Wrote a bad trip advisor review and the location responded with my full name and called me a liar. WIBU?

[Thefatedarrow]

I had a truly bad stay at a country house hotel in England over Christmas. I was charged £1500 a night for the stay, raised issues as they happened and nothing was resolved. I resorted to writing a trip advisor review when I got home where I gave 2 stars and gave the reasons why. I was not rude or offensive and I did not describe or name anyone in the post. Just talked about the venue and how vast amounts of it is still under construction, the extras they charged for that we were not aware of, the fact that dinner was booked up every night so we had to leave the venue to eat our meals.

my username on trip advisor is from an old gmail account, so it’s a nickname eg bubbles AT gmail.com and I post reviews eg as BubblesWales - ie unidentifiable.

in their response to my review on the site they wrote “dear my full name” - so they had obviously gone on to their records, looked at who stayed in the room and cross checked with the review timing.

they then proceeded to say I had lied about the events of the stay.

AIBU or is it wrong to NAME me in their response?

Is replying with your full name not a breach of data protection?(it is!) if you did not leave the review in your "real" name.

There is no imbalance of power. The hotel has chosen to be a publicly known entity offering services to customers whose right to privacy is enshrined in law.

I completely get that there are customers out there who weaponise reviews and omit key info which would cast a less than favourable light on their complaint. Many businesses have turned their responses to such reviews into an art form of filling in the gaps oh so politely but leaving no doubt that the reviewer was a trouble maker on the take. That's the way to address the issue, not to reveal the reviewer's real identity in a misguided attempt to "restore the balance of power". It's going to backfire on them and badly.

Nope sorry that's crap. One of the fantastic parts of the internet is having quick access to opinions about goods and services. Of course vexatious complaints are mean and borderline bullying but stating facts is fair game. Writing to the hotel is fine but writing a tripadvisor review is much more helpful for the customer and I suspect the most likely to bring about improvement.

I'm travelling to SE Asia next year. I've booked hotels myself. Tbh there's no way i would have felt comfortable doing this without tripadvisor.

Stop making OP feel bad for doing something that she's well within her right to do

This.
And if they are part of a chain of hotels then take it higher, complain to their CEO or equivalent.

Why are you dictating how op spends her money?

This is great news for the food bank, just think how much they will get when OP downsizes to a small flat and does her own cleaning, giving them all of the proceeds plus the amount she would have spent on a cleaner 😇

its not exactly the same thing though @Nicecuppatea2025 , is it? Reviews are reviews, complaints are complaints. The purpose of a review is to give an honest appraisal of the goods or services you got. Places like TA publish reviews for other travellers to make informed decisions. Making a complaint to the hotel is different - yes you can give the company a chance to apologise and make amends, as in your experience. On the other hand, some less reputable companies might use freebies as a way to ‘buy off’ customers so they don’t leave bad reviews, enabling the company to keep getting away with the same shoddy practices with no bad publicity! OP is perfectly entitled to leave an honest review of her stay, whether or not she wanted to make a complaint too.

I also think publishing her name is absolutely inexcusable and a serious breach of GDPR.

Appalling behaviour on their part.

However locally businesses have been destroyed with bad reviews on community forums and I wonder what recourse businesses have when faced with harsh criticism very piblically. A legal route is very expensive and there company would have to prove your lying.

Maybe the hotel thought their only recourse was to make a misguided attempt to shame you publically as a weird form of revenge or as a warning for other potential Bad reviewers? Either way the company has shot itself in the foot.

One question though - should you complain to the company privately and only use trip advisor as a last resort?

How do you know they don't? 🙄

OP addressed issues as they occurred: she didn't wait til the trip was over which is what their usual response is: why didn't you let us know at the time and give us the opportunity to put it right? So she gave them every opportunity to put things right but they didn't. Her review might have then said that there were some issues which she raised, but the hotel resolved them politely and promptly. Unfortunately when you charge that kind of money you have to deliver on the high expectations you set.

OP, for the meals and being unable to eat at the hotel because no tables were available, did the hotel not advise at the time of booking, that if you wanted to dine in the hotel, you would need to reserve a table for your evening meals as they were likely to be fully booked, given it was Christmas? If they didn't say that, again poor show on their part.

I think it must be very tough running a hospitality business at Christmas when people want time off/fall sick/pull sickies and that might explain why they couldn't attend to some of her issues because they were in fact understaffed but it's no excuse to call her a liar and disclose her identity. As others have said, that alone reinforces OP's 2* rating.

Had the same from a local garage who after mot my car left it unlocked on double yellow lines on a main busy road. As I used my maiden name not married name they said it was a made up review and were insulting and rude. The review was removed as it was made up according to them. I won't return to the garage and have told others about their conduct. My review was 2 star like yours saying no problem with mot etc but my car was left unlocked on yellow lines on a busy road after it's mot.

They shouldn't have used your full name so report them!

ICO. Report them. They have no business using your name online like that.

To those saying businesses are having a hard time etc. I have a judgement against Yodel reached in mediation which they haven’t paid, and now I’m having to do more paperwork. Businesses are in it for themselves, and the response they gave OP shows what they are about.

Complaining privately often resorts in being ignored. The business culture of fine print and shoddy service in the UK has resulted in tripadvisor doing very well for themselves.

the problem with a company responding online publically with TA is that the mean score remains the headline measure and people use this when quickly scanning companies. I can see this being devastating for busiinesses.

Maybe we should have a system where a company can demand the right for a review to be taken down unless the reviewer can evidence the points of poor practise? That may give companies protection.

There are laws of libel etc. for good reason but anonymous reviews seem to be a means of avoiding these laws and leave companies in really precarious positions in effect being held at ransom by reviewers (in fact is it illegal for a reviewer to deliberately make a false review in the hope of getting recompense).

Infusion the company in this instance acted absolutely incorrectly but maybe their poor reponse was due to frustration to an online system where companies can be maligned unfairly without due recourse.

Maybe review websites need more regulation?

Do you want me to print your name in full next to your post?

GDPR breach. Report them.

With a very high end hotel a bad review may be really impactful given that you have a very discerning clientele. Reputation management must be really important when you have relatively few people realistically looking at such hotel prices and there is obviously competition. The manager may have wrongly decided that the review was so ranging they were within their rights to attempt public shaming.

I might also mention in your public reply you are reporting them to the ICO for GDPR violation and doxxing. Give it to them. Frankly a firm that does that deserves to go bust.

They've done it to bully you in to removing your review imo. I don't have much experience of writing reviews for Trip Advisor but I'd be approaching the site and asking them to remove the full name/alter it to reflect your posting name as a minimum.

Trip adviser is so annoying (unless it’s changed) in that you can’t reply to a response to your review.

I left a negative review once and they responded to say I was lying and that I was a rival restaurants disgruntled wife! And I couldn’t reply or amend my review etc!

Two years ago we went out for Mother's Day and had lunch at a riverside restaurant. Everything about it was crap - the service, the food, the prices - except the view. I came home and wrote an honest review of it (on Google, I don't do Trip Advisor), giving it 2 stars.

About a year later, I got an email from the Google Reviews Committee (or something like that) saying the restaurant had complained about my review and I had to provide evidence of my experience (they questioned whether I'd ever even been to the restaurant). Given that it was over a year later, I no longer had receipts, HOWEVER, I am a Facebooker and on the day in question I'd come home and had a moan to my FB friends about what a disappointing time we'd had, saying almost exactly the same as I had in the review. There were no photos of the food (as it was shit) but there was a photo of DS2 at the restaurant. I sent a screenshot (with timestamp) and the photo to Google and am delighted to report that my review still stands. There are also a few others up there now that say basically the same thing.

Enter the virtue signallers.

I’m confused by the name thing tbh.
Was is just the email address or your TA username that contained your real name.

My TA username is my real name as I’m prepared to stand up and be counted. Only fair imo

Maybe she should write a new review and mention it and the doxxing. She also can take them to consumer arbitration

https://consumerarbitration.co.uk/how-to-complaint-about-a-hotel/

Isn’t your name on your trip advisor account