There is an article on the BBC website today about how up to 700 hotel owners are planning to sue the Trip Advisor website claiming they are the victims of unfair reviews. Many people, like me, use this site before they book a holiday. I don't always respond to the reviews the way I'm expected to respond by the reviewer though. I've found one negative review in a string of wholly positive ones which I've disregarded assuming the reviewer had another agenda. Arriving at the resort I discovered the positive reviews were the correct ones. I've also booked hotels because what the reviewer doesn't like is what I want.
The internet has made us all critics. We can now blog and leave testimonials on many sites. In fact thebestofmaidenhead is designed to promote the best businesses based on Testimonials received about them. The majority of content on the internet is completely unmonitored and people can and do write completely untrue things that can damage a person's or businesses reputation. The main criticism of sites such as Tripadvisor, it is the most prominent site of it's kind, is that negative reviews can be left by a competitor, a former employee with a grievance or someone else with a grudge.
The testimonials you read on thebestofmaidenhead are written by real people and checked by the team before they are posted. 99.9% of the time we happily post glowing testimonials about our featured businesses. So what do we do when they aren't so great? We speak to the business to find out more and then we contact the person who left the testimonial. We don't publish negative comments about businesses but we do keep a record of the less than complimentary comments. In case you think that only posting good testimonials is misleading we will act on them if it is appropriate. If we were to receive too many bad comments about the same business we would remove them from the site. Thankfully this has never happened.
Why don't you help us tell people about Maidenhead's great businesses by either writing a testimonial for one of our members or telling us about someone we don't know about.