Indiana Woman Charged $350 After Bad Hotel Review: Lawsuit

BROWN COUNTY, IN — An Indiana woman says she was charged $350 and received a threatening letter from an attorney after leaving a bad review for a hotel. Katrina Arthur and her husband said they stayed at the Abbey Inn & Suites in Brown County, Indiana, in March 2016 and got hit with the extra charge after posting an online review about unsanitary conditions at the hotel.

Arthur told ABC Chicago the couple's room smelled like sewage and looked like it hadn't been cleaned. She said her review also criticized the poor water pressure in the room and the fact that the air conditioner didn't work.

"We didn't see anybody we could talk with, so I decided to call the number that goes to the front desk and it automatically went to a lawyer's or something weird like that," she told ABC. "I actually had to clean the room myself."

After returning home, Arthur said she got an email from the hotel asking her to leave a review, so she did.

The hotel apparently didn't like what she had to say, and responded by charging her card $350 and having an attorney send her a letter threatening legal action, she said.

Arthur filed a claim with the Indiana Attorney General's office. Last week, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against Abbey Management, which operated the Abbey Inn at the time of Arthur's stay. The suit alleges that the Abbey's customer review policy is "unfair, abusive, and deceptive."

According to ABC, a policy posted on the Abbey Inn website states that if guests find problems and "fail to provide us the opportunity to address those problems while the guest is with us" and then
"(disparage) us in any public manner," they will be charged a $350 fee. "Should the guest refuse to retract any such public statements legal action may be pursued," the policy stated.

A link to the hotel's policies on the Abbey Inn website now directs customers to an error page that says, "Oops...the page you were looking for seems to have gone missing......Must be hiding in the Brown County Indiana woods..."

RTV6 Indiana's "Call 6" investigated Arthur's claims and said a reporter who visited the hotel this week could not find any staff members to talk to, and found signs indicating the hotel does not have a front office. The station was also unable to reach the owner of Abbey Management, since a number listed for him was disconnected and an email bounced back.

The station reported that a woman named Amanda said she has been trying to buy the Abbey Inn since the beginning of 2017 and was unaware of the lawsuit.

The attorney general's lawsuit claims the Abbey Inn & Suites often did not have employees on-site, and a sign instructed guests to call an overnight phone number — but warned they would be charged $100 if it was not an emergency.

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