Q:  I’m looking for unbiased information about hotels. Do you have any suggestions for where to start?

A: User-generated hotel reviews are notoriously difficult to trust, says travel expert Pauline Frommer in a blog entry for Bing.com. That’s because hotel marketers often pay people to write and post fake reviews. Further complicating issues is that fact that ordinary travelers usually only stay in one place in any given location, which makes it tough for them to definitively declare that the hotel they are writing about is “the best in the city.” Thankfully, Oyster.com may change that. The website sends out anonymous reporters to sleep in the beds, interview guests and photograph their entire hotel experience. If the room service tray wasn’t picked up during the night, you’ll hear about it. Likewise if the gym isn’t well equipped and has no windows. Frommer points out that Oyster.com still hasn’t worked out the kinks when it comes to accurately reporting room prices, but if what you’re looking for is a thorough idea of what it’s like to stay at a wide range of hotels, it’s a great resource. Oyster.com currently reviews hotels in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Jamaica, Aruba and the Dominican Republic.

Neal Justin is more than just the Star Tribune TV critic. He is also a tireless traveler of the Vegas-this-weekend-London-next variety, which makes him the most welcome kind of guest Escape Artist. Here, his blog:

My friend and I are are fairly frequent guests at Westin Hotels, so we weren’t a bit surprised to find a small bottle of decent red wine sitting on the desk when we arrived last week at our downtown Chicago room. I almost never use the minibar, especially when I can walk (stumble) to about a jillion bars from the lobby, so I carefully looked to see if there was any indication that the juice was going to cost us anything.  Because it seemed to have no relationship to the minibar, and because the bottled water sitting right next to was clearly labeled with a price tag, we made the assumption that it was a complementary gift.

Boy, were we wrong. When the checkout bill came, we discovered we had been charged $27. (Did  I mention it was a small bottle?)

An attempt to talk to a lobby receptionist was quickly shut down, but she did call a manager who showed up a prompt two minutes later. He  needn’t have bothered. He stated that the price was indeed revealed – but only if you utilized the minibar, which we completely ignored. Why wouldn’t we? He said it was company policy to display the wine that way in every Westin. Hope he’s mistaken. He also suggested that, in the future, I should always assume there is a charge UNLESS it’s clearly stated otherwise.

I guess that means that I should assume the hotel can charge me now for soap, shampoo and the freakin’ electricity unless I see the word FREE dancing in front of my eyes.

I’ve never had this problem before and since I plan to be wary of the Westin from now on, I hope to never have it happen again. But maybe this has now become a common scam.

I should note that the manager did take half the price off, but only after about a 20-minute, er, “discussion” and my friend’s reminder that he spends enough money at the Westin to buy a sports car (or three bottles of Westin wine).