After Guest Posts Review, Hotel Shows Her the Door

Susan Leger and her granddaughter, 6, were settled in for the night at the Baymont Inn & Suites when the phone rang. It was the manager of the Georgia hotel, WXIA reports. "This guy is on my cellphone ranting at me, and he said that he's kicking me out," Leger said. The manager also said he'd called police, she said. Next, an officer knocked on the door of her room. "They can truly kick me out in the middle of the night, from a hotel for giving a review of three and five?" Leger said she asked the officer. "And he says, 'Yes, ma'am. It's within the law.'"

Her offense, Leger said, was giving the hotel a three-star review on Hotels.com. Her comments were: "Rundown. Pool's not open. Toilet doesn't flush well." The hotel manager first told WXIA that the real issue was that Leger hadn't reported the problems, so they couldn't be fixed. He later said the two actually were kicked out for complaining too often. "They called me at least 10-11 times in maybe one hour," Danny Vyas said. "Sink is not working. Everything is not right." But a police report listed a single reason for the eviction: "Leger had given the motel a bad review."

In his 911 call, Vyas said he was giving Leger, who had prepaid for a three-night stay on the site, a refund. He didn't do that. The officer did help her find another hotel, at least. Leger asked Hotels.com to provide a refund and was turned down. The site changed course after being contacted by WXIA and gave Leger her money back, two months after the eviction. Leger, 63, has advice for anyone tempted to post a review online of a place where they're still staying. Don't, she said, "if you don't want to be walking in your pajamas with your 6-year-old granddaughter." (More online review stories.)