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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 85.5 ms ] threadI.e., if the hotel comes after you with the torte-law equivalent of a flyswatter, return the favor with a torte-law sledgehammer.
I think you may mean "tort".
After all, a carefully worded response to the review is far better as an option.
I don't think this has anything to do with free speech, but more about fair business practices.
I think there are problems with casting it this way. You can get in trouble for making false claims in ads.
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.
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 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.
[1] http://www.bcdemocrat.com/2018/01/04/former-abbey-inn-owner-...
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.
"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.
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.
Was the construction going on next door really intolerably, or just a bit noisy?
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.