Is Trip Advisor paying for bad reviews?

http://www.tnooz.com/2011/12/14/news/what-is-wrong-with-tripadvisor/ and intersting aeticle and another one that will do harm to our friends at Tripadvior....the walls are caving in ....lol Reply to this

I have been subject to TA's defamatory reviews and there seems to be nothing that can be done about it other that a huge class action suit to stop them in their tracks. We just closed for the season and up pops a review that is not only insulting but an outright lie. When someone complains that the soap you have is not to their liking, BFD! Bring your own if you're that fussy! And when they say that the matresses are bad When they are brand new and there are no hair driers in the room ( but we provide them on request), my God! Do I need to wipe their butts too? And there is no disputing this on TA. They are completely one sided. So I sit with this with this bad review glaring in the faces of people who think TA is the be all end all of the travel industry when in fact they should be sued for all their assets for not allowing a truthful rebutal and the disclosure of the names of the individuals who posted false information. I am getting to hate this business thanks to TA. Reply to this

Tripadvisor are becoming a bigger joke than ever, I now never go on Tripadvisor and do not welcome people that are stupid enough to take notice of the lies that they allow to be published but do not allow us to defend ourselves. Reply to this

Here is a new one: TripAdvisor permiitted a poster to post a review giving a restaurant a 3 out of 5 rating notwithstanding the fact that the reviewer states that he hasn't been to the restuarant since posting a highly negative review 12 months earlier. See for yourself: Eureka Springs Arkansas restaurants: Gaskings Cabin Steakhouse. Reply to this

Hello David 😊

Are you a lawyer? If not, how else would you have the reviews removed? You don't mean you can hack into TripAdvisor and actually remove them, do you? Or some other way? Is what you do legal?

Mel
TravelBlog Moderator Reply to this

PS:

We are currently also working with our legal team on a take down notice solution that would not involve costly litigation and would be a PRE-EMPTIVE solution to the possibility of future false, misleading or negative reviews.

This is in the final stages of drafting and would be based on legal precedent in both the U.K and the U.S. Reply to this

For all of the Tripadvisor lovers out there that have been duped into believing that whatever Tripadvisor say is the truth the whole truth blah blah.

what TripAdvisor has been told it cannot claim all of its reviews are written by real travellers.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said claims that all reviews on the travel site are genuine are "misleading".
The ruling came after complaints highlighted statements on the TripAdvisor website which claimed: "reviews you can trust", "read reviews from real travellers" and "more than 50 million honest travel reviews and opinions from real travellers around the world".
The complainants said they understood that TripAdvisor did not verify the reviews and therefore could not prove that they were genuine or from real travellers.
The ASA upheld the complaint and said that consumers would take the claims on the website to mean they could be certain the reviews posted were from genuine travellers. It said that, as reviews could be placed on the site without verification, it was possible that non-genuine reviews could go undetected.
TripAdvisor said it used "advanced and highly effective" fraud detection systems and dedicated substantial resources to identifying and minimising any non-genuine content.
However it said it was "not practical" to screen each review manually before it was posted and there was no practical way to verify identities due to their independence from operators.
TripAdvisor said reviewers were asked to sign a declaration that their review was genuine and honest but the ASA concluded that this did not necessarily prevent non-genuine reviews from being posted on the site.
The watchdog said: "Because we considered that the claims implied that consumers could be assured that all review content on the TripAdvisor site was genuine, when we understood that might not be the case, we concluded that the claims were misleading.
"We told TripAdvisor not to claim or imply that all the reviews that appeared on the website were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted." Reply to this

Ali, here is the link..... http://uk.news.yahoo.com/travel-website-claims-misleading-010706285.html Reply to this

Please note that KwikChex has expanded on this news with a statement on our website, citing the reasons for our actions and further detail.

http://www.kwikchex.com/2012/02/kwikchex-statement-re-asa-ruling-on-complaint-against-tripadvisor/ Reply to this

This thread confuses me quite a bit and i have a few questions.... i do have a personal preference for travelblog and really enjoy the people on the forums but i do also use tripadvisor for information as i've mentioned previously in here so thought i would put some thoughts out there.....

Quite a few people on here have said that they have received reviews on ta that are from fake people or are from people saying extremely incorrect things. Why cant you just write to ta in response? For example, if you look at the green garden resort in tuban bali there have recently been a lot of negative responses and the management has replied to each one either apologising, taking on their comments or constructively explaining why what they said was blatantly wrong. For example 'you said you didnt like the ground floor room with the door opening on to the pool however you stayed on the 4th floor'. That sort of cracked me up! I thought for a few of you where you have said people complained there werent any hairdryers or the soap was wrong you could definitly go that route and just say you apologise that there wasnt a hairdryer in the room but as written in the guest guide there is one available at reception if they ask etc etc. Then at least their review and their opinion has been squashed.

The other thing is i am noticing more and more are fake people on tb in the forums... some are ridiculously obvious and tout that they are from a travel company and can help you but some are just way to salesy on a place and out of place in the thread or discussion that is happenning. there is one at the moment in the discussion regarding thai beaches that seems a little odd and out of place. Although i am impressed if govt tourism boards send people off to play on social media sites. I dont think the aussie govt is that far advanced to even allow social media sites on their office pc's!!!! anyhoo, thought it was worth mentioning as that seems to be a regular comment on here regarding ta, but it does occur on tb as well. Reply to this