review: Holiday Inn Zurich Messe (scam warning)

Your reviewer stayed at Holiday Inn, Zurich Messe (scammers) in early February this year.

Your reviewer asked the price at the front desk.  The hotel employee reported something like 225 CHF plus local tax.  Why Eurotards feel unable to quote exact and all-inclusive prices is beyond the scope of this review.

The hotel employee then pushed a card terminal at your reviewer, but the amount on the screen was around 290 CHF.  Local tax is normally just a couple of francs.  So your reviewer asked: is the local tax really 60 CHF or so?  No, local tax was tiny.

They eventually admitted they'd made a mistake, sort of, in a Swiss way, which means not really admitting they made a mistake.  Logically, one might expect a retry of the card procedure, but this time with the correct amount.  That's not what happened.  The Zurich Messe (scammers), instead, pushed a document at your reviewer, and asked him to sign it.  It was agreement to AGBs, meaning general terms and conditions.  At this point, your reviewer's defences were up.  The scammers had already tried to slip past an incorrect charge.  When they got caught, they switched to trying to get a document signed.  Was this another trick?

Naturally, your reviewer asked for a copy of the AGBs.  One reviews, and keeps a copy of, what one signs, right?  The document referred to the AGBs by reference, and said the signer agreed to them, so it was incomplete without the AGBs.  But the hotel employee said the AGBs were contained fully in the document to be signed.  There was no separate document.  Your reviewer clarified, with care, that this was definitely what the employee intended to communicate.  Yes, without a doubt, they were definitely stating that the full AGBs were contained in the sheet to be signed.  Your reviewer annotated the sheet to this effect, and signed.  At this point the hotel employee said the AGBs just contained this reasonable term, and they just contained that reasonable term.  Though these sounded like reasonable terms, they were not on the sheet.  The AGBs, now orally summarised by the Hotel employee, were indeed a separate document.  The victim, your reviewer, had been tricked into signing "agreement" with the AGBs by the Hotel employee's lies.

At this point, instead of concluding they had scammed and tricked your reviewer enough, the employee started a shit little passive-aggressive escalation routine.  Why was your reviewer so concerned with seeing the AGBs, they wondered.  No one else had ever bothered about such a thing.  So, having tried to over-charge your reviewer, and having got caught, their next action was to try to get your reviewer to sign agreement to, unseen, some set of terms, and the question now is: "why does the reviewer care what they are being asked to sign".

Since the topic now appeared to be: what aspects of the interaction had / had not the parties experienced before, your reviewer notes: your reviewer has been scammed by Swiss people many, many, many times. 

Conclusion: Holiday Inn Zurich Messe are scammers, liars.  Stay away.

score: minus 11, scammers