TripAdvisor Delete property review with no explanation Needham Massachusetts
Like thousands of people, I depend on TripAdvisor to determine if a particular property (Hotel or Bed & Breakfast Inn) is a quality place to visit. I trusted the reviews that I was able to read online, until recently, and I will explain. I was searching for a great bed and breakfast inn in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and I found the Foxtrot Bed and Breakfast Inn, looked very nice in the TripAdvisor presentation so I checked the reviews, lots of great positive reviews, and what, only about 3 poor reviews, and they were old, July 2008, January 2012, and December 2013, so the inn must be great, right, WRONG. We stayed two days there and found that the very low rated TripAdvisor reviews were much more accurate that the highly rated reviews, and there were so few of the poor ones, burried at the bottom of the stack? I found out the hard way that negative reviews are simply taken OFF TripAdvisor and they are so clever in the way they delete negative reviews.
My review of the Foxtrot Inn in Gatlinburg was well written, very accurate, very detailed, had no obsene language, a very well thought out review and yet it would post and be almost immediately taken off the site. Both me and my friend called TripAdvior, and emailed TripAdvior repeatedly about our reviews being taken off the site or not published, and their system is about as frustrating as they can possibly make it. They will speak to you on the phone at their 866 322-5942 telephone number, but they WILL NOT tell you why your review was published and later taken down OR not published at all. If you tell them you have checked your review and as far as you know, you have easily met all their criteria, and if you have missed something, please just let you know what they object to and you will gladly remove it or reword, however, they WILL NOT tell you WHY they do not publish your review or remove your review, no information at all, here is exactly what you will receive from TripAdvior (the way that we process reviews is proprietary, so I am not able to offer details about exactly how your reviews are not published, nor am I able to publish them).
When you call TripAdvisor at the 866 322-5942 number the customer service person will not tell you anything, but says she will send a message to the content integrity team who will get back to you in 72 hours only by email, and they will tell you WHY your review is either not being published or being published and then taken down, but this is not the case, they will not tell you anything. It was also mentioned the innkeeper "could" have something to do with the reviews being deleted, COULD, come on, you think!!
Using the language that TripAdvisor uses, as shown above, there is really no way to ever determine WHY they are not publishing a review, they cover their bases beautifully, and they blocked my well written but negative review of the Foxtrot Inn very effectively and continue to do so. If I try to reinsert my review I get a pop up that says, you have already written a review on this property, and it will not let you proceed. It is very clear TripAdvior skillfully and carefully controls all negitive reviews, and it is so evident on this property we visited, as a result of the overwhelming TripAdvior positive reviews compared to the very few and very old (3) negative reviews, which were totally and completely accurate and exactly what we experienced, my gosh, it seems like even reviews cannot be trusted. I was certainly shut down by TripAdvisor, and my review was very detiled. If they completely control and delete the negative reviews they choose to delete, how can any traveler get an accurate picture, yes that is correct YOU CANNOT! I trust you will remember that the next time you place your faith in the reviews on TripAdvior! They let you see what they want you to see, I found that out the hard way.