Mick Smith hits out at companies who are offering to post positive fake reviews in exchange for money.
Porthminster Beach Café’s Mick Smith hits out at fake review companies that offer to give positive ratings to eateries on TripAdvisor in return for cash.
The chef (and co-owner) told the Mail Online that he has received sales from an organisation who offered to write 840 good reviews for £1 each. Mick also reported that he had seen review packages for sales which offered 24 'drip fed bespoke reviews' of up to 20 words 'tailored to your business' for £150 a month.
As well as writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor, the firm also offered to create 'bespoke reviews, created by our writers based on their experience of your establishment for TripAdvisor, Google and Facebook', promising to increase the restaurant's ratings or give their money back.
In their email, they said:
'We have never ever had even one review removed. We use 100% safe techniques by our advanced systems that will never harm your profiles or business.'
Speaking to the Mail Online, Mick hit out at these companies saying he was 'sick to death' of these companies whom he felt was damaging the credibility of review sites like TripAdvisor.
He has suggested that a way to ensure that a review is authentic would be to make reviewers submit their bills to prove they have actually visited the places they write about. However, TripAdvisor has responded saying that they felt that this would be ‘unfair’ to genuine posters and that it could reduce the number of reviews.
A spokesperson from TripAdvisor commented: “We are strongly against the buying or selling of fake reviews — known as paid review fraud. It is not only dishonest but also illegal in many countries.
We are absolutely in support of this chef’s complaints. We feel really passionately about the fight against paid review companies.
We are continually battling against paid review companies and have invested significantly in doing so. We’ve actually put a stop to more than 60 such companies in the last few years alone. In addition, we recently worked with law enforcement in Italy to send the owner of one of these companies to jail”
Mick said: “It's about time people knew this was happening. We get three or four of these every week, it's been happening for a while now. This just shows TripAdvisor are not investigating properly. Everyone takes TripAdvisor as gospel but the vast majority of it is bogus.
TripAdvisor would be fantastic if it was legitimate, it has the potential to be a really great tool and the industry would take it more seriously if it was legitimate.
Reputation is really important in this business, people do everything online now and so TripAdvisor will be their first call and they will check the top five list.
I've looked at reviews before and wondered whether the person writing it is real or not, the anonymous side of it all is a real issue.”
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