Saturday, April 28, 2012

Progressive: Small but growing group of vacation rental owners with non-disparagement clauses - chicagotribune.com

Progressive: Small but growing group of vacation rental owners with non-disparagement clauses - chicagotribune.com
"It has come to our attention that you have written an unauthorized review regarding your stay at a home managed by Progressive Management Concepts," it said. "If this review is published by VRBO.com, you will be in violation of the confidentiality clause of the rental contract you agreed to when you made your reservation."

When the Dorows refused to remove the review from VRBO.com, the site through which they'd found the rental, Progressive Management promptly charged $500 to their credit card.

Progressive is among a small but apparently growing group of vacation rental owners and management companies adding non-disparagement clauses to their contracts.

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Thanks to Fred Pilot for this link to another example of our fine print society in action. As Fred says, soon we may be seeing "no disparagement" clauses in HOA and condo CC&Rs. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Disparagement clauses have been utilized numerous times by declarants and HOA boards. There is a pretty interesting one that KB Homes used a few years ago in the Houston area.

There are also HOA/condo bylaws and even restrictive covenants that purport to prohibit causing any statement to be published in any public forum (radio, tv, newspaper, web, etc.) Some of these clauses even have express language purporting to prohibit any negative statement about the subdivision, HOA, builder, or declarant.

Incredibly the despots who prefer to operate anonymously try to either fine or file suit in an effort to silence public disclosure of what's going on there.

Anonymous said...

Somebody beat me to the KB Home story. But I will point out that if you read the end of "Buy A House And Shut Up!", it says that :

But the KB spokeswoman stressed that the provision is not to protect KB Home from bad publicity. It's to protect neighbors from damaged property values.
And she says it is the homeowners' associations, not KB Home, that enforce the restrictions.

What happens when the HOA owns the telephone and internet infrastructure within the neighborhood? Will they have the right to monitor and block network traffic in the same manner as an employer does today when you are at work?

For example, will they block access to certain web sites ( such as privatopia.blogspot.com and onthecommons.net , etc. ) and keep track of who is posting negative comments in their e-mail or on internet message boards?

When that happens, the right-wing Ayn-Randian response will be, "Of course they do. You are using the HOA corporation's network. You have the same rights at home that you do at work, since both environments are governed by a private contract."