We have been guests of the Balance Hotel Badenweiler. One night during the course of our stay, we had a less than pleasing experience at dinner finding both the food and the service wanting. After complaining about this to the hotel owner, Maria Grüninger, in person, I was disappointed to be accused of lying by both Mrs. Grüninger and the waitress who had been in charge of our table. In addition to this incident, we had found the very small room (with less than comfortable beds) we had been given not satisfactory for the considerable price we had been charged. So, I wrote a moderate 2 star-review on google and later sent a very friendly email to Mrs Grüninger a few days later, not asking for a refund of the payment, but just explaining my point of view and reasons for having put the review. Mrs. Grüninger replied in an extremely unfriendly and insulting note, calling me not only a liar, but "sick" for what I wrote and suggesting that I maliciously was attacking other people out of my own dissatisfaction and I had better clean up my own stuff! (I have this email as well as all others from the side of Marc and Maria Grüninger as a proof for my allegations. Almost all of them use abusive language.) After that, we received a letter from the hotel's lawyer, threatening us with a lawsuit unless we paid 400 Euros to the hotel for alleged damages caused by my sharing of my experiences on some German hotel review sites (as a consequence of having received the abusive email from Mrs. Grüninger). It said that if we would not pay the 400 Euros, we would have to pay over 5 000 Euros as a result of some court order. Owners of the German hotel review sites were persuaded by the hotel to take my reviews down, as the hotel said to them that I was lying. In addition to all that, my husband received insulting emails from Marc Grüninger, the son of Maria Grüninger, threatening him with a lawsuit as well. He also falsely accused me on facebook for having created a fake profile to put an additional review on the hotel's facebook page, using words like "BS". He then proceeded to upload a video on the hotel's facebook page as well as on youtube that contained massive defamation and harassment against myself and my husband, calling both of us "sick and twisted" (again, we have proof for that). Upon our request, he first took the video down, only to upload it secretly again, this time onto a different youtube channel, as well as onto several public German websites. He also wrote a ripoff-report about my husband, falsely accusing him of criminal extortion and blackmail! After the video had been taken down the first time, my husband offered peace and suggested an olive branch arrangement, where Free Spirit would forgive all the abusive behaviour that had taken place in return for a 500 Euro refund which included a (very generous) charge for his time - given that he charges several hundred Euros an hour for private consultations for those that need help with their spiritual development. That would have been the end of it - even if no payment would be received - had the video not been uploaded again and spread around as well as the ripoff-report created.