The Spielers treated a lot of people badly, and TripAdvisor’s reaction is to simply ignore that and let more people get shafted by their new business.  I used to recommend this site.  Now hell will freeze over before I send someone to look at it, because their reviews are only as trustworthy as their weakest-kneed administrator.  If a site’s only response to legal threats from the worst hoteliers and tourist traps is removing honest reviews, how can they possibly be trusted to have anything but puff pieces?

http://cebusandman.typepad.com/blog/2011/06/tripadvisor-reviews-are-censored-be-aware-that-real-complaints-issues-problems-etc-by-travellers-are.html

The owner did write a very detailed rebuttal which made me wish that I had provided more details in my review. She very much exaggerated the truth, because it contradicted the conversation she and I had before I left the hotel.

I guess she was not happy with her rebuttal because the entire review is now gone. Now it makes sense what happened to me years ago. I traveled to Miami, stayed at a place that seemed okay after checking TA’s reviews. The place was a nightmare. Because we arrived late at night, we were forced to stay the night. The next morning, we checked out and walked around in the rain with out luggage to find some place else to stay. I could not believe that the reviews on TA did not reflect the truth about this place.

I’ll never use TA again.

Now when you consider that Barry Diller (Billionaire) owns both companies and that the former Tripadvisor CEO is now head of Expedia. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure something shabby is going on.

You can figure this out by looking at, lets say, a 400 room hotel that might have 100 reviews and then a 80 room hotel that has 150 reviews.

Obviously the 400 room hotel gives Expedia more money in commissions and has more pull. I have seen whole blocks of reviews disappear over 24 hours.

The reason Tripadvisor has no contact tel # is so that they get to control everything.

Isn’t it interesting that a company that is about improving so called communications does not provides anything to, their customers (Via Expedia), the hotels that pay them.

Barry did not get to be a billionaire for no reason. He is a predator of the highest degree as most people know.

Now would it not be rational to make sure that the person making the review actually stayed at the hotel in question. This can be done very simply. Hotel.com will not post unless they know for sure.
Expedia could confirm this to Tripadvisor as they are owned by the same organization. They will not do it because it takes the control away from Tripadvisor. Some hotels are owned by the tripadvisors parent company.
Shame, Shame, Shame!

You hotel guys are sitting ducks for him. My suggestion is form a Class Action / get a high power law firm.

How is it that a company without a dime in mortar and bricks controls your hospitality industry. They are very smart. Get smarter or perish.

I’m really wondering about Tripadvisor’s system now.

And for someone to blast him for steering his friends away from a car dealer because of an issue he had with them, that makes no sense. Sounds like someone looking for something to bitch about. I would be thanking him.

Similarly, I’m a little skeptical of the gushing all-positive review.

Mr. Leon said he was “very, very detailed” about his experience. In an all-negative review, that puts me way off.

Like many people in these forums I have traveled very extensively – and in an earlier career was a hotel manager – and I know full well that no property is all bad or all good.

As an earlier story about a “fake” review that after I contacted the reviewer, he posted to say he was real, this one again ends out being a non-issue. The original review had VERY condescending language.

Also, Mark, for your information “rock hard” is and adjective and is an OPINION. (Unless you’ve slept on Chinese beds, don’t get me started) AND “SAWING THROUGH THE GRISTLE” you mean she used a REAL saw to cut the meat? Since “sawing” means to cut with a saw.

Yea, all fact huh?

So it took a few days for TA to get back to him. It’s a FREE WEBSITE – they have no obligation to us, other than to be fair and honest in what they put out there for the public to read. That’s where I disagree with you: we are not entitled to “customer service” from them! We are not paying them for their service – we’re not customers! So we have no right to expect hand-holding, or specific turn-around times. We can wish for it, and we can complain when we don’t think they’re fast enough. But to write to a travel ombudsman about a few days delay in a response? From a free website? Isn’t that being a bit…well…whiney?

What’s WORSE, however — far worse — is that this truly trivial incident of a rejected review and lack of a fast-enough response has resulted in a big fat headline on a couple of widely-read travel sites suggesting that TA is “censoring negative reveiws”. There is nothing – ZERO – in what happened between Mark and TA to suggest that. Not one thing. Nor is there anything to suggest they “cherry-pick”, as Mark stated in the article.

Regarding communicating their rules “before the fact: Did I read the entire FAQ on TA before I submitted my first review? Heck no. I did skim it so I’d get a feel for what’s acceptable, and it jumped out at me that I should leave out any comments about prior reviewers. The review sections is not a message forum – they don’t want the kind of back-and-forth and flame wars that happen on message forums.

Are their guidelines a little ambiguous? Sure. The very nature of it dictates that – it’s based on human judgement of opinions. Can’t get more ambiguous than that. There are likely a number of different moderators, who all may interpret the guidelines slightly differently, so that one might reject something that another would accept. That’s just human nature. But in my opinion, after reading Mark’s original review, not a single TA moderator would have passed that one through. It blatantly violated the rules.

Obviously the positive review didn’t raise any red flags, so it was posted quickly. And once he removed the offensive content, his negative review was posted promptly as well. Had he included similar, direct-to-prior-reviewers comments in his positive review, I’m sure it would have been held up as well. Again: no conspiracy. Just the standard process.

So, in the end, the WHOLE POINT of this article is that he felt they didn’t get back to him very fast. Maybe they were busy. Is that really worthy of all this bruhaha, accusations of censoring and cherry-picking, and sturm-und-drang?

Like I said – much ado about nothing.