Customer fine £100 after bad review

[SPR]

Hotel ‘fines’ guests after bad TripAdvisor review - The Scotsman

sounds good to me ...

"RIBnet is the most friendliest place, welcoming place to find out about new things - all welcomed.

the admins and moderators do a great Job."

S.



RYA First Aid - Scotland
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[HughN]

To be fair, it was in the Hotel's terms and conditions - which the guests signed to say they accepted when they checked in.

I hope there was also a clause that said "Guests who run to the press like pathetic ninnies must surrender their mortal soul (please leave it outside the door for collection)".

[SteveHall]

looking at the reviews on Trip Advisor they must make a fortune with the £100 fines

[Pikey Dave]

Small print or not, I'm assuming the guests in question have given the hotel the appropriate 2 word response.


Update
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30111525

[Hightower]

Whether you agree with the charge or not, it has spectacularly back fired in the Hotel's face.

Now everyone knows how crap it is!

[wavelength]

To be fair, it was in the Hotel's terms and conditions

Unfair Contract Terms Act?

[willk]

It's one of those "and finally" stories that get run on quiet news days. The hotel's actions MAY be legal from a contractual point of view, but are certainly not acceptable. The credit card company will not allow this charge to stand and will refund the money and make a chargeback to the hotel. Obviously the place is a dump, but the owners may feel that for £36 a night, that's par for the course. It would be difficult to market the hotel as a "cheap dive - you get what you pay for" and yet patently, there is a market for £36 hotels.

I stayed in one recently (as the area was booked out). It was spectacularly poor but at Euro 46 for two persons, I didn't feel the need to warn the world about it. I did check their Trip Advisor page for entertainment and sure enough, there were some very unhappy people on there.... what DID they expect??

[WDI]

Unfortunately for the hotel "it's in the terms and conditions" doesn't quite cut it.
If a practice is deemed to be 'unfair trading' the customer will be supported and the hotel penalised. As rightly they should in this case!

You can't just put whatever you want into the small print and expect it to stand up.

There are lots of perfectly acceptable, and some very good places available for under £40/50 per night.

[tonymac]

Originally Posted by Hightower

Whether you agree with the charge or not, it has spectacularly back fired in the Hotel's face.

Now everyone knows how crap it is!

Anyone for a night out there???

[jambo]

That's hotel that was on a Hotel inspector recently. Didn't come thru that with any credit.


Sent from my iPhone using RIB Net

[WDI]

Meh, I've probably stayed in worse :P

[biffer]

I was listening to a radio phone in about this. They reckoned the kettle didn't work. It did but not in the plug hole near the kettle. By there own admission the wiring was " funny"
Owner said he would sort it in the morning. Guests said. We are only staying tonight. Lol

[Mollers]

OK, this place may've been a sh*thole, but T'advisor has largely become a 'forum' for miserable whinging, swindlers and moaners.

My student son works the bar PT at the premium waterside watering hole in this area. We eat there regularly, he has a back story for virtually every negative review the place has received on TA.
Most are outrageous distortions of the truth and the facts posted by 'orrible feckers.

[willk]

Originally Posted by Mollers

OK, this place may've been a sh*thole, but T'advisor has largely become a 'forum' for miserable whinging, swindlers and moaners.

My student son works the bar PT at the premium waterside watering hole in this area. We eat there regularly, he has a back story for virtually every negative review the place has received on TA.
Most are outrageous distortions of the truth and the facts posted by 'orrible feckers.

That's all true - the very bad reviews are paper versions of the "rant" an unreasonable person makes in person. I would generally ignore the review ratings that fall outside the general "scatter" - i.e. the very good and the very bad. It's the overall rating that matters - I find those are usually fairly accurate. I read the comments to see if the property will suit my particular requirements*.

*Reminds me, if you want a laugh - phone one of those tweedy country horsey house hotels and ask if it's OK to have a dog in the room. If they say yes, ask them leave a pretty poodle in your room....

[JamesF]

It can be interesting to look at the graphs of review scores on sites like Amazon — you'd expect a typical distribution of real opinions might to be centred on three or four (everything OK, nothing especially outstanding or particularly bad); but the reviews tend to produce a weird bimodal shape with lots of one-star and five-star.

I wonder what would happen to the average score if they replaced star ratings with "OK/not OK"...

I almost left a bad review of a restaurant on TripAdviser once. If I had, only the most damning of willk's ignorable outliers would have been sufficient. And if it was going to be ignored, there didn't seem much point in going to the effort of writing the piece of (justified) superlative-stuffed invective I had in mind.

[willk]

Originally Posted by JamesF

I almost left a bad review of a restaurant on TripAdviser once. If I had, only the most damning of willk's ignorable outliers would have been sufficient. And if it was going to be ignored, there didn't seem much point in going to the effort of writing the piece of (justified) superlative-stuffed invective I had in mind.

I didn't say it was pointless to write entirely positive or negative reviews - just that I tend to ignore them if they are isolated amid a raft of ratings and reviews that are clustered around an average. It's entirely possible to have a singularly poor experience in any business - and were you do, a calm, objective report of what was wrong will hit FAR harder than some of the ranty/smart-arsed/poorly written comments out there. Rating a premises as a 0 when it averages a 7.9 makes the reviewer sound dodgy - like a competitor posting a poor comment, or a total Victor M. Giving it a 4 and saying why is more useful to future readers.

[SPR]

my review is

"if I am ever 3 miles of the said establishment I would stay there ..."

S.


www.firstaidatsea.co.uk
www.SPRmarine.co.uk

[Brian]

I pick through the reviews to see if specific mention is made of something that I particularly want.
For instance, if car parking near the hotel or in it's own car park, is important to me, I look at any review which covers parking to see if I can/or can't park where I want.

[John Kennett]

I like Trip Advisor and use it a lot. You do need to mentally filter the reviews, but I've found them to be generally helpful. Of the reviews that I have left only one was a complete panning, but even that was more in sorrow than anger as it was a hotel that could be great but the owners were in completely over their heads. Most of my reviews are pretty favourable, but often with caveats.

If a ranty reviewer has zero previous then I don't pay much attention. If they have a track record of considered reviews then I might give them more credence.

Trip Advisor also has very good forums which are worth a look if you're planning a trip to somewhere new.

[Pikey Dave]

I travel for work, & tend to stay in "budget" establishments & I make good use of TA. My basic requirements are:- Clean, quiet, warm, good shower, IRO £50/night room only. I have stayed in some fantastic places that exceeded my requirements & I've also stayed in some (pre tripadvisor) sh1tholes. As already mentioned, an experienced TA reader can see through the whingers & the over expectors, take the general feel of the reviews & discard the extremes. If you can do this, Tripadvisor becomes quite a powerful tool.
PS I'll be in Pompey next week & looking forward to having a pint in the "Spice Island"