Resort vows to sue guest for B3m over bad review

[spoon]

Another case of customer being threatened after leaving a bad (6/10) rating.

Source

[caeron]

Why any business would ever think this would end well boggles my mind.

[PeterRS]

Words fail me. How on earth does a 6 out of 10 stars review merit a lawsuit.  There must be something more to this than we have been told.

On Tripadvisor I have twice given hotels 1 out of five stars. One was the Holiday Inn at Helsinki's Vantaa airport. There was no way to heat up the room as the hotel had determined what was the ideal temperature. When I told them I came from Thailand where it is hot, they did not care. The shower flooded the bathroom and there was a mop for guests to clean up the mess.

The other was at a 5-star hotel in Tallinn. I was so looking award to staying there but the room was tiny, the bed was tiny, there was no bedside table and since the restaurant was closed the evening I arrived, they suggested I eat there the following evening. I booked, but it was closed that evening as well. When I complained, I was offered free transport to the ferry terminal to Helsinki. The car never tuned up. I took and laud for a taxi. At least the manager of that hotel refunded my room charges. He still got a 1 star from me, though.

 

[thaiophilus]

What's the Thai for Streisand Effect?

[vinapu]

2 hours ago, PeterRS said:

 

The other was at a 5-star hotel in Tallinn. I was so looking award to staying there but the room was tiny, the bed was tiny, 

I wonder how come hotel with tiny rooms was even granted more than 3 stars ,  no matter what facilities would be. Vagaries of rating system I guess.

[unicorn]

I was once scammed by a business. When I documented the scam on a Yelp review, I received a threatening phone call from the business owner. I told him to go f**k himself and never call me again. I then amended my review to add the threatening call I received, and also alerted Yelp of the call, which subsequently flagged the business. I never heard from them again. 

[PeterRS]

21 hours ago, vinapu said:

I wonder how come hotel with tiny rooms was even granted more than 3 stars ,  no matter what facilities would be. Vagaries of rating system I guess.

I asked the same.  The fact was that most of the hotel rooms were spacious and beautifully furnished. But there was a corner in the building and the hotel had decided to convert these tiny areas to rooms. Being a corner, the space was in a V shape. They decided to have to room in the bottom of the V and the bathroom with the windows in the larger part. Result was the bathroom was about 3 times the size of the room. The bed was wedged into a wall and about the size of one of the beds in a normal twin bedded room. So if two were trying to sleep, the one nearest the wall would have had to climb over the other party to get to the loo! I headed my review "Beware of Phantom Rooms"

I had earlier found the same in one Tokyo hotel -  then just the Hyatt and now the Hyatt Regency in Shinjuku. I had once before been accommodated in a room that was a fraction of the size of the normal minimum price rooms, even though it was stated that two people could sleep there! That room was nowhere on the hotel's website. Attending a Conference a couple of years later, I asked the organiser to make certain I was not in one of those tiny rooms. Well, he didn't do his job and I found myself stuck in this tiny room once again. So I went to the front desk and asked what was the price of their standard twin or double room. I was told around ¥27,000. And the price of the room I was in - ¥25,000. This was nuts. I asked who booked these rooms. I was not told. So I asked to speak to the Night Manager. He told me that they were only sold to Japanese tour groups and walk-in guests. I was not Japanese, I informed him, and demanded to be put into a normal room with a large bed. 

He could not do this, I was told. So the next morning I had a meeting with a Mr. Kobayashi, the GM. In typical Japanese fashion he trotted out excuse after excuse. Again I got nowhere.

So on my return home, I emailed Hyatt head office in Chicago. I got a very nice reply asking for my phone number and a suitable time to call. The young lady actually thanked me for my mail, pointing out that no-one in head office was aware of these tiny rooms. They had an executive going to Tokyo the following week and he would make sure to see every room type. A couple of weeks later she again called. They had instructed the management to withdraw all of the 90 small rooms in the hotel. She offered me Hyatt points equivalent to the amount I had paid for my visit and asked me to contact her the next time I was at a Hyatt as she would ensure I was upgraded to a suite. Great service!

As a postscript, I was able to use those hotel points twice over. I soon used tham for 3 nights at the Hyatt on Waikiki. But that hotel was also a disaster - for reasons I need not go into. After I left for japan, I wrote a long email to the GM. He said he was mortifed at my treatment and recredited the Hyatt points. Later I used them at the lovely Hyatt in Kyoto!!

[vinapu]

good to know that people staying in 5 stars are treated all the same lowly 2 stars occupants are

[thaiophilus]

47 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

I asked the same.  The fact was that most of the hotel rooms were spacious and beautifully furnished. But there was a corner in the building and the hotel had decided to convert these tiny areas to rooms. Being a corner, the space was in a V shape.

 

I had the opppsite experience at the Flamingo in Pattaya. Because there was an awkward corner they had joined two nearly normal sized rooms to make what was effectively a suite with two entrances from the corridor. I checked in, unpacked, went out. When I returned, my toothbrush etc. had mysteriously disappeared from the bathroom.  Had the maid moved it? if so, where to?  It took a while for me to realise that because of the history of the room, not only were there two entrance doors, there were two identical bathrooms and my things were in the other one 🙃