"If You Are Not Pleased with Our Service, You Do Not Have to Pay"

A few weeks ago, I traveled with my family to Indiana. We stopped for one night at Hampton Inn. At the reception desk, we noticed a sign saying something like "If you are not pleased with our service, you do not have to pay." Legally speaking, that means that a guest can walk away without paying. Such behavior could be quite rewarding: the rate for a suite is about $200 a night, so a three-day-stay without paying could be a real temptation. How can the hotel afford such a policy? Before responding, let me say first that neither I nor my colleagues at the Law School with whom I talked have witnessed such a policy actually carried out by a hotel. Most of us have seen something similar in restaurants, where a sign says something like "Don't pay if you did not like our food." But the risk of not being paid for a pizza is not comparable to the risk of losing a few hundred dollars!