<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mweiss:
If we go to a business and tell them that if we don't get satisfaction, we will tell the world about the poor service we got, that's extortion?</font>
You're right, that wouldn't be extortion, IMHO.
But this is something completely different. The 300-room guy (and let's just say he's a hypothetical 300-room guy-- there's NO WAY we should detail the events that led us here,) booked as many nights as he humanly could at a $0 rate purely and explicitly for the purpose of squeezing the hotel for money, points, program-status, etc. There were no "promotions" in place-- the $0 rate was a computer mistake and everyone who booked it knew that full well as they booked it (and booked it and booked it...)
300-room guy had NO intention of using the reservations (or most of 'em anyway) he made. And, his recourse would presumably be the threat of legal action-- otherwise Hilton has virtually no reason to make even the modest offer that they did.
I'm most certainly not claiming that the above described comports with what would get someone put in jail for extortion-- or even that a district attorney would take an interest, just that in my personal book of ethics, it's extortion.