Italian Court Throws Out TripAdvisor Fine Over Bad Reviews 37
jfruh writes: TripAdvisor had been fined half a million euros in Italy for publishing "misleading" information in its reviews. But now an Italian court has thrown out that punishment, saying that the site clearly states that the reviews are user-submitted and that TripAdvisor can't confirm all details. In a statement the company said the court's decision, "confirmed what we always knew: that TripAdvisor is a hugely valuable and reliable resource.”
Is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody is saying it's not valuable... (Score:2)
Re: Nobody is saying it's not valuable... (Score:1)
You want to get fined for posting that a shifty hotel is shifty?
Re: (Score:3)
You know, sometimes businesses give you shitty service. In which case nobody is holding their reputation hostage, they've have earned a lousy reputation through bad service.
Usually when I travel I look into reviews. When I do travel I mostly rent from owner-rented condos and the like. Give me a great, clean place to stay and I'll give you a good review. Give me a lousy place to stay, not so much.
The trick with travel reviews is you have to read enough of them to understand them, and you also have to get
Reliable? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Simple, come to /.
For example, I can assure you that the Hotel Centro in Rome is one of the finest Hotel I have been to.
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I wonder how difficult it would be to validate the reviews by asking users to submit their hotel receipt (maybe without publishing them).
You can still fake them, but maybe it wouldn't be worth the pain.
Same for all other review-based websites (amazon, etc)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So give them as much credence as the paid positive reviews then? It's gotten to the point that I won't buy anything that doesn't have at least a couple of negative reviews to balance out a product's cheerleaders. Nothing is so perfect that somebody somewhere can't find something wrong with it.
Re: (Score:2)
My mum says I'm perfect. Are you calling her a liar?
So did mine, a half a century ago. Overtime though the warts and blemishes developed so today we just accept each other as being mere humans.
Valuable and reliable? (Score:2)
In a statement the company said the court's decision, "confirmed what we always knew: that TripAdvisor is a hugely valuable and reliable resource.”
TripAdvisor were then called back in and fined €1m for contempt of court.
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I think the idea is that the CEO will have to pay the fines in person instead of the company, but yes :
the reviews are user-submitted and TripAdvisor can't confirm all details
TripAdvisor is a hugely valuable and reliable resource
Does not compute.
Re: (Score:2)
if it wasn't a valuable resource then the hotels wouldn't have bothered suing them for negative reviews.
anyways, which hotels were those? maybe avoid them. frigg, some hotels have tried to pull off the trick of trying to charge persons for posting negative reviews as well. it's all very sketchy.
If I said that Yotel new york is overpriced here - should Yotel be able to sue slashdot? of course not - that's friggin silly.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you need to replace the word valuable with popular here, unless you mean valuable in the strict sense of having monetary value.
Re: (Score:1)
if it wasn't a valuable resource then the hotels wouldn't have bothered suing them for negative reviews.
anyways, which hotels were those? maybe avoid them. frigg, some hotels have tried to pull off the trick of trying to charge persons for posting negative reviews as well. it's all very sketchy.
If I said that Yotel new york is overpriced here - should Yotel be able to sue slashdot? of course not - that's friggin silly.
LOL. "wouldn't have bothered" assumes the courts are valid and fair.
You don't know much about Italian "courts" do you.
It's about grifting, bribes, and grandstanding over there and not a whole lot else.
Re: (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
No, the court said that you weren't liable because you stated up front that your reviews aren't reliable.
Better than Yelp; still sucks. and site is broken (Score:2)
I have some reviews on TripAdvisor. The good: You write a review, they post it, you can look at it. The bad: You write a review of a new restaurant, presumably they call them up just like Yelp and if they don't get money, they don't go in the index. The best restaurant I ate at in Panama (I was there for a month) didn't make the index. Probably went out of business before people even realized it existed... hmm no, I see that they did finally add it, but they didn't use the picture I took or the review I wro
I might also add (Score:2)
I forwarded this message above along to webmaster, pr, and support@tripadvisor.com. webmaster and pr bounced, and support gave an autoreply saying to use the website to contact them. But the website doesn't work, so I can't do that. So, Tripadvisor broke their website, and they don't care. They deserve to fail. Just let them fail.
Re: (Score:2)
The website works just fine. Perhaps you should contact noscript, ghostery, etc and complain their stuff breaks stuff.
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The website works just fine. Perhaps you should contact noscript, ghostery, etc and complain their stuff breaks stuff.
If your site doesn't work when your domain and CDN (and other typicals like jquery) are enabled in noscript and ghostery is turned on then you're probably a festering piece of shit anyway and your site can DIAF.
Re: (Score:2)
Trip Advisor operators and managers are really slack and need to spend some time with real legal advice. From the article "The association cited a recent âoestingâ by the lifestyle magazine Italia a Tavola (Italy at Table), which posted fake reviews of a make-believe restaurant", well, that ain't no sting that is fraud and because it represents the abuse of a computer network, a computer crime as well. So where is the prosecution for that, what hasn't the Trip Advisor team sought to prosecute that
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This has what to do with the conversation?
Re: (Score:2)
You are supposed to register your own business on TripAdvisor. There is no fee for doing so.
Maybe that's true now but when I wrote the review, they explicitly told me that they would review and decide whether the restaurant should be added. If that wasn't true, then they should not have set my expectations incorrectly.
Re: (Score:2)
Things may have changed but I have added a restaurant in the past as part of submitting a review. It didn't take any special magic.