tripadvisor

[BM06]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2214974/Dear-staff-We-positive-comments-Hotel-boss-caught-telling-workers-post-fake-reviews-TripAdvisor.html   I hate to say I told you so but........."I told you so"   

[ovacik2]

A villa very close to ours was sold November last year and the basement converted and being rented out via TA and others. A review was posted for May on TA, We were here May and no Guests were at the villa for sure and was curious about the infinity pool, you know the one where the water flows over 10" of travertine then through the plastic grids into the channel that takes it to recycle just like ours. Being an old sod, as I am, contacted the review person and he came back asking if we lived at our villa and that he had posted as it was his sisters Villa. He had two reviews on TA one funnily enough in November last year. We use TA for reviews but it is usually easy to see if someone is genuine by the No of posts etc. In fact Booking.com reviews are more up to date in lots of cases compared to TA. Reader beware???     

[Scunner]

People that actually own or work for a hotel/restaurant/bar writing nice things about it while pretending to be a happy customer? I've never heard of such a thing.

[nichola]

I don't see the point in faking reviews; surely it would become obvious to even the most stupid person in time if the reviews failed to match up. I have got over 400 friends on Facebook (don't ask me how) and I am sure if I wanted too I could get a good % to write a review for our restaurant even though they have never eaten there.

But why? There can be no pleasure in what is effectively cheating and TA do have a zero tolerance policy on fake reviews.

A couple of years ago I found a duplicate account on TA which coincided with the beginning of the season and a fair few new reviews coming in. I got a scary email from TA saying that they thought that some of the reviews were fake and that we could end up with a great big red box on our listing saying so.

I wrote back about the merged duplicate account and explained that after the winter closure we were now reopen and that may account for what might seem like a sudden burst of new reviews and they wrote back to say thanks and this might account for it.

They monitor IP as well as email addresses so even when people write a review from say the same hotel or guest house this could cause problems for the business. It is one of the reasons they encourage people to write reviews on their return from holiday or travels although these days with tablets and iphones many people often write a review there and then and I always worry in case the fact they are using our free wifi might cause us a problem.

Of course we provide people with information on our publicity about TA and the CBF too for that matter but then it is up to them to write a review or not.

[Scunner]

There is a lot of information to draw on when looking for fake recommendations - it isn't all down to IP, due to the reason you give - that people can be seen tweeting and reviewing almost as they eat - obviously using the restaurant IP. Ten years at this next year and I can 'feel' a dodgy post even before I have read it sometimes and it's often down to the English, or tiny pieces of punctuation, or a far too "over the top" review where absolutely everything was perfect. I've never been anywhere that was perfect on every last detail..!

There's something blindingly obvious about a fake review. I've asked other members of the team their opinion on a first post review that is very positive about a restaurant but after all is said and done seems absolutely genuine.

The one thing I wish these people could grasp is the damage they do to their reputations. It's like they haven't managed to get a positive review from a genuine customer so they have to pretend to be their own cutomer. It is better to have no review than fake one...

[nichola]

"It is better to have no review than fake one..."

I totally agree   

[Jim Fraser]

Sadly fake reviews and posts on TA are only obvious to some people - others take any printed info as gospel.