View Full Version : Tripadvisor to be sued, apprently
Wonder if the toothy site might be next in line given its, ahem, laissez-faire approach to comment moderation?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1311066/Hotels-prepare-battle-TripAdvisor-critical-reviews.html
I've never used the Tripadvisor site myself, have any of you?
Really not good news. If this is the way it is going then it is only a matter of time till we also get sued.
I have to admit that this is in the back of my mind in my ongoing issues with reviewing standards (http://forums.pubsgalore.co.uk/showthread.php?445-Reviewing-standards). It will end up at the point where all reviews have to be moderated and no negative statements and most negative implications will not be allowed.
I don't like the way BITE is run, but I like lawyers touting for business in this way even less.
I've never used the Tripadvisor site myself, have any of you?
It is a pretty useful tool for selecting a hotel somewhere you've never been to before. In general, I've found the reviews reasonably accurate, but you do get some people banging on about their pet hobbyhorse, in the same way that the widescreen TV chap (remember him?) did you know where. Having said that, I've never seen the sort of nonsense currently going on about the Firefly elsewhere...
Delboy20
11-09-2010, 18:57
The trouble is these days people will try and sue anybody for anything. I'm sure everyone has heard about some ludicrous legal case. Like prisoners trying to sue because they are denied drugs in prison and it is an infringment of thier human rights. I remember some parents suing a local council because thier son fell through a skylight when he was climbing on a leisure centre roof !
Solicitors make a lot of money and are quite happy to tout for business. The last time I was in my local hospital there were "No win no fee- had an accident?" leaflets in the A&E waiting area !!
I don't like the system. Trying to leave a response has proved more hassle than its worth. 1 review was upset their room had old furniture in it and felt misled by the website. I replied saying that if customers looked at our website as it was back then, the 1 picture of a room we had was the room this customer stayed in, clearly marked as a room with period furniture. Tripadvisor wouldn't publish it as linked to the website.
At least on here and the other one I have a free response if I choose to take it. As for tripadvisor, it's good if you want a laugh but I wouldn't use it seriously.
Strongers
11-09-2010, 20:44
The whole point of review sites is for people to give their own personal views and a statement on most sites states 'this site holds no responsibility for the opinions blah blah blah'. When it comes to someone bringing legal proceedings to the table I think that if the website is oblivious to any problems there shouldn't be a problem in the eyes of the law, but if they have been informed about an untruthful comment and not acted upon it then I think that they should be held to account.
I'm not sure how this is enforceable, but if someone threatened legal action against the site for something I had written I would hope that I would be asked if I will stand by my comments, which I would! Maybe it is not worth the effort and the comment should be deleted, but then we all may as well stop commenting and find something else to do.
I no nothing of this type of law and imagine that my views are nonsense as most of the bile that goes on in a courtroom doesn't really make any sense to anyone but the few chosen ones - Wouldn't want us representing ourselves and managing to prove our innocence without paying top dollar to some smarmy git that hates us.
Evil Gazebo
11-09-2010, 21:03
John Walsh in today’s Independent
TripAdvisor does its best to plead fair play in its assessments. They're prefaced on the website by the words "Reviews you can trust," and every one is followed by the rubric, "This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member, and not of TripAdvisor LLC." None of which reassures you that you're reading the words of a wholly disinterested party.
So, it's no wonder that several hotels and restaurants which have been rubbished by anonymous reviewers on the TripAdvisor site are seeking some form of retaliation.
I'm afraid they're doomed to failure. Even if they discover that some adverse reviews have been posted by rival restaurants, it's hard to see what legal redress they're entitled to.
Which kind of sums up my feelings. So long as TripAdvisor manages the more lunatic element of posters sensibly, it’s difficult to see this threatened action having any success. I’m not sure it’ll even go ahead, there are too many uses of words like ‘could’ and ‘indicate they might’. Short of sending out some huge task-force to police the entire internet, the tens of thousands of online review sites are here to stay. I can’t see TripAdvisor being the tiniest bit worried by this.
Companies which leave blatantly libellous and offensive comments about people’s businesses on their website, despite being repeatedly warned about them, however…
Oggwyn Trench
11-09-2010, 21:14
If i am going somewhere new i will use the review sites (tripadvisor , holiday watchdog , holidays revealed etc) if an hotel has 90% good reviews i tend to ignore the bad ones , a hotel we stay in on Zante has one bad review on Tripadvisor , the main complaint is that the barman is English and a Northener , the hotel is one of the best we have stayed in , in Greece and Mick the barman is from Derby, in the Midlands last time i looked , so take the reviews with a pinch of salt , everybody has there predjuces
The whole point of review sites is for people to give their own personal views and a statement on most sites states 'this site holds no responsibility for the opinions blah blah blah'. When it comes to someone bringing legal proceedings to the table I think that if the website is oblivious to any problems there shouldn't be a problem in the eyes of the law, but if they have been informed about an untruthful comment and not acted upon it then I think that they should be held to account.
The only case law we know about on this in the UK relates to Demon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_v_Demon_Internet_Service), where they failed to remove a forged post from a newsgroup and just left it for the 10 day expiry to hit and were held liable. Which is frankly against all sanity given that they would have only been hosting a mirror of the newsgroup due to the nature of Usenet. So I would put no confidence in the courts reaching a sane assessment.
Which kind of sums up my feelings. So long as TripAdvisor manages the more lunatic element of posters sensibly, it’s difficult to see this threatened action having any success.
Assuming the firm mentioned in the Mail article signs all they want to and that the story is true, they are starting with £170,000 battle pot before they even get going. There is no way in hell we could raise that sort of money, and I doubt even if we get the site as successful as we hope we would be able to mount a relevant defence against that. Whilst tripadvisor is presumably earning good money, it is still an unenviable position to be put in.
Strongers
11-09-2010, 23:38
Assuming the firm mentioned in the Mail article signs all they want to and that the story is true, they are starting with £170,000 battle pot before they even get going. There is no way in hell we could raise that sort of money, and I doubt even if we get the site as successful as we hope we would be able to mount a relevant defence against that. Whilst tripadvisor is presumably earning good money, it is still an unenviable position to be put in.
If the doom mongers are to be believed the british pub industry couldn't muster up £17 let alone £170,000.... Just don't p*ss of Mr JDW!... They've always been my favourite chain and I never walk past one without spending all of my disposable income in their unique pubs that are fully tailored towards my drinking needs - They should be renamed Wetherladels as that is how I like my gravy delivered.:whistle:
I think the law firm will raise it if the story is genuine, probably why they are going for hotels rather than pubs though :)
Sorry if I seem overly passionate on this one, partly it is because I hate ambulance chasers. But mostly we have a nice site here that I would like to grow and I live in fear of this sort of legal case forcing us to just kill the site. It is not difficult to see a scenario where we get destroyed by a relatively small legal case, so I would rather it doesn't come into fashion.
I live in fear of this sort of legal case forcing us to just kill the site. It is not difficult to see a scenario where we get destroyed by a relatively small legal case, so I would rather it doesn't come into fashion.
bloody hope not, I've spent several hours today uploading photos!!
Well hopefully Strongers will be right and common sense will win through. In that respect this may prove a useful test case that makes a sensible law.
Regardless, I can't see it going wrong through anyone's efforts here, you are regularly reporting reviews and making us think about whether they are valid, and in most cases we remove them which is hugely useful and clearly different to many other places.
I've never used the Tripadvisor site myself, have any of you?
I do use Tripadvisor but not to choose a hotel, more to double check a choice I’ve already made. It’s the site with the most coverage and the most reviews so I tend to have a look just to see what people have said about a certain place. It’s much the same way, and for the same reasons, as I still use BITE now and again :o You can generally tell those reviewers with a personal axe to grind and they stick out even more if they are just one within a number of positive or neutral reviews.
I think Tripadvisor only has itself to blame as it has rather courted this bad publicity. As the article says they have taken to e-mailing newsletters to members highlighting not only the Top 10 destinations, hotels etc., but the worst. This was bound to lead to trouble, especially if they have based this on the members reviews rather than any independent research carried out themselves.
For my own travel writings I dabbled with Globosapiens (http://www.globosapiens.net/) for a while but found that a bit serious. The main site that I’ve used, and which holds a number of my musings on visits to the worlds beer drinking capitals, is one called Virtual Tourist (http://www.virtualtourist.com/). In my opinion it’s one of the friendliest around, it has some great forums and loads of good information. You can also build your own ‘website‘ within it with pages and tips relating to specific destinations. Even being technologically challenged I found it very easy to use and create pages as it uses it’s own VTML code which is, I think, a more simplistic version of HTML.
I did rather fall out of love with Virtual Tourist though when, a couple of years ago, it was bought out by ..... Tripadvisor :rolleyes: so I haven't used it for maybe a year. Whilst it has still retained it’s community feel the Tripadvisor influence can certainly be seen in the advertising and other commercial aspects. It would be a bit like PuG being bought out by BITE :eek: and there are similar comparisons to be made. Whilst I will visit Tripadvisor & BITE for information I consider Virtual Tourist & PuG to be ‘home’ :love:
Strongers
12-09-2010, 06:57
It would be a bit like PuG being bought out by BITE :eek:
NOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't worry Steve, if you recall the Companies House discussion I don't think a takeover is likely anytime soon...:cheers:
I have used Tripadvisor to check out places I am staying, and have found it useful, for instance warning that the front bedrooms of a well known national chain hotel in St Austell [not naming it here Conrad, sleep easy] faced onto the car park of a burger chain & all local chavs raced around in their cars
I stayed there, but asked, & and got, a bedroom at the back
I have generally found the reviews to be a fair, and the few I have posted on there I have tried to be fair as I do with the pubs
I find it slightly annoying that hotels / pubs believe a good review but mainly seem to think a bad one is some nutter out to get them instead of an honest reflection of the poor service, beer, dirty room etc that a paying customer experienced
I found this disclaimer on a site earlier today:
IMPORTANT: Read this first.
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If you do not have a sense of humour, for example if you have got this far already without laughing, please go away and don't come back. I don't like you, and you probably don't like me. This is not my problem, it is yours (and the people's around you).
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Don't know how it would work with the lawyers, though...
gillhalfpint
12-09-2010, 20:16
Love the disclaimer. Sounds like something Brewdog might put on the back of their bottles!!
Re BITE. I remember a lot of trouble caused when some folks disagreed with the Top 20 pub lists as in "Why is that pub there?" kind of thing. There will always be disagreements, because after all, our reviews are different according to our expectations.
I had money refunded today for the Wetherspoons carvery that I ate at 4pm as the veg were all cold and sad.
Someone a couple of hours earlier could have praised it to high heaven. Hot it would have been a marvellous carvery.
Strongers
12-09-2010, 21:37
Is that cretin with short man syndrome now working for tripadvisor?:D
trainman
17-09-2010, 22:23
I've used tripadvisor in the past, usually to check views on a possible hotel, rather than search for one directly.
Did anyone else hear the debate regarding the group action today on radio2? Was really more about the type of stuff they get on tripadvisor and pundits, as well as some hoteliers, suggesting (as we all know with pub review sites) to take an overall view & not be swayed by some troll going against the general flow. The first telephone guest (hotelier) spoke about action he was taking against a tripadvisor reviewer, rather than the site, so he had managed to identify a defamatory culprit from his end.
Following talk of national PG exposure earlier this week, I was almost tempted to phone in to explain the pitfalls of unmoderated sites, and the benefits of well regulated ones...
Oggwyn Trench
18-09-2010, 17:30
I've used tripadvisor in the past, usually to check views on a possible hotel, rather than search for one directly.
Did anyone else hear the debate regarding the group action today on radio2? Was really more about the type of stuff they get on tripadvisor and pundits, as well as some hoteliers, suggesting (as we all know with pub review sites) to take an overall view & not be swayed by some troll going against the general flow. The first telephone guest (hotelier) spoke about action he was taking against a tripadvisor reviewer, rather than the site, so he had managed to identify a defamatory culprit from his end.
Following talk of national PG exposure earlier this week, I was almost tempted to phone in to explain the pitfalls of unmoderated sites, and the benefits of well regulated ones...
I heard the Radio 2 debate , basically as long as the review is a truthfull representation of your visit (good or bad) and is not malicious and defamotary your OK
I heard the Radio 2 debate , basically as long as the review is a truthfull representation of your visit (good or bad) and is not malicious and defamotary your OK
The way I was always given to understand it is that it is not libel if it is the truth :).
More genuinely though libel is a git of a law as it holds a reverse burden of proof, so once you are being done for libel you have to prove what you said is true, meaning opinion is fair game as that is true. Suggestions of illness or food poisoning however are difficult to prove unless you visited a Doctor or reported it to Environmental Health.
Going beyond that, whilst I might feel able to ask regular contributors if they were willing to stand by their comments, I have no faith that the one drop complainer who doesn't use their real name is going to be willing to support their statements.
Maldenman
19-09-2010, 09:55
Possibly one to look at considering this thread.
http://www.pubsgalore.co.uk/userinfo.php?name=Natalie+Cardwell
We don't need this thread to know those should be deleted :)
Thanks for bringing that to our attention, both reviews now gone.
Given the recent publicity, I'm surprised that Tripadvisor think that this 'promotion' is a good idea:
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/DirtyHotels
Given the recent publicity, I'm surprised that Tripadvisor think that this 'promotion' is a good idea:
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/DirtyHotels
The photos do not lie though, I liked the ones with "dirty" writen in the dirt on a door, [like "clean me" on the back of a lorry] and the wires hanging from a ceiling
http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/article/89626
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