CAUGHT ‘INN’ WEB

NY hotel’s bad-review fee backfires online

A more savvy hotelier might have had some reservations about adopting this policy.

The owner of an upstate inn who threatened to impose a $500 fine for each negative online review saw the plan blow up in his face Monday after Page Six exposed the outrageous tactic.

Hundreds of scathing comments drove the average rating of the Union Street Guest House on Yelp down to 1 star, with more than 1,000 others removed for violating rules against “harassment,” “lewdness” and “defamatory” postings.

Some of the reviews were clearly attempts at humor, such as the 5star rave from “Zane E.”

“The concierge has all the best escort services on speed dial. They had an amazing selection of videos. My favorites were the shemale and cuckold ones,” he wrote.

But most attacked the Hudson, NY, inn’s sincerevoked written policy that warned anyone who booked the place for a wedding or other event that “there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review . . . placed on any Internet site by anyone in your party.”

“Rob S.” of San Luis Obispo, Calif., decried the inn’s “unethical business practices.” “My guess is that they claim that we owe them about $150,000 by now,” he wrote.

“Alex V.” of Los Angeles called the policy “the most despicable practice I have ever read about in the history of modern business.”

“Do we live in a Stalinist autocratic regime?” he added.

And “Nathan S.” of Seattle said of the backlash, “This is what happens when you think you are more intelligent than the Internet.

“Let this be a lesson to those of you who feel that prioritizing customer service is no longer a requirement. If you receive negative feedback, learn from it and move on,” he wrote.

A source at the Union Street Guest House insisted that the policy “was meant to be tongueincheek,” and said the hotel was receiving threats for a bad joke.

“We hope you can help us get the hundreds of people sending us horrible threats away,” the source said. “We certainly know that billing someone for a bad review is not even feasible.”

But one Yelp member contacted by The Post said he actually received two emails from the inn’s management threatening to impose the fine if he didn’t take down the 1star review he posted last year.

Rabih Zahnan, 38, of Alexandria, Va., said he stayed at the inn for a friend’s wedding and was stuck in a room that was “musty and had a a bit of mold smell.”

“The reaction that they sent just reinforced my 1star review,” said Zahnan, who works in private equity.