UK: Trip Advisor bad review 'fine' to be refunded by Blackpool hotel

[webfact]

Trip Advisor bad review 'fine' to be refunded by Blackpool hotel

(BBC) A hotel that "fined" a couple £100 who described it as a "rotten, stinking hovel" will refund the money.

Tony and Jan Jenkinson posted the comments on the Trip Advisor website after spending a night at the Broadway Hotel, for which they paid £36.

The couple, from Whitehaven, had the £100 charge levied to their credit card two days later.

The Blackpool hotel has now said it will refund the money and vowed to improve the facilities.

It introduced the policy of charging people who wrote bad reviews to prevent "customers from defaming" the business, a spokesman said.

In a statement, the hotel said: "We exercised this policy with Mr and Mrs Jenkinson as we felt extremely upset by their actions and insulting comments towards our staff.

"We agree there is room for improvement at our establishment and we desperately want to turn things around."

The hotel has now cancelled its policy after Blackpool Trading Standards warned it could be illegal.

Full story: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-30111525


-- BBC 2014-11-21

[Anthony5]

So in the UK you can just introduce a policy at own will and charge customers credit cards without their consent?

[zydeco]

Too late, I should think. This amounts to theft and fraudulent use of someone's credit card. And they admitted it. In the US, you do something like this with someone's credit card and you go to jail.

[MobileContent]

This seems to be clearly fraught

[bkkcanuck8]

Too late, I should think. This amounts to theft and fraudulent use of someone's credit card. And they admitted it. In the US, you do something like this with someone's credit card and you go to jail.

Actually, the same situation would probably exist in the US since the contract they agreed to -- was a consent. It might or might not be illegal but it would not have met the standards of intent to defraud.

Edited November 21, 2014 by bkkcanuck8

[NeverSure]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Edited November 21, 2014 by NeverSure

[Humberstone]

I think you'll find that the hotel in question added a disclaimer in the small print such that if a guest gave what they considered as a bad review they would have an amount deducted from their credit card. However, this has been upheld to be wrong and the amount returned in full - quite rightly.

[bkkcanuck8]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Bull... There are chances there could be additional charges added after the bill is paid -- even in the US. If you read what you sign, they indicate what are agreed charges that can be made after the fact. These include: Damages to your room, missing hotel stuff such as tv remotes, towels, tvs etc. Food/beverages are the only things that are truly inspected and added to your bill at time of checkout (assuming you don't do a quick checkout).... If you take the time to read what you sign at check-in you will find that your card can be charged. If it is a gray area like this - no charges would ever be brought because it is a civil matter.

The question the card issuer asks is did you authorize the payments, and if you did there is nothing they can/will do.

I had my credit card hooked up to paypal one time and I was hacked - paypal took forever to respond so I cancelled my credit card and tried to stop the payments going through. The credit card company said there was nothing that I could do -- I had to deal with paypal because by me entering the credit card in paypal I had authorized paypal to make charges. In other words - they will only act if they were unauthorized. Although they were unauthorized with paypal, I did authorize paypal to make charges (undetermined at time of contract) against the credit card itself.

Edited November 21, 2014 by bkkcanuck8

[simon43]

The 'bad review' charge was in the hotel's booking T&Cs. AFAIK, those T&Cs have not yet been deemed to be illegal - the hotel has simply offered to make the refund itself.

[Briggsy]

The 'bad review' charge was in the hotel's booking T&Cs. AFAIK, those T&Cs have not yet been deemed to be illegal - the hotel has simply offered to make the refund itself.

Nice post Simon, a diamond in the rough, a non-ranting post in this thread of ranters.

[AhFarangJa]

You would have to pay me a hundred pounds to stay a night in Blackpool...

[bkkcanuck8]

I don't plan on staying in any hotels in UK - so you would not catch me dead there anyway

[wilcopops]

Sounds illegal to me............ Basil Fawlty eat your heart out!

[mrtoad]

So in the UK you can just introduce a policy at own will and charge customers credit cards without their consent?

You can introduce any policy you wish into your own company, however it has to be compliant with the laws. This story has been in the papers for the last 4 days in the UK, and trading standards have already been called in. I further suspect that environmental health and hotel regulators will also be involved. The monies have been returned, and I suspect the hotel will be punished quite heavily.

I spent a few minutes a few days ago reading the trip advisor comments, was hilarious. What a dump of a place, even for 36 quid. The place for all accounts should be closed down until they address the numerous issues.

[wilcopops]

I don't plan on staying in any hotels in UK - so you would not catch me dead there anyway

good...'coz we were all so worried about you!

[Equalizer]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Bull... There are chances there could be additional charges added after the bill is paid -- even in the US. If you read what you sign, they indicate what are agreed charges that can be made after the fact. These include: Damages to your room, missing hotel stuff such as tv remotes, towels, tvs etc. Food/beverages are the only things that are truly inspected and added to your bill at time of checkout (assuming you don't do a quick checkout).... If you take the time to read what you sign at check-in you will find that your card can be charged. If it is a gray area like this - no charges would ever be brought because it is a civil matter.

The question the card issuer asks is did you authorize the payments, and if you did there is nothing they can/will do.

I had my credit card hooked up to paypal one time and I was hacked - paypal took forever to respond so I cancelled my credit card and tried to stop the payments going through. The credit card company said there was nothing that I could do -- I had to deal with paypal because by me entering the credit card in paypal I had authorized paypal to make charges. In other words - they will only act if they were unauthorized. Although they were unauthorized with paypal, I did authorize paypal to make charges (undetermined at time of contract) against the credit card itself.

Not true, you pay for something on pay pal, a service or goods and you do not receive them you put in an item not received dispute, then the other party must prove you have received what you have paid for. If pay pal still find in favor of the other party you then put in a charge back via your bank to the credit card company. Pay pal have no say in this matter. Pay pal must then by law reverse the money sent even if the other party has withdrawn it. It costs Paypal millions of pounds a year, now as from Nov 18th this month pay-pal have increased the time frame for making a dispute from 45 days to 180 days in line with the amount of time a person can charge back through their credit card company.

[bkkcanuck8]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Bull... There are chances there could be additional charges added after the bill is paid -- even in the US. If you read what you sign, they indicate what are agreed charges that can be made after the fact. These include: Damages to your room, missing hotel stuff such as tv remotes, towels, tvs etc. Food/beverages are the only things that are truly inspected and added to your bill at time of checkout (assuming you don't do a quick checkout).... If you take the time to read what you sign at check-in you will find that your card can be charged. If it is a gray area like this - no charges would ever be brought because it is a civil matter.

The question the card issuer asks is did you authorize the payments, and if you did there is nothing they can/will do.

I had my credit card hooked up to paypal one time and I was hacked - paypal took forever to respond so I cancelled my credit card and tried to stop the payments going through. The credit card company said there was nothing that I could do -- I had to deal with paypal because by me entering the credit card in paypal I had authorized paypal to make charges. In other words - they will only act if they were unauthorized. Although they were unauthorized with paypal, I did authorize paypal to make charges (undetermined at time of contract) against the credit card itself.

Not true, you pay for something on pay pal, a service or goods and you do not receive them you put in an item not received dispute, then the other party must prove you have received what you have paid for. If pay pal still find in favor of the other party you then put in a charge back via your bank to the credit card company. Pay pal have no say in this matter. Pay pal must then by law reverse the money sent even if the other party has withdrawn it. It costs Paypal millions of pounds a year, now as from Nov 18th this month pay-pal have increased the time frame for making a dispute from 45 days to 180 days in line with the amount of time a person can charge back through their credit card company.

I am talking about you and your relationship to your credit card company /bank issued.

When you are seeing charges flying through on paypal and your account has been hacked into.... and you are basically having a heart attack... and you contact paypal and they don't bother responding for 8 hours... in the meantime you contact the bank to stop the payments going through.... the bank will do NOTHING other than cancel your credit card but will continue processing payments that you authorized (including all paypal transactions) - although it might be different rules for different countries.

As a side note since you now want to respond by going off-course in relation to the salient issue I was talking about.... Paypal eventually did reverse all the charges.... but I was still out a lot of money because of the difference in exchange rates on the purchase and the credit back.

I have never and will never hook up my credit card to paypal again.

It is my personal experience - and not some hearsay story...

Edited November 21, 2014 by bkkcanuck8

[Equalizer]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Bull... There are chances there could be additional charges added after the bill is paid -- even in the US. If you read what you sign, they indicate what are agreed charges that can be made after the fact. These include: Damages to your room, missing hotel stuff such as tv remotes, towels, tvs etc. Food/beverages are the only things that are truly inspected and added to your bill at time of checkout (assuming you don't do a quick checkout).... If you take the time to read what you sign at check-in you will find that your card can be charged. If it is a gray area like this - no charges would ever be brought because it is a civil matter.

The question the card issuer asks is did you authorize the payments, and if you did there is nothing they can/will do.

I had my credit card hooked up to paypal one time and I was hacked - paypal took forever to respond so I cancelled my credit card and tried to stop the payments going through. The credit card company said there was nothing that I could do -- I had to deal with paypal because by me entering the credit card in paypal I had authorized paypal to make charges. In other words - they will only act if they were unauthorized. Although they were unauthorized with paypal, I did authorize paypal to make charges (undetermined at time of contract) against the credit card itself.

Not true, you pay for something on pay pal, a service or goods and you do not receive them you put in an item not received dispute, then the other party must prove you have received what you have paid for. If pay pal still find in favor of the other party you then put in a charge back via your bank to the credit card company. Pay pal have no say in this matter. Pay pal must then by law reverse the money sent even if the other party has withdrawn it. It costs Paypal millions of pounds a year, now as from Nov 18th this month pay-pal have increased the time frame for making a dispute from 45 days to 180 days in line with the amount of time a person can charge back through their credit card company.

I am talking about you and your relationship to your credit card company /bank issued.

When you are seeing charges flying through on paypal and your account has been hacked into.... and you are basically having a heart attack... and you contact paypal and they don't bother responding for 8 hours... in the meantime you contact the bank to stop the payments going through.... the bank will do NOTHING other than cancel your credit card but will continue processing payments that you authorized (including all paypal transactions) - although it might be different rules for different countries.

As a side note since you now want to respond by going off-course in relation to the salient issue I was talking about.... Paypal eventually did reverse all the charges.... but I was still out a lot of money because of the difference in exchange rates on the purchase and the credit back.

I have never and will never hook up my credit card to paypal again.

It is my personal experience - and not some hearsay story...

I think you would have been better doing a charge back solely my opinion because pay-pal will only reverse the pay-pal transaction money and it will show as a positive balance in your pay pal in the currency of the purchase. Whereas if you went directly to the credit card company and charged the payment gateway back IE Pay pal they will reverse the very same amount taken from your account and return it to your account with no exchange rates involved. Pay pal do not like chargebacks it costs them profit.

Warm regards

[jimky]

In both the US and UK most terms and conditions only help companies avoid lawsuits and criminal charges. That is about as far as it goes. The courts recognize most people do not read that stuff. If the tos contains terms that are not standard that no would suspect are there those terms not enforceable. this is true even if signing or checking a box to indicate you read and agree to them. So charade is up, consumer wasn't stupid so now it is time to refund.

[MAJIC]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Last time I bought some software on line from America using my Debit Card I filled out all my details,then changed my mind and never accepted the final agreement part of the order,when I got my Bank statement the company had processed the order but never sent the software. My Bank told me there was nothing they could do,because I had given the company my Debit Card details!

[maidee]

something they learned in thailand?

[Suradit69]

So in the UK you can just introduce a policy at own will and charge customers credit cards without their consent?

We exercised this policy with Mr and Mrs Jenkinson as we felt extremely upset ...

Nanny state mentality ... just do whatever you want, no consequences or cost to you. The credit card company should cancel further use of their cards at this hovel, I mean hotel.

"We agree there is room for improvement at our establishment and we desperately want to turn things around."

Seems a better approach, clean up their act rather than defrauding customers who are victims of it, but hey, T-i-UK.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Suradit69

[kinmaew]

My God I thought LOS was bad ol Blighty isnt clean either we all got our faults - ONE LOVE as Keith says!!!!!

[wilcopops]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

Last time I bought some software on line from America using my Debit Card I filled out all my details,then changed my mind and never accepted the final agreement part of the order,when I got my Bank statement the company had processed the order but never sent the software. My Bank told me there was nothing they could do,because I had given the company my Debit Card details!

Absolute nonsense! Change your bank or better still get them to put that in writing

[wilcopops]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

sounds like theft to me in the UK too.

[wilcopops]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

sounds like theft in the UK too..... as far as the statement or contract, in UK it isn't with the paper it's written on if it is outside the "spirit" or intentions" of Fair Trading and consumer law...... you can't curtail a customer's rights over that law.

[Baerboxer]

So in the UK you can just introduce a policy at own will and charge customers credit cards without their consent?

No. This hotel detailed it in their agreement which guests signed. However, Trading Standard have pointed out that it is likely illegal.

Credit card providers may also consider removing this facility from this hotel as they won't want to get embroiled in disputes.

[Jonmarleesco]

Until this incident, I thought businesses which used defamation threats to discourage legitimate criticism of their services or products, rather than improve, were peculiar to Thailand. A suitable case for Gordon Ramsay.

[Baerboxer]

Actually in the US if it wasn't fraud it would be theft. The card owner agreed to a sum certain to be charged, gave out card details and then the hotel abused the information.

The hotel would quickly lose its merchant agreement and therefore ability to accept that credit card. That's just the first of a snowball of bad things that would happen to it.

sounds like theft in the UK too..... as far as the statement or contract, in UK it isn't with the paper it's written on if it is outside the "spirit" or intentions" of Fair Trading and consumer law...... you can't curtail a customer's rights over that law.

Not quite. But consumers have far more protection than businesses when it come to contracts. The couple might want to bring an action for damages if the hotel was not as described etc. I'm sure Trading Standards and local authority hygiene officers will be taking an interest in all aspects of this hotel now.

What this does highlight are the dangers of any organization charging your credit card with things without your prior approval.

Putting a clause like this into sales conditions is more or less admitting your crap.

[tw25rw]

Just a small private hotel where the owners thought they could try it on. If the review was honest rather than mischievous, I don't see that they had a leg to stand on.