British couple fined for giving hotel bad review on Trip Advisor

Tony and Jan Jenkinson were not impressed with their £36 ($64 CAD) one-night stay at the Broadway Hotel in the seaside town of Blackpool in North West England. So they did what any disgruntled customers would do: they gave the place a scathing review on Trip Advisor.

An excerpt from their review:

“Couldn’t believe the state of the room. the hot tap didn’t work, when we reported it we were told they knew about it and it would be fixed in the morning (we were only there for one night.) The drawer fronts fell off when we opened the chest of drawers.

Again, they knew about this and it was supposed to be dealt with in the morning. The kettle wouldn’t work, were told you had to switch on the socket it was plugged into, also switch on another socket to make it work. This was because the whole place was rewired wrongly according to the member of staff who dealt with us, and they couldn’t afford to have it put right.

There were instructions on how to make a phone call, we would have had a job as there was no phone!! The wallpaper was peeling off the walls, the carpet was thin, dirty and stained. The bed was something else, it must have come out of the ark, the base was all scuffed and dirty and the springs in the mattress attacked you in the night. The curtains were tattered and filthy, there were polystyrene tiles on the ceiling which are a fire hazard.

Not long after describing the hotel as a “filthy, dirty, rotten, stinking hovel run by Muppets” on the travel review site the Jenkinsons discovered an additional £100 ($177 CAD) had been charged to their credit card.

The hotel told them that it was its policy to charge for “bad” reviews.

Despite the fact that 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.

Tony Jenkinson told BBC News that, although the policy was outlined in the booking documents, his wife was without her glasses and couldn’t read the small print when they signed in.

“The small print was so small it was practically impossible to see it,” he told the Blackpool Gazette. They are now fighting the charge.“Annoyed isn’t strong enough for how I feel about this, what happened to freedom of speech?” Tony Jenkinson said. “Everybody we have spoken to says they (the hotel) are not allowed to do this.”

Trading Standards officials are now investigating the charge — and whether or not the hotel breached unfair training practice regulations.