8 hours ago, Sujo said:

Trip advisor did not renege, they had no contract or agreement with the resort.

They are correct to flag the resort, a review resulted in jail time. Fact.

 

No.  It was one review after another for weeks on end.

 

The American Guy was obviously an AXXXhole   but   the Hotel were idiots for what they did ,, and were on a hiding to nothing   ,,,,  now they will lose much business and  eat humble pie

No matter which way you look at this case the point is by writing a negative ( but true ) review one can end up in prison in Thailand. Scaring.

15 hours ago, rkidlad said:

Trip Advisor are merely stating what happened in regards to this hotel and the guest. What people choose to do with this information is up to them. Maybe the hotel should proudly state what happened on their website so people read it and go, “yea, I think I’ll give that place a miss”.

 

As a person who reads reviews for products and services online, you often see the most insane and stupid things written. You learn that if most of the reviews are good, the product or service is good. I’ve read reviews here that were praising a service or product to the point where you know they were blatantly fake reviews. This to me is a telltale sign that this company isn’t to be trusted. 

Why are they not saying that he wrote reviews under different names? It wasn't about one review.Its clear that the reviews on trip advisor are not to be trusted 

Boy, how stupid the hotel owners must feel now, together with the police

who arrested A TOURIST for writing a review.

Now they understand, the hard way, the meaning of the saying THE CUSTOMER IS Allways right.

Thai service providers usually do have great service awareness, but in this case it seems indeed

that the hotel owners were confused between their slaves and their customers. It does

happan from time to time in thailand, which is indeed a rigid cast society.

They clearly misunderstood the western and global concept of freedom of speech, which means

the freedom of one to say things that you might not like to hear.Not to mention the FREEDOM

OF TRAVEL, which means traveling to places that will not lock you in jail for writing reviews.

 

I did look at the hotel trip advisor page and saw there thousands of positive reviews, and just

few, maybe less than 20, negative ones. so now they will have this official warning, and

the damage will be huge, because guests reviews do count.

 

On 11/14/2020 at 9:35 AM, BobBKK said:

They have got this wrong. The reason he was sued was he kept posting reviews with racist overtones and would not reply to emails etc.  What was the business supposed to do?  this guy stayed there ONE night and was angry about being asked to pay a corkage fee for his bottle of gin he brought into the restaurant.  Trip Advisor are hypocrites as they renegaded on the agreement to end all this. 

"What was the business supposed to do?" Respond to the reviews or ignore them, just like every other business does - NOT file charges against the fool who wrote them. If a potential customer sees hundreds or thousands of generally positive reviews and a handful of crazy-sounding negative ones, he or she will discount the crazy reviews and assume that the hotel is probably a nice place. It's not rocket science.

19 hours ago, DLock said:

All businesses get negative reviews, some fair, some not so fair. The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away...

 

I like to read the bad reviews and guess where the writers are from.   The bad reviews are pretty funny and totally ridiculous on their complaints sometimes.   Usually doesn't make a difference on if I stay there or not (usually)

 

18 hours ago, ukrules said:

Lol ????

Yeah  ....  So funny.  They don't drink much though - compared to a thirsty camel

12 hours ago, adammike said:

Why are they not saying that he wrote reviews under different names? It wasn't about one review.Its clear that the reviews on trip advisor are not to be trusted 

Reviews should always be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Anyone can write anything. This is why we apply logic and don’t overthink too much. 

On 11/14/2020 at 9:26 AM, Misterwhisper said:

 

As the American refused paying the corkage fee, the restaurant and hotel managers acted well within their rights to prevent him from consuming his booze on the premises.

 

 

 

 

in other threads on this matter it is said they waived the corkage fee and I assume let him drink the booze.

14 hours ago, Stargrazer9889 said:

Giving a negative review is one thing. Reading the content of this disgruntled guests comments

were way beyond negative.  This situation could have been handled privately if this English

teacher had communicated with the hotel directly.  The price of booze in Thailand hotels

are not ridiculous like it is in Canada or the USA, so I have to ask why did this visitor

insist on bringing his own booze to where he was eating?  Cheap Charlie is a phrase for

what caused this situation in the first place.

Geezer

 

What caused this situation was the Sea View's desire to imprison and humiliate their customer. The funny thing, here, is that even before the guest/English teacher was forced to grovel and send out letters and make statements attesting to his own guilt, people on this forum repeatedly and often said the hotel should settle things amicably, allow both sides to exit with grace, or there would be tremendous blowback. And what did the resort do? They not only made one dumb decision, having the man arrested in the first place, they doubled down and made a second, even bigger blunder by having the guy issue apologies, letters to embassies and news organizations, and statements that sounded like they were crafted from North Korea or the Hanoi Hilton.

4 hours ago, khunjeff said:

"What was the business supposed to do?" Respond to the reviews or ignore them, just like every other business does - NOT file charges against the fool who wrote them. If a potential customer sees hundreds or thousands of generally positive reviews and a handful of crazy-sounding negative ones, he or she will discount the crazy reviews and assume that the hotel is probably a nice place. It's not rocket science.

Exactly.  When I shop on eBay and checkout the sellers reputation I look at the negative feedback to see whether it is justified or it posted by habitual complainer. 

On 11/14/2020 at 2:43 PM, mrmicbkktxl said:

What is the point of a hotel review website if people can't leave negative reviews and are in danger of imprisonment if they leave a negative review???Anyway I think TA should show a warning for all Thai businesses,not only for that specific hotel

You have obviously not read or understood what happened...

On 11/15/2020 at 10:46 AM, khunjeff said:

"What was the business supposed to do?" Respond to the reviews or ignore them, just like every other business does - NOT file charges against the fool who wrote them. If a potential customer sees hundreds or thousands of generally positive reviews and a handful of crazy-sounding negative ones, he or she will discount the crazy reviews and assume that the hotel is probably a nice place. It's not rocket science.

So, how many fake 1 star reviews should be enough to find alternative ways of amkin him stop? Would 100 1 star reviews which would have dropped the scores to average at best would be acceptable?

 

There are so many clueless people writing here thinking that because a business is working in the hospitality industry they should tolerate all sorts of abuse...

20 hours ago, John Drake said:

 

What caused this situation was the Sea View's desire to imprison and humiliate their customer. The funny thing, here, is that even before the guest/English teacher was forced to grovel and send out letters and make statements attesting to his own guilt, people on this forum repeatedly and often said the hotel should settle things amicably, allow both sides to exit with grace, or there would be tremendous blowback. And what did the resort do? They not only made one dumb decision, having the man arrested in the first place, they doubled down and made a second, even bigger blunder by having the guy issue apologies, letters to embassies and news organizations, and statements that sounded like they were crafted from North Korea or the Hanoi Hilton.

 

Mate, you havent read much about this have you? The hotel contacted the guest over a period of 2 months to resolve the dispute amicably and the guest not only ignored their contact but continued to post negative reviews. The hotel said they were forced to involve the police.

17 minutes ago, Peter Shap said:

 

Mate, you havent read much about this have you? The hotel contacted the guest over a period of 2 months to resolve the dispute amicably and the guest not only ignored their contact but continued to post negative reviews. The hotel said they were forced to involve the police.

Nobody is  forced to contact the police 'mate'

17 minutes ago, pixelaoffy said:

Nobody is  forced to contact the police 'mate'

 

I assume English if not your first language? When they said forced they obviously didnt meant it literally x)

2 hours ago, Peter Shap said:

 

Mate, you havent read much about this have you? The hotel contacted the guest over a period of 2 months to resolve the dispute amicably and the guest not only ignored their contact but continued to post negative reviews. The hotel said they were forced to involve the police.

 

Sure, not a thing. Just like I just must have joined the forum two hours ago.

20 hours ago, Peter Shap said:

 

I assume English if not your first language? When they said forced they obviously didnt meant it literally x)

'english if not ' and 'didnt meant '. And you ask about my first language ?  Clown 

Do google and trip keep deleting bad reviews ? I am ready to post more but waiting to be sure that they won't be deleted !