Defend Your Right to Leave Bad Reviews: Stepping Up for TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.

September 21, 2016 | rjmcgarvey | Consumer affairs, Travel

rjmcgarvey01

 

By Robert McGarvey

 

Many hospitality purveyors want to stifle your right to free speech – especially when you are talking on TripAdvisor and Yelp.

That’s why now it is more important than ever that we assert our right to express opinions about the hotels where we stay, the restaurants where we eat and, if we like, the many travel related vendors we encounter on every trip, from airport shops to limo services.

Those reviews when good help the vendors. When bad,they hurt – and some vendors are hurting back, such as Prestigious Pets in Dallas which sued because a customer for its pet sitting services dissed their service afterwards.  

That company claimed the one-star review caused “irreparable and continued… libelous and slanderous harm” and it sued.

In California, meantime, Hassell Law Group is suing Yelp because a client put up a negative review that the law firm deemed defamatory. Hassell won in Superior Court, it won on appeal, and the matter is now before the California Supreme Court where a galaxy of tech businesses – from Facebook to Microsoft – signed a letter that said the lower court ruling “radically departs from a large, unanimous and settled body of federal and state court precedent” which could “silence a vast quantity of protected and important speech.”

A long accepted principle of the Internet is that the host – Yelp in this case – is not responsible for the content of user posts.  That principle has allowed user generated content sites to flourish and that begat TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.

Out of them arose much more honest and unbiased reviews – by real people – of hotels and restaurants in particular.

I have long said that where there is a critical mass of reviews – perhaps 50 minimum, maybe 100 – there almost certainly is truth to be found in the totality and that truth, generally, is a lot more honest than what has historically appeared in many publications under the bylines of paid writers.

I am not saying the writers are bribed. Nope.  I am saying I will generally trust 100 citizens who have paid for a room or a meal out of their own pockets more than I will trust a reviewer who may well have been comped.  

Pete Wells at the New York Times is a glorious exception. I trust him, a lot, and would spend my own money on his say so.

But he is an outlier.

In most cases, give me the masses and I’ll let their opinions lead me.

Do I believe all the reviews are true? Nope. Some are written by cranks. Some by would-be extortionists. Some by devious competitors.  Academics who have investigated agree that a significant percentage of Yelp reviews probably are fake.

Similar is probably true at TripAdvisor.

That’s why I have long recommended that readers throw out the really positive reviews, along with the really negative.  Focus in on the middle ground and very probably a kind of truth will emerge in my experience.

And I believe that truth has emerged as a valuable tool in the traveler’s toolset. For us, it can save us money and also – perhaps more importantly – grief and bad times.

Some businesses disagree and the wily ones are inserting a non disparagement clause in their contracts (and who reads a contract with a pet sitter anyway?) – but now Congressional legislation is taking a hard look at those gambits. A bill – co-sponsored by Joe Kennedy in the House – would ban contracts that prohibit negative reviews. That legislation has passed in the House.

Similar legislation last year passed in the Senate.

The bills have to be reconciled, then win approval again in both houses, then go to the President.

“A lot of Americans, particularly in my generation, use those reviews,” millennial Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass told AP. “You look at good reviews and you look at bad reviews and both of those are very important.”

It’s not just the young who swear by reviews. I know plenty of seniors who won’t stay at a hotel before reading TripAdvisor.

Smart.

That’s why it’s my recommendation that you contact your representatives and Senators and urge they help enact this important consumer protection legislation.

While you’re at it, remind the politicians that free speech has been integral to the rise of the Web.

Suing because of a review perceived to be bad – hurtful – just is overkill.

The antidote to a bad review is easy. Get a lot of good ones. Earn them.  If I read 20 reviews that say a hotel is a great bargain and the rooms are spotless – then one that says the place is a dump, which do you think I believe?

Right.

Give consumers some credit for a little intelligence — then deliver great service and you will be rewarded.  It’s that easy.

 

 

Continue reading »

Don’t Blame the Hotel Housekeeper for Dirty Sheets

September 14, 2016 | rjmcgarvey | Consumer affairs, Travel

 

 

rjmcgarvey01

By Robert McGarvey

By now you have seen the Inside Edition episode – or at least heard about it – where  Candlewood Inn and Suites in Manhattan, La Quinta Inn and Suites near Central Park, and a Residence Inn all failed to change sheets between guest visits.

How did the show know? Simple.  It sprayed “I Slept Here” on the sheets – invisible to the naked eye, visible under ultra violet light.

All three hotels were profusely apologetic – but so what? Not changing sheets between guests is plain disgusting and if it is happening to sheets, it is happening to towels, glasses and who knows what else. And reportedly many hotels do not change comforters or duvets between guests, although some do.  

Note: Inside Edition batted .333. It checked into 9 hotels, 3 failed the sheet test. That is a terrifying stat.

Understand too: Inside Edition checked out of the room. Then later checked back in, under a different name, requesting that room. The sheets should have been changed, of course. They weren’t.

That is indeed gross.

But I urge you: do not blame the housekeepers.

I am quite sure housekeeping is negligent, really at most hotels below 5 diamond status.  But that failing is not on the housekeepers, anymore than the bartender is responsible for the swill the hotel bar pours as its house brands of booze and the slop that features in many hotel breakfast buffets is the fault of the property’s executive chef.

What is at work is a kind of ruthless cost cutting that, at many hotels, went into overdrive in the early days of the Great Recession, that is, 2008-2009 and the mindset still predominates at many properties.  I have talked with senior hotel execs – rungs above GMs – who have gloated about their cost cutting “successes.”

And now the guests are suffering the consequences.

Housekeeping has often been a high priority target of senior hotel managers. I have no idea why, just that it is. Maybe it’s because so few guests ever have direct interactions with housekeepers – who work silently, behind the scenes, with a kind of invisibility.

As management turned the screws, at many properties housekeepers have found the number of rooms they were assigned to clean per day jumping from 12 to 14  upwards to 15+, often approaching 20.

The math becomes impossible when it takes an estimated 30 minutes on average to clean a typical hotel room. Add minutes if the guest has checked out for tasks like sheet changing. Also add minutes if the guest is a slob and many are.

Here’s what union Unite Here said about housekeepers and their ramped up room quotas: “To meet this quota, she often skips breaks and works off the clock. It also is increasingly common for her to have luxury beds with heavier mattresses and linens, triple-sheeting, duvets, and extra pillows than in years past. Other add-ons, like coffee pots, spa robes and floor-to-ceiling mirrors, can make a housekeeper’s job of cleaning a room even more difficult and time-consuming.”

Unite Here added:  “With booming business and high room rates, housekeepers face increasing time pressure to maintain a quality guest experience. Many housekeepers report that their hotels are understaffed and that they must work at unsafe speeds, which increases their risk of injury.”

Unite Here also noted that most housekeepers are women, they have the highest injury rate among hotel employees, and here is why: “Each day, she may lift 100-pound mattresses, push heavy supply carts across miles of carpeted floors, climb to clean high surfaces, or drop to her hands and knees to scrub floors.”

For how much money? In most of the country, housekeepers earn near minimum wage especially when they are not unionized.

And often they are forced to deal with disgusting junk left behind by guests, including discarded syringes (increasingly common, apparently).  How would you like to pick needles off the floor? Especially when you are in an enormous time crunch?

What can we – guests – do?

If a room is not cleaned, complain – loudly – to the GM.  

Stress that the fault is not on the housekeeping staff but on the hotel management. Give people too much to do and some of it won’t get done.  

Email the hotel corporate manager – complain loudly, not about housekeeping, but about the corporate mandated cost cutting.

Want to know how you can insure that you get a clean room on check-in? Here are great tips from longtime GM Mike Matthews. Ask for a room that has recently been deep cleaned is his advice.  But read his column.  He also offers poignant insights into the plight of the hotel housekeeper and things are only worse nowadays.

So do this too: Leave the housekeeper a decent tip – at least $2/day, as much as $5 in a ritzy hotel or if you are messy (you know who you are). If the housekeeper does something special for you, tip accordingly.  

Say hello if you see a housekeeper in the hall. Show a little humanity.  
And whatever you do, if your sheets aren’t changed, don’t come down on the housekeeper. It really is not her fault.

Continue reading »