[Bullfrog]

I often post my experiences of hotels and restaurants on TA.

I had an appalling experience with a hotel recently, and with over 600 reviews on TA, they have taken my review off line. The owner of the hotel accused me of ‘annihilating’ the room which is utter nonsense. Having a terrible review on TA may not be in the interest of the hotel, but I am appalled at TA for not making my review public.

Does anyone know who I can contact ?

[Luc Jones]

Was your review taken down after being made public, or never ‘approved’ by TripAdvisor? I have heard the opposite from several hoteliers, that they have been unable to remove such posts when they are clearly fake (ie, written by competitors who have never actually stayed there). Agree that something needs to be done to make TA a genuine source of information.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog

[Bullfrog]

My review was taken down after being made public. However since then, TripAdvisor emailed me to ask me to edit and re submit.
I realise from TA’s point of view, I am not a business & therefore not providing them with income.
I use TA to remind me of the places I have visited, especially the restaurants over the last 10 or so years.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Polly, PatJordan

[FormerBA]

TA is a bit of joke now and their main aim is to sell not review.

Like Facebook it is almost impossible to contact them.

If you use the site then your really must discount any review from anyone who has less that 50 or 60 reviews are most are fake.

7 users thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog, Jacob, Polly, TupeloKid, cwoodward, DerekVH, PatJordan

[CathayLoyalist2]

It´s always been a mystery to me how TA actually validates that someone flew on that airline, stayed at that hotel, ate at that restaurant ect etc. Does anyone know?

[DavidSmith2]

It´s always been a mystery to me how TA actually validates that someone flew on that airline, stayed at that hotel, ate at that restaurant ect etc. Does anyone know?

Well until I turned off their monitoring system it was always them who messaged me saying ‘We see you have been to The Great Wall of China, please don’t forget to send in a review’. That was when I turned off the monitoring system and stopped auto log-in. Soon after, I stopped posting and, after a few years, I stopped reading reviews altogether. As others have said, they are essentially a booking company now.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog

[stevescoots]

When i had a pub in China i asked them to take down a fake review, clear it was fake and i sent all the details and supporting details. They refused.

About a year later we had an event and around 30 expats put up good reviews over the course of a weekend…

TA pulled them all off and sent me a warning about fake reviews! after that I just gave up on TA for anything

3 users thanked author for this post.

TimFitzgeraldTC, Bullfrog, Jacob

[Alsacienne]

Having been a regular contributor to TA with many ‘helpful votes’, I was initially suspended for pointing out that a certain poster was posting inaccuracies about my home turf – and other destinations that I knew well.

After having been reinstated with a warning that I would be removed from the list of members if I continued to warn about this contributor (a bot with no paragraphing, no punctuation and no local knowledge or experience) I warned other posters through PM (very politely TBH) not to call out this contributor as a fraud or that they would risk the same fate as happened to me. PM sadly did not mean PRIVATE messaging as my messages were obviously read by the Mods and/or Administration team and I was banned.

This poster still posts in the same vein in multiple fora, and it seems that TA are more interested in having clickbait than real, local and helpful knowledge.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog, DannyBoy

[Tom Otley]

It’s very interesting.

I do read the reviews of hotels I am travelling to, and many of those hotels have a guest relations officer or some other such title replying to all the comments, so it must be something the hotel is tasked with doing at head office.

Most of the comments are not very useful. Here’s a recent example of somewhere I stayed last week

“Room is nice, the staff is awesome! The house cleaning staff are amazing; XXX, the staff on our floor is the most considerate and helpful we’ve seen in a long, long time! The room is always super clean! Absolutely awesome!”

Although, to be fair, the room was pretty clean (!)

3 users thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog, DannyBoy, Polly

[Clay']

Well if the hotel have put in writing an accusation that you “trashed the room” then I would challenge that as you have said it’s not the case and remind them that stating so gives you the option of suing for libelous comments. Invite them to, in writing, issue a retraction of siad statement both to yourself and a copy for TA along with confirmation that they also have no objection to you reposting the original, unedited, review.

Make demand of proof to back up their claim and question as to why if it was the case that you had done so why contact was made, additional charges for cleaning/ repair and/or advisement that you were banned from the premises for your actions.

I’d then call out TA for simply taking a vendors owed over yours and acting in a punitive manner about what turned out to be a false allegation and suggest they perhaps review their own internal procedures for such instances.

If the hotel refuses to action this ( I’d suggest granting them 21 days from day of issuance) then advise them that non compliance within said reasonable timeframe will leave you with no option but to investigate litigation.

IF nothings done then reissue your original demand to their legal department along with a timeframe for compliance.

Non of that will cost you any more than say half an hour of your 9wn time.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog, DannyBoy

[cwoodward]

A few years back it used to be a useful resource for me.
The revues and comments I always found to be genuine
Now I never bother with it as I find that little of the information can be trusted to be genuine

Its a shame that it has become so debased as it was a very good travellers tool.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog

[DannyBoy]

[postquote quote=1214812]

One of the reasons I suspect the nature of short reviews I think due to several factors such as bandwidth to write a full report with pictures etc. Second, they may be done on the fly using their phone, hence using the one/two liners.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog

[Swissdiver]

I am a rather active TA user (both reviewing and using).

Reviewing: I had a couple of setbacks, but not so many. And, yes, in general resubmitting does the job. What probably happened to your review, Bullfrog, is a coordinated flagging (if several flag a post, the system will erase it – human actions are seldom on TA). Over the years, the only reviews that were put offline were justified by a change of management or of operator of the hotel or the restaurant, something rather fair IMHO.

Using: Common sense is required. I usually exclude from my judgement reviewers below 10 posts. I look at the latests and also at the worst. All in all, never had a real issue.

[Author]

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