Thousands of companies subsist on these forums or specialized pages, such as tourism pages (rural tourism, hotels, restaurants, amusement parks and others), price comparison sites, etc. These companies pay these forums or pages to advertise their services so that people can buy and comment on their experience, so that they take into account what other users say about how well, or how regular or how bad the service was provided. Normally the negative comments of the services in this type of forums or websites are between 3% and 4% of the total, but it is enough that in a service there is a negative comment for another user to retract their purchase or not make it.
The Comments are made Anonymously
Normally all these comments that are made on the websites mentioned above, are all accepted unless they include insults, or serious faults. But what do I need to put a comment of a company or a service in these portals? You only need a name (which can be false) and an email (which can also be false). So anyone can put a negative comment or not on an advertised service. But this fact is not taken into account by the companies that advertise the services when the comments are positive, because even they themselves can comment themselves with another name. They only remember this when the comments are negative and they really do too much damage.
Not all negative comments are true, and not all positive ones are true either. Blackmail
With all this have emerged people who, whether or not acquire these services, but through e-mail or in person or by phone, ask the owner of the service a bonus, compensation, discount or free service, or otherwise put devastating negative comments that make users take them into account for that service. Others even go so far as to create negative blogs against that service or that brand. The problem is that these bad and false comments are made anonymously, and users believe them as much as they believe the false positives. And it is not easy for companies to denounce those people or those portals.
If you ask for more mandatory data, the number of comments and visits drops
When you have no obstacles to make a comment on a website, you usually have more chances that this website or portal has many comments. The more mandatory fields there are to make a comment the less there will be and above all fewer visits for those portals and therefore less performance. Therefore it is easy and simple to include notes at the end of this service.
A possible solution: Checker and chip change
First of all, people’s philosophy has to change in terms of not attending to anonymous comments from people who post their opinions anonymously on these portals. The second thing would be to provide a field (not mandatory) where you put a serial number, invoice number or something that proves that that person purchased that service or that product, so that you can make anonymous comments but that users, Internet users or readers understand that if a person has put his invoice number, or a ticket number or something, it is because he really bought the service and his opinion can be taken into account. And if they falsify information, then the owner of the service will have information about this person to take legal action against them.
How to combat this today?
Well, I’m afraid that it is part of the Latin idiosyncrasy, the picaresque that reigns with us for centuries and that in other countries or other cultures does not even cross their minds. If you have false negative comments somewhere you can do the following:
FIRST. By the good ones
Try to talk to the owner of the portal to remove that false comment.
SECOND. The hard way
If in the first way they have not agreed to remove it, it is best to call them your lawyer or receive a buro fax requesting it formally or otherwise you will take legal action against them, because they are directly responsible for everything that happens or what is published on the portal, no matter how many clauses they have in the privacy policy, legal notice or terms and conditions of employment. Normally at this point they will remove the comment. But if they insist that they do not care, they will not remove it….
THIRD. Request the elimination of the offer or the Company
A false negative comment can hurt you a lot. If that offer has 50 comments with very good score and only one negative, even so there are people who can take it into account depending on what that comment says. So the best thing to do is to ask the company to remove the offer and with it all the comments. And if it is a comment to the company itself, then request the withdrawal of the company. If they still do not remove it, then we have two more options:
FOURTH and FIFTH. Pay with the same coin or denounce the company
Here it is optional, and we can do both at the same time. If we want to play the same game, we will write very good comments, others good, but none regular or bad, so that there are many comments, and that negative comment will go lower and lower. And above all what we should do is to denounce the Portal. See a lawyer to denounce the portal so that a judge is the one who forces to remove the comment from your website.
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