Woman Says Hotel Charged her debit card $350 For Giving A Negative Review
Woman Says Hotel Charged $350 For Giving A Negative
Review
December 20, 2017 at 11:52 am
CBS Local — A customer at an Indiana hotel is claiming
that she was charged $350 and threatened with a lawsuit in retaliation for the
negative review that she posted online.
Katrina Arthur and her husband stayed at the Abbey Inn
& Suites in March of 2016 and allege the room they stayed in was less than
stellar. “It was a nightmare,” Arthur said, via WTVR. “The room was unkempt,
and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the last people stayed there.
We checked the sheets and I found hairs and dirt.”
The unsatisfied customer added that the Abbey did not
have any staff available to fix the issues and their calls to management went
unanswered.
“I decided to call the number that goes to the front desk
and it automatically went to a lawyer’s or something weird like that,” she
added. “I actually had to clean the room myself.”
After their stay, Arthur posted her review, which she
says gave an honest account of the couple’s experience. The hotel quickly
responded to the review by slapping the $350 fee on Arthur’s debit card and
sending her a letter promising to sue for the comments they claim, “disparages
us in any public manner.”
“That scared me to death. I feel like they were punishing
me for being truthful and I don’t think that’s fair,” Arthur told reporters.
The former guest added that she deleted her review out of fear the hotel would
continue to threaten her.
A detailed explanation of the inn’s hard-line stance
against bad reviews had been posted on Abbey-Inn.com, but the website was
reportedly taken down in November of 2016. Arthur took her complaint to the
Indiana Attorney General’s office in hopes of getting back her $350. The
state’s top law enforcement office not only filed a lawsuit against the Abbey
Inn on Dec. 15, but accuses the business of violating Indiana’s Deceptive
Consumer Sales Act.
“It is illegal, unethical for businesses to charge
consumers or threaten legal action,” National consumer watchdog Jason Brown
said. “Currently only Yelp warns consumers of this practice. Consumers should
continue to write truthful reviews.”
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