Black listed pubs

[Strongers]

This is a question for Conrad about black listed pubs as I was looking through an old thread and the point was made that if a disgruntled landlord kicked up a fuss about a seemingly relevant, but negative, review the pub would be deleted from the site rather than the review from the pub. Is this still done and if so how many pubs are there that are not allowed to be added?

[Conrad]

I probably shouldn't have commented on that as we don't want to encourage pubs that this is a solution.

To answer the question though, we have 6 pubs in the blacklist system.

The one that prompted the system to be built 3 years ago by spending a day phoning us explaining how he would litigate if we didn't get the page removed from the Google cache (a complete arsehole, and the review which explained how rude he was seemed fairly believable to me) is now under new ownership. Was quite funny the fourth time he phoned up and threatened us with action and I pointed out that he had already promised action in the last phone call so it was a little hollow, he then explained how he hadn't promised action in the prior call .

Another is under new management.

2 more are closed (one of those however I would say the blacklisting was more our fault than theirs).

1 appears to be going strong.

And 1 is a cafe we got in a tiff with and blacklisted because it was more hassle than it was worth given they were a cafe.

[Strongers]

So out of 5, I won't count the cafe, only one has the same management? If you find out a pub management has changed is the pub removed from the blacklist?

[Conrad]

I guess we should, not really something we have ever addressed. We only bothered to investigate out of curiosity from your request.

I think if it has changed management then it is fair game to re-add.

Closed is a little more complicated, if the listing was being genuinely vandalised is it fair to the last owners to have their name potentially re-tarnished, could be insult after injury.

You can still add them I think, it is just we get a dirty great warning on our screen when we come to approve them, so I guess we will consider it as you stumble upon them.

Saying that I just remembered that the arsehole I mentioned actually tried to re-add his pub with a good review a month after having his yelling fits down the phone (you may gather I really despised this individual).

[Strongers]

Cheers for taking the time to answer... I can imagine the hassle is sometimes not worth the pub being listed. As you say, it seems a little foolish to me that any gov would want his pub taken off a site offering free advertising - Some people eh!

[Conrad]

A pleasure to answer, it is interesting to hear other peoples perspective.

In terms of the sense of asking for a removal by a landlord, whilst it is easy to gloat about those closure stats amongst the ones we have blacklisted, I do think it illustrates that their mindset isn't a great one to take.

We are remarkably relaxed about allowing reviews to be removed and I think in all of the ones blacklisted we were comfortable to remove the reviews, the trouble came where they then also seemed to want their pound of flesh rather than just following up with some positive action.