How NOT to deal with bad reviews

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jarledb

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Topic # 150854 5-Aug-2014 16:44

This is a mind boggling story about a hotel that charged $500 fines for bad reviews online.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/4/5966715/hotel-fines-newlyweds-500-for-negative-yelp-reviews

Seems to have backfired just a tiny bit...

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pctek

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Reply # 1103339 6-Aug-2014 14:38

I had a similar experience after posting a not bad - but average review of a restaurant on one of those restaurant review sites.
I got phoned - not by the restaurant - but by the owner of the site and absolutely hounded to change it.

He took it off in the end.

jarledb

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Reply # 1103351 6-Aug-2014 14:44

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Really would like to know which review site that was. Sounds like someone is selling "ratings" to restaurants.

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Coil

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Reply # 1103356 6-Aug-2014 14:52

That was on Imgur and the internet just owned his review site.

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MichaelNZ

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Reply # 1105466 9-Aug-2014 15:40

I posted a review on rankers.co.nz which was taken down by the site owner. I emailed them to ask why. They responded that I had not been a customer of the business. Never mind the negative review was in respect of the business operator's behavior in trying to score business. Of course, meaningless one liners giving rave reviews of the business are allowed... I don't trust rankers.co.nz or any site which censors or removes fair and deserved reviews.

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Abo

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Reply # 1105535 9-Aug-2014 17:55

MichaelNZ: I posted a review on rankers.co.nz which was taken down by the site owner. I emailed them to ask why. They responded that I had not been a customer of the business. Never mind the negative review was in respect of the business operator's behavior in trying to score business. Of course, meaningless one liners giving rave reviews of the business are allowed... I don't trust rankers.co.nz or any site which censors or removes fair and deserved reviews.

Agree that one liners are pretty much meaningless.

Price spy was pretty bad at this as well, not sure if they still are. (this was about 1-2 years ago)

It wasn't really censoring bad reviews more just allowing fake good reviews.

Best example was the reviews for Einfotech, all of their good reviews came from their "own store" always 10/10 and most are single words or lines like "good" or "excellent". Clearly they were all fake but no one seemed to care.
Then you see the real reviews which are large paragraphs of text with details and low scores and pretty much always question where the good reviews come from.

mattwnz

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Reply # 1105569 9-Aug-2014 19:12

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I pretty much don't trust any review websites these days. Some companies even create their own reviews sites and only post positive ones and some even provide some incentive for customers to post positive reviews. The only reviews I possibly do trust are facebook ones, because I believe they can't be modified or deleted by the Facebook page owner unless reviews are disabled. Also facebook ones are associated to a person, and links to their Facebook profile.

petes117

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Reply # 1105621 9-Aug-2014 21:09

I only trust reviews from people I know, or reviewers I generally trust or agree with my own tastes (if I read their reviews often). I was asked to write positive reviews for a bar I worked at on menumania (now zomato?) and felt really guilty about doing so. I quit the job not long after.

It's a real shame because a lot of people won't spend their money on something with anything less than, on average, near perfect 5-star reviews.

Then there are people who write bad reviews to sabotage the competition. This really does happen and it is even more pathetic than fake positive reviews.

The lesson: most online reviews and review sites are inherently broken.