Score:3)
Say you had a legit bad experience there- so you wait the week or so until they return your deposit to unleash your torrent of critical reviews, or start burning through the deposit while you're still there.
If your experience there was so bad that you can't wait a week to post the review you should probably be talking to a lawyer first anyway.
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Uh oh, you didn't read their policy at the Wayback Machine archive:
You might have to wait a looooonng time for your refund. Ha ha.
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He wrote: "so you wait the week or so until they return your deposit"
But their policy states "we reserve the right to refund at any time"
It is mathematically possible for "at any time" to be a period longer than one week, possibly much longer if they know that the customer has been royally stiffed. "Never" is a long time, but weeks, months, years -- those are possibilities that have been left open by their policy.
Perhaps you are the owner/manager of this "fine" establishment? Why not introduce yourself to
Don't know who to side with (Score:3)
A business trying to restrict users' free speech, or users empowering the various review sites out there that seek to become "gatekeepers of reputation."
So... (Score:2, Funny)
Next steps for Union Street (Score:2)
First Amendment (Score:2)
My favorite thing about this is how many of the yelp reviewers think that yelp removing their reviews is a violation of their first amendment rights.
It even gets worse... (Score:3)
We can only take people's word for what wedding they are attending, therefore we are not responsible for guests booking under different names or choosing to attend another event. We will not question guests about their intentions after a reservation is made.
So, even if a person not in your wedding party leaves a bad review, you may get dinged for it if that person was mean enough to say he belonged to you when he checked in...
Re:Libertarians, discuss! (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like "the market" is going to take care of these jokers. You should probably find a better example to make your point.
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Contracts that you voluntarily enter into to keep your yapper shit meet Supreme Court approval. Normally it would be "don't badmouth our mutual financial endeavor", not over a product purchase.
The wisdom of such in a situation like this is something else. Other uses of free speech to lambaste them seem to be working fine.
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Contracts that you voluntarily enter into to keep your yapper shit meet Supreme Court approval..
Perhaps. However, signing a contract on someone else's behalf is questionable at best, and that seems to be the case here - the hotel is putting the contract signers on the hook for the actions of people who did not sign said contract.
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Yeah, pretty sure those wouldn't hold up.
Re:Libertarians, discuss! (Score:4, Informative)
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This makes sense when you hold an event there that may involve urinating etc, but normally, once everybody has gone home the liability stops in the butt.
As long as it doesn't happen in his mouth...
Re: Libertarians, discuss! (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately that doesn't sound that bad. If you rent a car and your friend trashes it, you're still on the line for the actions of your friend...
This hotel is stupid and they deserve what they're getting, but it's not signing a contract on someone else's behalf, it's signing a contract saying you are responsible for what they do. In many circumstances that's perfectly reasonable.
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Perhaps. However, signing a contract on someone else's behalf is questionable at best, and that seems to be the case here - the hotel is putting the contract signers on the hook for the actions of people who did not sign said contract.
This happens all the time. Companies sign non-disclosure agreements. If an employee violates the terms of the NDA, then the company is liable.
To help protect themselves, the company's lawyers draft their own NDA and make the employee sign it, so if an employee disc
How so? (Score:3)
If anything they probably backed down because they'd just find themselves getting a tonne of credit card disputes, which you're allowed to do because of a Gov't imposed requirement written into a law...
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Naw, go look at their Yelp page. Hell, just Google them. This will sting.
Re:Libertarians, discuss! (Score:4, Interesting)
well.... I don't like to get into the label game of whether I am or am not a libertarian, I do have many such symptahies though.
That said.... there is respected....and there is respected.
On its face, it is hard to argue with such terms without also arguing with other kinds of NDAs which, while I tend to not be a fan of, I am not really dead set against either. In fact, I can only find one reason split that hair, but I do think its a decent reason.... bad reviews are a form of consumer protection and so they are actually asking you to cover up their quality so as to reduce other people's ability to make an informed decision. As such, I would generally be ok with saying.
That said, I should also point out that one has generally already paid by the time one writes a bad review. If they wanted to charge you, they would have to do it after the fact.
As such, I would say, I am ok with them having this policy and not ok with the force of the state being used to enforce its terms. So feel free to charge me $500, I am not going to pay, and i will never come to your establishment again, you can grow old and die thinking I owe you $500 for all I care. Enjoy your policy.
Hows that for libertarian?
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"...t ok with the force of the state being used to enforce its terms."
as long as you are ok with the state not enforcing me to pay.
Re:Libertarians, discuss! (Score:4, Insightful)
well.... I don't like to get into the label game of whether I am or am not a libertarian, I do have many such symptahies though.
That said.... there is respected....and there is respected.
On its face, it is hard to argue with such terms without also arguing with other kinds of NDAs which, while I tend to not be a fan of, I am not really dead set against either.
...
As such, I would say, I am ok with them having this policy and not ok with the force of the state being used to enforce its terms. So feel free to charge me $500, I am not going to pay, and i will never come to your establishment again, you can grow old and die thinking I owe you $500 for all I care. Enjoy your policy.
Hows that for libertarian?
so you would agree to such terms, and then screw over your contract partner after the fact by refusing to comply with the terms you just agreed to and have no problem with?
Sounds just like a Libertarian to me.
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So don't post the review until you've received your deposit back. Problem solved.
Of course you can also argue that a "bad" review is different from a "fair" review, even if the fair review described goods and service that other people may not want to pay for.
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Regardless, it
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But that makes my monitor harder to clean!
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How stupid can places get?
Zeroth Law of Stupidity: There is no upper bound on the amount of stupidity that can exist within any particular individual. First Law of Stupidity: We always underestimate the number of stupid people, even after the First Law of Stupidity is applied/accounted for. Does that answer your question?
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Second Law: We're apparently counting in zero-indexed binary so this law doesn't exist.
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Microsoft has the same idea for Windows 9, as well as GM for next year's model numbers. Get as much bad press as possible with the current product, and people will flock to you when the next one comes out.
That sound about right?
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Yeah, it makes people want to go there if they're known as the hotel that stinks so bad they have to blackmail you so you don't write badly about them.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
A good review can be just as effective: "I really loved the cold soup, the dirty sheets, and the rude staff attitude - it made me feel just like home."
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
Have you ever considered a new wife?
(Posting anonymously because some stuck up people think women are some kind of sacred beings and sexist jokes on them are some kind of blasphemy.)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
So in a world where men who make terrible husbands exist, and women who make terrible wives exist, you're just going to put all your money down on one side of the table all the time, every time, when you know nothing of either side in any given particular case.
You're sexist.
Gotcha.
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Well, yeah. Didn't you know that women are always right and men are always wrong? Heck, all men are rapists anyways. We'd be better off without that entire gender. But until then, we'll tolerate men at best.
And if you do not believe this, you are a neanderthal savage.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Their site [unionstree...thouse.com] and the source [old-computers.com]
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah yes. The good old 'We were just joking' defence. AKA 'The smiley at the end of the insult'.
Dear guests of Union Street Guest House,
Yesterday Union Street Guest House went viral for all the wrong reasons. News articles, blog posts and social media posts were published about our policy to charge wedding parties a $500 fee for every negative review.
Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed. This indeed was a policy of the Union Street Guest House. It was originally intended as a joke and never something I told employees to enforce. However, since it was listed on our website it did represent an official policy. I now realize this joke was made in poor taste and not at all funny. This is no longer a policy of Union Street Guest House and we have taken it off of our website.
I’ve also read the reviews from guests saying we tried to enforce the negative reviews policy on them and for that I apologize. It was never my intention for anyone to pay this fine. The instances where an attempt was made to collect the fees were a breakdown in communication between my staff and me, and for that I accept full responsibility.
Including the fine for negative reviews as part of our policy was a mistake. That’s not the type of business that we run. It was a case of a joke gone very, very bad. The internet, social media and review sites are very powerful platforms and this situation has taught me valuable lessons about them. Feedback from our guests is very important to us. I admit that at times it can be tough to see a negative review and I could do a better job of taking that criticism in stride. We value each and every one of you and want to hear about your experience with Union Street Guest House, even if it’s a negative experience. Your reviews give us an opportunity to improve our service and make the Union Street Guest House experience better for everyone.
I’m a novice when it comes to the internet and digital communication. My background is in music and hospitality. That’s by no means an excuse, but a realization that I need to learn and continually educate myself on technologies that affect my business. I vow to do that moving forward to avoid mistakes like this in the future.
All of the team here at Union Street Guest House invites you to come visit us in Hudson, New York, and give us a chance to show you who we really are – a group dedicated to making your stay in the beautiful Hudson area a positive and memorable one.
Please also accept my offer of a 10% discount on a visit to Union Street Guest House within the next three months as further apology. Just mention this letter. And I encourage you to leave a review about your experience (positive or negative) after your stay.
I hope we see you in Hudson in the future.
Best,
Chris Wagoner
Owner
Union Street Guest House
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Please also accept my offer of a 10% discount on a visit to Union Street Guest House within the next three months as further apology. Just mention this letter. And I encourage you to leave a review about your experience (positive or negative) after your stay.
Not what I want to see. After all... if it's so bad you had to have a 'fine for negative review policy', why the heck would I want to stay there in response to this?
The only way you will win me over is if you show that YOU RETURNED any fines you
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Could have been worse. He could have said "Oh, who shall rid me of those troublesome negative reviewers!" :)
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I hereby notify all B&Bs and motels: I charge $500 for a good review.
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I'm on my way to yelp to post a review of them right now.
Speaking of Yelp (Score:3)
And Yelp doesn't allow you to down-mod reviews. Just 3 versions of "I got high reading that review".
Odds that Yelp goes under in 2014? 2015?
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Odds that Yelp goes under in 2014? 2015?
considering that all of the internet will self-implode on May 6 2015 I would say it is quite likely that yelp will go under next year. Unless they make good money on selling those little stickers.
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Yelp automagically pulls (hides behind the curtain) reviews it deems are not representative.
How about we join some reviewers whose reviews were suppressed with some guests who had a bad experience in a lawsuit against Yelp over review suppression and some FTC complaints. We can claim that their suppression of negative reviews was deceptive and resulted in us staying there and not getting the experience we paid for and believed we would be getting according to the biased selection of reviews that Yel
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Getting bad reviews should not be a business model.
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Either is despicable, paying for good reviews as well as intimidating those that want to leave bad ones.
Earn your good reviews and deal with the bad ones. Welcome to the free market. For a change, the demand side finally can fulfill its duty in a free market: Make an informed decision.
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C'mon, they're maybe bad but they're not the RIAA, they can't make you pay even if you don't need their service.