A friend of mine recently had a bad experience in a restaurant. She and her husband only WENT there because it came highly recommended on a restaurant review site.
So, after complaining at the restaurant and refusing to pay for part of the meal she decided to put her own review on said site.
Today, she received this email:
>Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 16:55:35 +0100
>
>Thank you for your recent review of Gurkha Grill
>
>As you may have noticed, it has not yet appeared on Sugarvine’s Reader
>Recommended section.
>
>
>
>The aim of this section of the site is for people to recommend restaurants
>they have enjoyed to other people — we have tried to make this clear both
>in the title (Reader Recommended) and in the FAQs box (Our policy on Reader
>Recommendations). We don’t post negative reviews for two reasons — legally
>we have been advised we are on unsafe ground posting potentially libelous
>comment unless we have actually visited ourselves and also we have no way of
>differentiating between ‘genuine’ poor reviews and malicious reviews from
>jealous competitors, disgruntled staff etc.
>
>We do, however, forward these reviews to the restaurant concerned,
>explaining that whilst we are not going to publish what has been submitted
>to us, this is legitimate customer comment which they might wish to take on
>board.
>
>
>
>I do hope you will continue to write restaurant recommendations for us.
>
>
>
>Yours,
>
>
>
>
>
>Daniel Coffey
>
>Administrator
>
>Sugarvine
Is it just me that doesn’t get it? You can submit your reviews, but only if they’re good. In which case – what’s the point of the reviews? You don’t get a full picture of what all the customers really thought, you just get the few that thought it was fabulous – which is misleading surely?
Imagine if you could only say great things about anything you ever bought. Imagine if theatre critics could only say good things about the plays they see, or food critics only publish rave reviews for restaurants they’ve finished.
Criticism is an essential part of building a business. How do you change those things that people don’t like if you don’t allow them to criticise? In this age of online reviews and word of mouth marketing, this sort of censorship is not welcomed by anyone I know of.
Come on Sugarvine, there must be a better answer than censorship.
