Woman Billed $350 For A Negative Hotel Review Demands An Answer

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Woman Billed $350 For A Negative Hotel Review Demands An Answer

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One of the biggest worries when traveling is deciding where you want to stay.

It consumes so much of your time because you're trying to look for a good deal while assessing if the cost is worth the living condition.

After you feel comfortable with the price and browse through a few pictures, you're next step is to read some reviews. Once you read a couple bad reviews, you start that cycle all over again.

One woman who left a negative online review about a hotel in Indiana was billed $350 and threatened with legal action.

The thing is, her review is not far off from what we would write if we had a bad experience at a hotel...

Katrina Arthur from Green County, Indiana booked a room at Abbey Inn at Brown County with her husband last year.

She said the moment she stepped in the room, she and her husband didn't enjoy their stay. The room smelled of sewage, there was poor water pressure, and the air conditioning didn't work.

"The room was unkempt, and it looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the last people stayed there. We checked the sheets and I found hairs and dirt," she told Fox News.

Katrina tried to get a staff member to clean her room, but there was no one around, so she decided to scrub the place herself.

When it was time to give an online review, Katrina warned others by recounting her experiences at the hotel.

"I was honest. I wanted people to know not to waste their money because I know people save their money for special occasions," she said. "There's nothing wrong with being truthful."

Soon after she posted her review, she noticed that her credit card was charged an additional fee of $350. Soon after, Katrina was contacted by a lawyer who threatened legal action.

"That scared me to death. So I went ahead and took it down," she said.

Katrina was furious about the whole ordeal, so now she's pushing a lawsuit against Abbey Inn for breaching Indiana's Deceptive Consumer Sales Act.

The hotel's policy allegedly read: '"Guests agree that if guests find any problems with our accommodations, and fail to provide us the opportunity to address those problems while the guest is with us, and/or refuses our exclusive remedy, but then disparages us in any public manner, we will be entitled to charge their credit card an additional $350 damage. Should the guest refuse to retract any such public statements legal action may be pursued."

Katrina has still not received paperwork from the hotel.

However, Katrina is not the only one who has left the hotel a negative review. Another hotel guest wrote on TripAdvisor: "I recently stayed at your inn and found out it needs to be shut down. You reek. Everything was dirty and worse yet, management was unresponsive."

Moojan has been a writer at Shared for a year. When she's not on the lookout for viral content, she's looking at cute animal photos. Reach her at moojan@shared.com.