Woman and Granddaughter Thrown out of Hotel After Posting Review Online During Stay
A Georgia hotel is in the headlines for kicking out a guest who wrote a negative review in the midst of a 3-night stay. According to a report by The National Post, 63-year-old Susan Leger logged onto Hotels.com during her first night at the Baymont Inn and Suites in Helen, Georgia late last month. Not long after, she and her 6-year-old granddaughter were asked to leave.
Leger told reporters that she was in her pajamas relaxing in her hotel room when she received an email from Hotels.com asking her to review her experience at the Baymont. She obliged, rating the establishment with three out of five stars. The website prompted: "What went wrong?" and Leger answered: "Rundown. Pool's not open. Toilet doesn't flush well." That seven-word review went up online at once, and Leger said that at 8:40 p.m., the hotel manager, Danny Vyas, called her to angrily demand that she leave.
"This guy is on my cell phone ranting at me, and he said that he's kicking me out," Leger told local NBC News affiliate 11Alive. "He's called the police and I have to leave the room. And then I hear, literally, 'bam, bam, bam!'"
The Helen Police Department came to make sure that Leger left as the hotel manager wished. They told Leger that it is perfectly legal for Vyas to kick a guest out in a situation like this, but Leger was astonished that they actually went through with it. She recalled asking: "They can truly kick me out in the middle of the night, from a hotel for giving a review of three and five? And he says, 'yes, ma'am. It's within the law.' This was scary. This is just horrifying."
Reporters obtained a police report which said that Leger and her granddaughter were removed from the Baymont because "Leger had given the motel a bad review." However, the police reportedly helped settle her into a room at a different nearby hotel. She stayed at the Fairfield Hotel, and it is not clear if she wrote a review of her time there.
Now, Leger is furious that on top of everything else, she is being denied a refund for her stay at the Baymont. She said that she requested a refund through Hotels.com and got a response reading: "Unfortunately, we were unable to contact the property and will need to abide by the terms and conditions of the booking which states refunds rae not allowed."
A recording of a 911 call made from the hotel that night reportedly features Vyas telling the dispatcher that he would be refunding Leger. Additionally, he told 11Alive reporters that he decided to evict Leger because she did not approach him or his staff with any of her complaints, instead taking them straight to the internet. However, he later told the Post that he actually evicted them because Leger made too many complaints. As for Leger, she simply advises travelers not to leave reviews until after their stay is over.