TripAdvisor v Motelier Faceoff

While we are intoxicated with the open market freedoms that allow the public to post bouquets and brickbats on the Tripadvisor.com platform, we understand the emotion and frustrations of fellow accommodation providers that feel that their reputation has been sullied by alleged rouge reviews.

A dear reader sent us an email exchange that occurred between him and Tripadvisor that exposes some of the emotion involved.

The motelier was so incensed after making no headway in disputing a negative review that he took matters into his own hands by posting a review of his own property and signing this off as the motel owner.
 
The self-review was flagged by TripAdvisor with the motelier receiving the following email: 

From: contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com
To: xxxx@xtra.co.nz
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 8:47 AM
Subject: Official Notification from TripAdvisor

To whom it may concern:

We are writing in regards to a number of reviews submitted to our site from a source that we believe to be affiliated with either your staff or the hotel itself. Please note that it is a severe violation of TripAdvisor’s guidelines to attempt to submit reviews written by the ownership or management of a hotel, posing as guests. Beyond this, we do not accept comment cards or guestbook entries forwarded by hoteliers.

Please visit the following page to familiarize yourself with TripAdvisor’s guidelines. There are many things you can do to market your property, but even the appearance of impropriety in doing so can put your property listing at risk of penalty.

www.tripadvisor.com/help/owners

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns that you may have about our service.

Best regards,
xxxx
TripAdvisor Support Team 

Fair enough...however the motelier had an axe to grind and leaves us in no-doubt what he thinks of Tripadvisor with his following response:  

From: xxxx Motel [mailto:xxxx@xtra.co.nz]
Sent: Tuesday, 2 March 2010
To: contentintegrity@tripadvisor.com
Subject: Re: Official Notification from TripAdvisor

To whom it may concern, (xxxx???)

Bullshit!

I sent your sham of a site a review of my property and signed it myself as I'm so frustrated with attempting to deal with the faceless entity that is trip advisor, which in spite of all your false  promise to the traveling public and businesses, is in reality almost impossible to contact, as well you know.

I do not care for the threats contained in the below e-mail, or your attitude, which I find arrogant in the extreme. As my property is permanently last in our town on your site I fail to see what you can do to me or my business, apart from write fake reviews about it, as the "top rated" ones in our town (which aren't even in our town...) do when they're visiting the local internet cafe. At  least they do if they've got time while they're writing favourable reviews about themselves.

So, will you de-list my place from your site? Oh, yes please! At least we wouldn't be getting slandered and lied about with little or no recourse to do anything about it, as is the case at present.

You sent me this under the heading "contentintegrity". Is this some sort of joke? Trip advisor doesn't know the meaning of the word integrity.

How can trip advisor's "content" have any sort of "integrity" when it allows anybody who registers with it to say anything they like about any business, with no checks whatever as to whether these people are telling the truth or not. "trip advisor the name you can trust"??? Oh sure.................................   

Hmmm...no further comments required really;-)