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?

@limegreenheart
Another Mallory Towers reader? Poor Gwendoline. She’d be horrified to be so disrespected.

Yes, guilty! Although more of a watcher (of the BBC series) than a reader at the moment. Of course, Gwendoline would be horrified! Even leaving aside the inappropriate familiarities, surely everyone knows that it's Gwendoline Mary Lacey!!

I hope the OP found some solace in the advice here and some satisfaction in approaching TripAdvisor if she did decide to follow up; it's horrible feeling when your privacy's been breached.

You can red flag it and report it to trust pilot

Helpful🙄

Yes it is wrong to name you, play them at their game, now put the boot in and brutally honest!

Go out now, sell all the outfits you gave except one, give all the books you have to charity, downsize your house if you have one and give away the proceeds. Because I instruct you to.

Stupid comment, eh?

Submit a complaint to the Information Commissioner about the hotel’s breach of GDPR by using your name on Tripadvisor and linking your name to the complaint. Look at the Information Commissioner's website and you will see how to submit a complaint.

Write to whomever is the MD/CEP of the company that own the hotel and put in a complaint about GDPR.

I think they have broken GDPR regs and you could possibly take legal action. You would need to seek some advice.

Do this, but also take a screenshot and complaint to the ICO. It's easy to do.

Oh bless you you sound very patient and youve done everything right. They’re bastards. I’d pursue however you can and try to get that money back.

This is surely GDPR.

At this point you could have said anything, what you said is irrelevant, they broke GDPR..

I don't agree with the owners doing what they did.

And whilst I'm not a business owner, I can imagine how damaging it is. Your point about have you spoken to them first, sticks, because I do think if you're going to post a 2 star review, you should have allowed said place to put it right, before in essence, publicly shaming their faults, I.e. communicate the problems.

It's a bit like eating a full meal, and, then at the very end complaining......

Though, two wrongs, don't make a right, and sharing confidential information is a big fat no.

The world. It is so easy to hide in the written review and vent, when most of us probably wouldn't have the balls to say it to someone's face. I really do think it's down to the type of world we live in.

I am of the opinion, we should put as much energy in to compliment a business too.

Though, I do think if you're going to give such a poor review the onus is on the disappointed customer to bring it up there and then.

When you pay and they ask if everything was OK, and you nod and say yes, then go home and write a 2 review. The experience might be worth 2 but most reasonable business (I reckon) would want/deserves the chance to put it right before a gaming review.

The fact the business has breached GDPR is the most important though.

In OPs case they did bring it up there and then and things weren’t resolved. Let face it, this is what happens a lot of the time.

But either way I don’t think the onus is on the customer to make a complaint at any stage.

It can be stressful to some to make an in-person complaint, because the fact is a lot of the time staff are very dismissive or hostile which just leaves people feeling worse.

I had so many issues with a driving instructor and I chose to end the lessons and write the review. I’m glad I did because I learned via trustpilot while writing my own review that another learner driver who had challenged him was shouted at and he kicked off etc and she had to just leave the lesson. That kind of experience would’ve shaken me up.

That specific scenario aside you’re a customer, you’ve paid for something and if it’s not up to scratch it’s perfectly acceptable to go straight to writing up a review on it and letting people know that’s what happened. You don’t need to give businesses a “chance” , especially when often the ‘error’ they’ve made is obvious and they’re clearly well aware of it. If they were that decent or reasonable they’d apologise and rectify the ‘mistake’ off their own bat.

If you choose to give them a chance to address it first, and then choose not to warn other potential customers of what happened, that’s equally okay too. Personally for me it does depend on various things but normally I feel it’s important to let others know.

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!

This exactly. To use my driving instructor example, that learner (and a few others) reviewed them several months before I started my lessons.

The driving schools reply to her on was “you should’ve raised it at the time” but months after she and others had left reviews on him , the same instructor was still working for them and doing the same things to me and other learner drivers, despite the fact they clearly had notice of his problematic teaching practices by then.

I hope that other people see our reviews and don’t make the mistake we did of signing up to that driving instructor. So we did others a favour by making them aware. I care about that more than giving a large profit making companies a chance to waste people’s money.

If companies really want to improve ,
they should just take in what has been said and do better with future customers, instead of all this fake angst about “why didn’t you tell us”

> you should have allowed said place to put it right,
OP said they told them during the stay of the problems, that were not fixed

Here we go 🙄

Total breach of GDPR putting personal details on public site. They could be fined thousands for it. Report them ico.org.uk/for-organisations/report-a-breach/

I wrote a terrible review for a small hotel in Headingley/Leeds. I arrived at 3am and was gone by 10am. It was shockingly poor. Likened it to Faulty Towers, they replied publically with a response that did nothing to improve their credibility. If I read the exchange I would not have booked after that. I reported to TripAdvisor and a big online company I booked via. The same bookings company helped me find new accommodation immediately.