Your wedding day should be one of the happiest and most memorable occasions of your life, right up there with graduating with a college degree, the birth of your first child, etc. Should you happen to book your wedding at a particular Hudson, New York hotel, however, you may get more than you bargained for.
The Union Street Guest House (USGH), in an effort to deter negative online reviews, has a policy in which they'll fine whoever booked the event (usually the bride and groom) $500 for every negative review against their establishment placed on any Internet site by anyone that attends your wedding or event.
The Inn adds that if you remove the negative review, you'll get your money back.
It's an unprecedented policy that's drawing criticism across the web today. As a result, USGH's Yelp page is now filled with hundreds of one-star reviews regarding the policy. The real kicker is the fact that the Inn's last review before today's tirade was back in April and before that, November of last year.
USGH management has since removed the policy from their website but the damage has already been done.
According to this article from Sam Pratt, USGH owner Chris Wagoner said the policy regarding wedding fines was put on their 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, Wagoner said.