After a $500 fine policy for bad Yelp reviews was unearthed by the press, the Union Street Guest House in Upstate New York found itself at the center of an Internet target. Now, the Hudson, New York inn claims that it was all a joke that someone just forgot to pull from their website.
As we previously reported, the New York Post reported on the policy, which claimed that if members of your wedding party give the inn bad reviews on Yelp, you will be fined $500. If you taked the guests out of posting the bad review, you got your $500 back.
Obviously, the Internet responded the way the Internet always does, by bombarding a site with the very thing that an institution didn’t like. Even people who had never even been to the hotel began posting one-star reviews on Yelp to see what their response would be.
The inn’s response didn’t make anyone happier. According to ABC News, the owners posted a message on their Facebook page that read, “The policy regarding wedding fines was put on our site as a tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago. It was meant to be taken down long ago and certainly was never enforced.”
Well, that’s not going to do anything. In fact, people have now started posting one-star reviews on their Facebook page.
“I'm sure you think it was a big joke,” one Facebook user wrote. “Unfortunately most are smart enough to see through that line of crap. Perhaps you should try to get good reviews by actually giving good service. Just a thought.”
The policy has been removed from their site, but they haven’t updated their “Recent Press” section for good reason.