Are Tripadvisor reviews verified??

[regular traveller]

have been following item on tweeter, apparently anyone can post a review on Tripadvisor and they are never checked or are they verified that the reviewer has stayed at or visited a hotel or restrauant? How can they declare "get the truth, then go" if anyone can post a review without proof of stay. It seems the only checking that they do is the IP address that the review is sent from, so in essence a very good marketing representative could post a glowing review everytime they take a business trip, email address are easily obtained nowadays. Like wise disgruntled employees, competitors can post very damaging and defaming reviews about places they never stayed at. Or you could get the bored secretary who justs logs on registers picks a place and writes to their hearts content and no one ever checks the validity of the review and the more negative the better for Tripadvisor. THEY PREFER THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THAT THEY GET MORE HITS FROM THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS, So who checks the reviews for truth? for proof of visit ? How can they post a tag line "Get the truth, when they dnt know the truth?? Who is responsible for the site content? What happens when a review is not the truth? No wonder many european places are asking that their properties not be reviewed on tripadvisor, dnt understand why at first, but who wants to be reviewed on a site that is so OPEN TO ABUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[B&B owner]

as a B&B owner I can appreciate the forum, "are tripadvisor reviews verified? and I can tell you the simple answer is NO they are not, it is correct that TA send a link to the email address to verify the IP address from which the review is posted, but with the amount of travel people do, that is a simple thing to overcome, no telephone number is requested, no address and if you do register you are ask to state where you would like your profile to say you are from, so you could be from Paris but click on Timbucktoo and that is what will appear. Tripadvisor have developed an unhealthy approach to the owners & managers of properties and this is why I believe the european properties are specifically asking NOT to be reviewed on Tripadvisor. Many of the really good travel sites who also have booking engines will only allow persons who have made a reservation on their booking engine site leave a review and this is gauranteed a genuine review as they know that the person made the reservation. Regarding what happens if a review is not true, Tripadvisor have deemed themselves Judge & Jury over reviews and they do not accept any documentation from owners to support cases of fake negative reviews by competitors or disgruntled employees, they decide the wording of the response that is posted under the review and if they do not like the response they will not post it, so who decided if the tagline "Get the truth, then go" is true, Tripadvisor decide what they believe is true and then they pass the book onto the reviewer in the event of a claim, by stating that they are not responsible for the site content, if you want the truth from a really good travel site, go to the ones that verify the reviews as being from real travellers and a real traveller will have no problem giving their name postal address, telephone number etc, a proper travel site will have no problem conversing and communicating with the owners and managers and a proper site will encourage people with problems to make contact with owners to resolve problems not encourage them to post anonymous, malicious reviews so that the site continues to get hits on the world wide web thereby making it the no1 travel site. The forum is very true Tripadvisor do NOT verify reviews, it is only a matter of time before we will see tripadvisor hang a reviewer out to dry over a malicious or fake review because they will not be responsible for the literary words of some person and take the brunt of a defamation case. O and by the way, the tripadvisor forums are censored also, many owners and managers are blocked from contributing because when they address the problem of false or fake reviews or suggest that reviews need more verification, such as landline contact, Tripadvisor get tetchy and block them on the system, Hows about that for censorship!!!

[hunkydorkyfan]

used tripadvisor to plan our holiday in 2008 Never Again and I tell you most of the 5* star reviews are fake, or ficiticous stayed at an apartment in cyprus with dozens of 5* reviews and it was a dive and when we returned we did a review that was rejected because it "did not meet the guidelines" have since been told that the negative review was most likely rejected as we booked through Expedia who own Tripadvisor. So I agree it is not a reliable site and should be avoided, and the review we posted was not verified, we did not have to fill in our home address or telephone number, it was optional if we wanted to submit our post code, we are from the UK but we could have cliked that we were from any part of the world. Had staycation in lake district of UK this year and many of the places have notices that they are not listed on Tripadvisor and do not want to be, problems should be brought to attention managment and will be resolved prior to departure, compliments are welcome again to management, saw similar notice in Dublin Ireland in September, so it appears that Tripadvisor is not popular with owners or manager and getting less popular with travellers and all because of their poor business skills.

[brenda]

I know that a lot of genuine people use Tripadvisor and appreciate the reviews and some have become very astute at reading between the lines, however the site is open to abuse and that is being helped by the manner in which Tripadvisor deal with reviews, I know from using the site you are not requested to prove your identidy, you can actually log on and write a review about a place you may never have set foot in, travellers who do not honour their reservations are allowed to post reviews when they are charged for the room/table reservation, and in these reviews they are allowed comment on cleanliness, service etc, this is abusing the owners of properties as most people are made fully aware of the Terms & Conditions of their reservation at time of making the booking and if they did not show up for room/table how can they be aware of service provided or cleanliness, rooms breakfast, dinner etc, this is my opinion is allowing people with a grudge post a review to "get their own back", also Tripadvisor has become a tool with which to beat or blackmail the owners of holiday properties, with people who do not get an upgrade or discount or who cancel within cancellation period threathening to post a review on tripadvisor, this has appeared on many occasions on their own forum and the reply from the support desk is always to post a management response , however why should owners have to defend themselves against people who are to blame in the first instance, and management responses are very very difficult to get posted, I know I have been the victim of one such review where the people did not arrive to occupy a room and when charged wrote a most damning and damaging review about out property, a property that they never set foot in, a private message to them through the TA system was responded to that they could write what they liked and TA stated that they operate in the US and adopt the Freedom of Speech attitude, but that is only for the reviewers and not for the owners to defend themselves, TA refuse to accept any responsibility for the reviews but a Freedom of Information request could very easily see them having to divulge information about the identidy of the reviewer and I think this could see them very embarrased, because when you sign up you are not asked for any home details or landline number , you are asked to click where you would like people to think you are based, not actually where you are, so a certein amount of dishonesty there to start with. Guidelines for the reviews that seek the reviewer to have prove of visit (receipt or photo) available in the event of a dispute should be required, reviewers who did not honor a booking who were aware of terms and conditions of the reservation and if they did not abide by the terms and conditions they should not be allowed to make a damaging wrongful review, marketing people should not be allowed to review the property that they work for, this is a big issue and that is why many places are receiving so many "one off" glowing reviews, with the many varied trips marketing people for big establishments make nowadays the IP address of computers will be constantly changing, I believe that verifying the IP address of the reviewer is not enough, and what it all boils down to is that Tripadvisor is a site that is open to abuse, from begrudgers who do not honor bookings, disgruntled ex employees, competitors and very skilled marketing people, now that they own one of the biggest booking agencies in the world EXPEDIA they should be asking people who have resserved throught that site to review places that they stayed at and then they can be certein that the reviews are from genuine travellers, until they sort it out their creditability is at stake and their popularity is being deminished day by day, I know many of the larger chains and marketing groups are telling thier members to ask that they ask they visitors NOT to use Tripadvisor as the review site they choose to review thier holiday and instead steer them in the direction of some of the other sites that are verified. Would you trust reviews on a site where the reviews are not verified as being from a genuine traveller??

[brenda]

Today I told a few people in the hospitality industry of this forum as I know a lot of annoyed people over the way TA rate properties rankings etc and said to them to get on the site and let the people know how Triapdvisor actually treat owners/managers and most of them are AFRAID to post their opinons here because Triapdvisors punishment for speaking out about them is to block you from the site, then to remove your positive reviews and leave any negative reviews you might have and then they post a WARNING on your listing to state, that you have tried to manipulate the reviews, and all the owner may have been responsible for is protecting their business from very unscruplous people who hide behind the Cloak known as Triapdvisor. Now that is how Tripadvisor treat the owners.managers of the holiday properties. Some owners even believe that Tripadvisor might be responsible for posting negative reviews if they ask questions.

[JJ2009]

Hello to all....We are very tired of Fake Reviews in TA!..:We cannot control all the time cause our business is not checking what "people" write on TA..our job is to make our guest happy.
A question to all...Do you think I can take a lawyer against TA? I mean...In Europe you cannot publish anything that offends someone or you must pay a lot of money but TA published a very offensive comment .

In this comment the anonymous wrote: "xxxxx treated us terribly. He lied to us, stereotyped us, screamed at us, and worst of all - threatned us. It was insane and scary.

xxxxxx cares so much about his reputation, it's a little crazy. You can even find part of his website online where he literally finds every negative review ever written about him, and rebutts the negative points. I'm sure this one will be there soon, and I'm sure he will make up some crazy reasoning like he does with everyone else. "

This is of course totally false and should be considered VERY OFFENSIVE in Europe and for this reason not legal you cannot publish that. In Europe we call it: DEFAMATION....especially if it's made by an ANONYMOUS person...Do you think I should take a Lawyer?

TA accepts this kind of ANONYMOUS comments made by anonymous persons that cannot prove they really stayed in the places (that has a name and an adress...so no anonymous) they reviewed.This is bad I think and not really legal

TA publishes without investigating these type of comments and anytime a hotel or a Guesthouse want to reply...we have a lot of problems cause "we don't follow their Criterias"!!!..WHICH Criterias if they accept this type of offensive comments made by some Anonymous?...We also received some Fake comments by persons that were supposed to be with us in the period of our Seasonal Clousure!!!...We wrote that to TA and TA didn't want to move away the comment!!!...We needed 1 month to demostrate that we were closed!!!...But I mean...they consider more comments made by ANONYMOUS than reply made by HOTELS with NAME and ADRESS!..This is terrible!

What's your advise?
Thanks a lot to all

[JJ2009]

I think we must stop this abuse...this is the reason we are posting that...and anyway now TA asks to the hotels to advertise (of course it's not free) so my question is: If We don't advertise with T.A what happens? Can we lose position and have a bad rating?... We are not afraid cause we know how we work and the Guests can understand what's good and what's bad...but we are against this monopole that now is becoming dangerous for Hotels and Customers too cause they won't be able to get any real information...so...we invite the people to contact directly the hotels.


T.A didn't want to publish our reply to the Defamatory Comment cause it "didn't respect the criteria"!!!...Which Criterias if they publish Defamatory comments made by Anonymous and don't publish the replies made by the Official Hotels.

This is what we answered to T.A.

DEFAMATION COMPLAINT:

Dear T.A.

We don’t know which criteria you use to publish the reviews made by Anonymous people that of course didn’t prove that stayed in the places they commented.

The comment made was DEFAMATORY and we are disturbed that TA. would fail to notice this fact, specifically, that to say Mr Giorgio engaged in "stereotyping" is tantamount to calling him "a racist", and it is unacceptable that TA would print such unedited comments, both in the interest of keeping your website free of inappropriate content, but more, to avoid being dragged into a defamation suit in multiple jurisdictions.

We want you move away that offensive comment made by an Anonymous that didn't even prove his/her stay at Giorgio's House

You cannot understand how you published this thype of comment: “I'm sure he will make up some crazy reasoning like he does with everyone else. Giorgio cares so much about his reputation, it's a little crazy. Giorgio treated us terribly. He lied to us, stereotyped us, screamed at us, and worst of all - threatned us. It was insane and scary”

Regards and good luck to all the good Hotels in the world

Giorgio’s House Palermo
Italy

[madgarli]

Hi guys,
I don't think tripadvisor is not good website because if you write some thing wrong on tripadvisor website or hotel owner, friends or relative of them write to support for them. It is impossible because tripadvisor administration is always responsible for this and they never post this kind of posting on website. I think it is true

[LunaBlue]

We've had this issue with Tripadvisor for awhile. Our most recent beef with them is a phony bad review which they won't remove, but they won't post our management response, either. It has been 3 weeks of constant emails that have been ignored, and nothing has happened.

Before that we disputed a review where the reviewer broke two of TA's rules (no defamatory content and no direct quotes from emails). Not only did TA refuse to remove the review, but every time we wrote a management response it was rejected. Why? Because we quoted directly from an email and they said that what we wanted to say was defamatory! Amazing. It's okay for the reviewer to break the rules, but not the hotel.

It's all about money for TA. What used to be a really great site is now just a site based on greed and money. It's too bad, really, because eventually another webiste will come along and do these things right, and TA will be sorry when they lose all their market popularity.

Tony & Cheri
Luna Blue Hotel & Bar
Playa del Carmen, Mexico

[aimhigh]

I think they should take care this matter. I have been reading negative reports about Trip advisor website, and it may lead their site to shut down and their business to doom.