Overview
Fining guests for posting bad reviews of your Vanderbilt-built hotel? Might want to think twice on that poorly-formed brainwave and avoid giving internet reviewers a reason to unite.
Union Street Guest House in Hudson, New York is doing exactly that. The Rockefeller/Vanderbilt estate hastily took down a controversial rule from its own website yesterday, according to Huffington Post. The super dumb, money-grabbing rule charged wedding guests (primarily the newlyweds themselves) for any bad reviews posted on review websites like Yelp and Trip Advisor. Yep. Apparently, as pointed out by the initial New York Post story on Monday, couples holding their wedding at the USGH would see a sneaky $500 deducted from their security deposit for each thumbs down posted online by their guests.
After a few WTF inquiries, the hotel took to Facebook and pulled the ol' 'it was all a joke' card to quash the backlash, but then mysteriously that post went missing too. "The policy regarding wedding fines was put on our site as a tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago," read the Facebook post. "It was meant to be taken down and certainly was never enforced." Although it's no longer (obviously) up on the hotel's website, Business Insider snapped it up before it was lost to the ages. Here's what the rule read, seriously:
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.
Although the team attempted to put out the fire, the sparks had already flown. Over 500 angry reviewers threw the hotel major shade with the lowest possible rating, again and again and again. Although sites like Yelp delete reviews who haven't actually stayed in the venue up for review, the slams are still coming for USGH:
Now Union Street Guest House's rating looks like this:
Yikes. Think before you joke-fine.
Via Business Insider, Huffington Post and New York Post.