Your site has no check & balance system you post anything that anyone writes without regard to the business credibility never checking to validate that the party has ever been/stayed/shopped prior at the parties business. I feel so sorry for consumers' that relay on your feed back there are companies that can be hired to write reviews you site just a worthless joke! Trust me a fake email address will work!
Jake - 10 years ago
If a hotel cancels your booking for no apparent reason, you'll have a far worse experience than finding a few hairs in the shower, but how will you be able to 'authenticate' your experience?
Richard F - 10 years ago
Reviews of hotels, yes, it could work. Reviews of shops where nothing was purchased (because the shop put the purchaser off) or an attraction that was not experienced (e.g. a zipline where the staff had a lackadaisical attitude to safety enough to put someone off - unlikely, but this is about the principle). Would we seriously expect someone to go through a bad experience simply so that they could make a comment? I really hope not. I've been in a store where a customer was being harassed to make a purchase and harangued when they didn't. If I had remembered the name of the place when I arrived back in the UK, you can bet I'd have done a review even though I walked out before I even engaged with the staff. I'd never seen anything like it and I hope I never see anything similar in future.
Terry - 12 years ago
Everyone who voted yes might like to consider how verifying a stay would work in practice and also be achievable at anything less than huge cost.
Little beach bar in costa rica you visited? B&b you paid for in cash? Hotel that you took a partner to and you paid but they wish to leave a review? Lost the receipt? Then let's not forget all those people not exactly computer whizz kids. Got a scanner? Know how to add attachments to email?
Then, who amongst the army of people now working for TA will check that the scanned image isn't a fake? That hotel in china, who will decide if it's for the correct hotel and isn't anyway something someone mocked up on their computer? Something that the owner can do very easily, so this in no way addresses the issue of fake good reviews by owners surely a far larger issue than fakes by people who weren't customers.
And after all that, even if it's 100% guaranteed you stayed there, that doesn't show that what you wrote is correct! Perhaps you had an argument over the price, or they charged you shen you left early, so instead of saying that, you say there were bedbugs.
This a simplistic sounding easy to achieve solution that in practice is neither simple nor solves the problem.
Though Trip Advisors catastrophic foray into sound bite pointless "ratings" certainly exacerbates any problem there is. Bullet, meet foot.
DanteA - 12 years ago
Try this simple test. Think of a few hotels or restaurants that you know very well. Go to TripAdvisor and examine the reviews. Do the reviews in general provide an accurate description of what you experienced at those places? When I do this, the answer is a resounding, "yes!". Try it.
Your site has no check & balance system you post anything that anyone writes without regard to the business credibility never checking to validate that the party has ever been/stayed/shopped prior at the parties business. I feel so sorry for consumers' that relay on your feed back there are companies that can be hired to write reviews you site just a worthless joke! Trust me a fake email address will work!
If a hotel cancels your booking for no apparent reason, you'll have a far worse experience than finding a few hairs in the shower, but how will you be able to 'authenticate' your experience?
Reviews of hotels, yes, it could work. Reviews of shops where nothing was purchased (because the shop put the purchaser off) or an attraction that was not experienced (e.g. a zipline where the staff had a lackadaisical attitude to safety enough to put someone off - unlikely, but this is about the principle). Would we seriously expect someone to go through a bad experience simply so that they could make a comment? I really hope not. I've been in a store where a customer was being harassed to make a purchase and harangued when they didn't. If I had remembered the name of the place when I arrived back in the UK, you can bet I'd have done a review even though I walked out before I even engaged with the staff. I'd never seen anything like it and I hope I never see anything similar in future.
Everyone who voted yes might like to consider how verifying a stay would work in practice and also be achievable at anything less than huge cost.
Little beach bar in costa rica you visited? B&b you paid for in cash? Hotel that you took a partner to and you paid but they wish to leave a review? Lost the receipt? Then let's not forget all those people not exactly computer whizz kids. Got a scanner? Know how to add attachments to email?
Then, who amongst the army of people now working for TA will check that the scanned image isn't a fake? That hotel in china, who will decide if it's for the correct hotel and isn't anyway something someone mocked up on their computer? Something that the owner can do very easily, so this in no way addresses the issue of fake good reviews by owners surely a far larger issue than fakes by people who weren't customers.
And after all that, even if it's 100% guaranteed you stayed there, that doesn't show that what you wrote is correct! Perhaps you had an argument over the price, or they charged you shen you left early, so instead of saying that, you say there were bedbugs.
This a simplistic sounding easy to achieve solution that in practice is neither simple nor solves the problem.
Though Trip Advisors catastrophic foray into sound bite pointless "ratings" certainly exacerbates any problem there is. Bullet, meet foot.
Try this simple test. Think of a few hotels or restaurants that you know very well. Go to TripAdvisor and examine the reviews. Do the reviews in general provide an accurate description of what you experienced at those places? When I do this, the answer is a resounding, "yes!". Try it.