4 ms·

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but it's high time... TripAdvisor, Yelp and several other sites all have the same issue. In the competitive NYC hotel biz, compet

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but it's high time... TripAdvisor, Yelp and several other sites all have the same issue. In the competitive NYC hotel biz, competitors and people with post-stay expenditure remorse have been posting false/fake reviews of encountering bedbugs/mice/ants, blood/semen stains, pubic hair (can it ever anything else?) and prostitutes. Since reviewers have no obligation to prove they actually stayed at a property, they can say whatever they want. Property owners meanwhile have zero recourse other than a management response and without reservation details they can't even investigate claims. Competitors can usually be detected by references to their own hotels as better alternatives. 'Remorsees' are trickier, but there are patterns as well. For instance, they do not address issues during their stay, as indicated in post-stay surveys, but once they read the credit card statement, they send in complaints and post negative reviews thinking the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" (spoiler: they rarely do). I have even seen negative reviews posted which are promptly followed up on with a "settlement offer" email to the hotel ("Just give me back 50% and I will remove my review. If you don't, I will post this review on every trip review site on the planet.") The worst thing I've seen is a claim of bedbugs crawling from the mattress (impossible, they're tempurpedic and bedbug sniffing dogs visit the rooms at least once a month) where the reviewer had uploaded an image from Wikipedia, claiming it was a bedbug he'd caught in his room... We traced that one back to a self-proclaimed journalist/blogger miffed at not getting free nights in return for an article... In this particular case, reservations for this hotel dropped by 20% overnight and we had to threaten a lawsuit for the site in question to get it removed when they remained unresponsive. After analyzing 5+ years of customer feedback and surveys, I can tell you than a lot of visitors should have just thought twice before going on a trip...

aaronem 13y ago
Makes sense to me, and I say this as one who has posted several negative reviews on Yelp under the same name that's on his driver's license. Yelp's primacy in its field means that a negative review on the site can substantially depress the business of the company so disfavored. Given that potential impact, why shouldn't I be prepared to stand behind my words? Why shouldn't anyone? Anonymous speech on the Internet is of enormous value, but I fail to see why the protection of anonymity should be extended to outright slander. Such permissiveness can only dilute the perceived value of anonymous speech as a whole, with potentially disastrous effects on those who cannot speak in safety otherwise.

aaronem 13y ago

Makes sense to me, and I say this as one who has posted several negative reviews on Yelp under the same name that's on his driver's license. Yelp's primacy in its field means that a negative review on the site can substantially depress the business of the company so disfavored. Given that potential impact, why shouldn't I be prepared to stand behind my words? Why shouldn't anyone? Anonymous speech on the Internet is of enormous value, but I fail to see why the protection of anonymity should be extended to outright slander. Such permissiveness can only dilute the perceived value of anonymous speech as a whole, with potentially disastrous effects on those who cannot speak in safety otherwise.