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Trip Advisor bad review 'fine' scrapped by Blackpool hotel | Trip Advisor bad review 'fine' scrapped by Blackpool hotel |
(about 1 hour later) | |
A hotel that "fined" a couple £100 who described it as a "rotten, stinking hovel" in a review is to stop making the charge, trading standards say. | |
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's manager has not been available for comment. | |
However, Blackpool Trading Standards said its officers had now spoken to the hotel's management team, who have agreed not to levy these fines in the future. | |
Officials believe the hotel may have breached unfair trading practice regulations. | |
Mrs Jenkinson said: "We knew it was cheap, but you expect it to be clean and you expect it to be habitable - and it wasn't." | |
The hotel policy, contained in a booking document, reads: "Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and family may not. | |
"For every bad review left on any website, the group organiser will be charged a maximum £100 per review." | |
However Simon Calder, travel Editor for The Independent, said the charge was "completely out of order" and undermined people's "right to give their fair comment". | |
However, it did "highlight the exasperation" many hoteliers have with online review sites, with some customers threatening bad reviews in order to get discounts, he said. | |
Retired van driver Mr Jenkinson, 63, who paid £36 for a double room, said the details of the charge were in the booking documents, but his wife did not have her glasses on and signed without reading the small print. | |
Trading standards officers said they were trying to find out whether the hotel was also going to refund the charge to the couple. | |
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