My derelict pub still got TripAdvisor reviews
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The rest of the stay was Okay, just this weird deposit thing that really jarred me. So I mentioned that in my TripAdvisor review - the review dissapeared and TripAdvisor wouldn't tell me why. Looking at other review sites, plenty of other people had the same experience. It would appear that it was easier for the hotel to get these negative reviews taken off TripAdvisor than from other sites.
But why anyone takes TripAdvisor seriously after the whole "Shed at Dulwich" debacle is beyond me.
The VICE piece is here:
How to Become TripAdvisor’s #1 Fake Restaurant
The Shed at Dulwich was the number one rated restaurant in London, with foodies, celebrities and bloggers trying to get a table. The main obstacle for them, however, was that it didn't exist. Over the course of 8 months VICE's Oobah Butler used an assault of fake reviews to get his 'restaurant' to the hallowed top spot on TripAdvisor.
* It might be a way to save the hotel the cc processing costs (or even just time, if outside a 1st world country). This easily adds $10 to my bill for having to use my EC card (EC := debit card used a lot in Europe) in a foreign country at a foreign bank's ATM.
* That deposit could just be the daily limit for your card in that country. You'll unfortunately have to eat at the hotel because they are the only ones who graciously let you pay the day after.
* It might be a scam to get you seek the next ATM where someone is waiting for you and you start the millionaires' tour: Use all cards at gun- or knife point until their limits are reached.
Am sure this is what a bar in the Canaries tried with me, a 4 level bar/restaurant with about 10 rooms and their story was "this card machine is broken" "this one's out of battery" etc, then "there's an ATM just over there, I'll take you there...".
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, don't be surprised if they steal your bread.
I booked and prepaid the hotel with my Visa debit card. When I arrived they wanted a deposit for £150, which they would only accept using a Mastercard. I have never encountered any business that only accepts Visa OR Mastercard.
I don't have a Mastercard, so I was told I had to pay the deposit in cash. That was just really odd.
> This really set my alarm bells ringing
I interpreted this as "red flag", or "something fishy going on".
Me neither ... except Costco, which - in Canada at least - only accepts Mastercard.
Did you mention anything about the 150 pounds in your review?
IMHO, "complaining about price" in any arguable fashion seems to be reason enough to get something removed.
If you would have said "I really disliked their checkin process", the review would probably stand.
I have done consulting for an extreme micro-manager of a small business who was on the phone to trip advisor with every single negative review she received. The only time she was ever able to get a review removed was if it mentioned her prices in some fashion.
THen another paragraph starting with "You should be aware of the strange deposit requirement.." and then going into the detail of what happened and ending with me saying that I found the experience soured my opinion of what was otherwise a good stay.
Yes so again, in my experience, if the price of the "strange deposit" was mentioned whatsoever anywhere in the comment, that seems to be all tripadvisor needs to see to get a review deleted.
>IMHO, "complaining about price" in any arguable fashion seems to be reason enough to get something removed.
Comes off as a defense of TA here. It seems like you didn't mean it to be, only a statement of fact, but that's why you got the response you did.
I don't know if they'd had problems with stag nights in the past with people leaving a mess...
Becuase when I've traveled I've just hit up the top TripAdvsior attractions and restaurants and have always had a great time. I've never ended up at a "Shed at Dulwich."
Of course not, they're booked solid through the end of the year!
Let's be fair - the Shed at Dulwich was done by Vice and took a fake phone and months of effort, along with an entire network of friends to "verify" the restaurant via fake reviews.
That level of effort needs to be taken into consideration I would think before you just write off the whole site/service.
That being said, there are many, legitimate issues with all of these review sites like TA and Yelp.
This happens all the time on TripAdvisor. I bet there are dozens of “Bridge Inn”s in the UK.
You could use a plethora of other information to show this intelligently and not bother everyone (e.g. if you have been in the area, if you looked for the place beforehand etc)
And some are stolen, automated, or low-effort content that's not intended to affect the target at all, but exists only to make the account seem legitimate so it can't be trivially identified as having the sole purpose to astroturf one target.
I think there's plenty of reason to believe each of these categories is responsible for a ton of internet content.
"As of 2016, 8.5% of the prisoners are in private for-profit prisons. Since 2000, the number of people in private prisons has increased 47%, compared to an overall rise in the prison population of 9%."
Source: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-priso...
So, if the annual increase rate has not change since 2016, as of 2019 about 9.3% of the prisoners are in for-profit jails. [edit: computed the rate, it is not "more than 10%"]
The staff are passionate about looking after these primates and do not see the centre as a moral issue. The fact that the animals need to be rescued in the first place is the real moral issue.
Interestingly, the centre's worse reviewers are those who expect a zoo run for the visitors benefit, and who complain about the ‘untidy’ enclosures (i.e. good climbable trees that make it hard to see any action) or the fact that a given primate might have chosen to sit quietly in a sunny area where it has good privacy, rather than perform on demand.
Loro parque is known to host and reproduce a lot of endangered species of parrots and help it to recover from extinction with private money. As private zoo it has a very good reputation of taking lots of troubles to keep the animals as happy as they can.
They had an escape bat incident some years ago, solved, and there was the history of the killer whale Morgan with several animalist organisations figthing to avoid the park rescuing a deaf and starving dutch killer whale. It seems that some people would prefer the young lost whale dead than in captivity, for ideological reasons. Eventually Loro parque won all trials and collect all legal permits to keep an animal that would not survive a year in the ocean but is still alive and well and even has a calf in 2018. They even had to feed the calf with a bottle.
https://www.loroparque.com/morgan/
I'm not aware of anything really dark or wrong with them. Looks like a good modern zoo; In fact it is classified routinely as one of the bests zoos in Europe if I remember correctly.
What do you feel was wrong with them?
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the...
If you want more sophisticated reviews you can always go with Rick Steves, who usually does a good job of pointing out what are the most popular restaurants for tourists and contrasting that with the most popular restaurants for locals.