Will customers really bother to compare the sneakwrap agreements of competing vendors and choose the one with the best terms? Well, we just had a real world test of that question, and the customers passed with flying colors.

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My June 24th GripeLog column examined the remarkable document that at the time was posted as both privacy policy and website usage agreement for Hilton.com and its various brands, such as Conrad, Doubletree, and Embassy Suites. While pretty bad as terms of service go, it was even worse as a privacy policy. Rather than offering any assurances of how it would protect customer privacy, Hilton asserted it had complete ownership of all information collected from customers on its websites to do with as it pleased.

Perhaps because some were still making travel plans for the 4th of July, many readers decided to compare Hilton's terms to those of other hotels. "I was appalled at the disclosure policy for the Hilton Hotels," wrote one reader. "My question is if this an industry standard, or are they way out of the norm. I am staying at a Holiday Inn this weekend, so I popped to their site and read their privacy policy. This looks very good by my review, a further contrast with the Hilton site."

Indeed, not only was there a clear contrast between Hilton and Holiday Inns/Intercontinental, but readers also identified Choice, Marriott, Sheraton, and Westin Hotels as all having reasonable privacy policies in comparison to the Hilton brands. And they didn't just report this to me - they reported it to Hilton, too.