Blackmailing local traders (give me free stuff or I'll put a bad review on the EDF)l

[thecaptain]

Good call Admin.....very appropriate.

Sue, please wind your neck in......

thanks.

[Mike Dodd]

I am ill so I can be a twat if I want to be

[Seabag]

Oh dear!

Actually, didn't Meat Liquor have a thing regarding reviews on-line. Someone deliberately complaining to try for a discount, only to stupidly post their 'idea' on social media

[miga]

.

[jimbo1964]

Mostly it's pretty easy to make an informed judgement. However, Nico the plumber is like a whole Scottish Referendum of his own.

[Sue]

thecaptain Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Good call Admin.....very appropriate.

>

> Sue, please wind your neck in......

>

> thanks.

xxxxxxx

And you are sticking YOUR neck in - why?! :)) :)) :))

[rodneybewes]

The alternative scenario is that the tradesman did shoddy work, refuses to remedy it and the person has said they'll be posting their experience about it if it isn't fixed. Said tradesman then claims he's being "blackmailed" and gets his mate to post it on the forum in order to spike their guns and make them look like a liar. The person then gets banned by over-zealous admin after giving a perfectly truthful review. Both scenarious are feasible. Who knows what the truth might be?

[Bellenden Belle]

In response to your post rodneybewes:

For me the truth lies in the original poster being giggirl. Giggirl has been posting on this forum for seven years. Many of us old-timers (including "admin") have met her. I trust her implicitly.

There are lots of posters on here who engage on a broad range of topics and I often go by a person's posting history as to whether they are genuine or not. That posting history - for some established over many years - is why I value this forum as a resource beyond many other sites.

[Loz]

When I see a recommend or a complaint, the first thing I do (if I don't recognise the name) is to click the name/s and check the number of posts. Anyone with only 1 or 2 posts I treat with much suspicion. Anyone with 50+ I figure are reasonably genuine.

There's a lot of people that mainly post in the family room who I don't recognise by name, but have good posting histories.

[El Pibe]

gigirl seconded. if she said it, it's gospel!

[Otta]

Word.

[Salsaboy]

Up.

[katanita]

Not sure Rodneybewes was calling giggirl's integrity into question (since that would be folly) but rather saying that there could be a difficult future scenario with a bad review, where the tradesperson involved claims it was posted as blackmail to get it removed and the poster banned, and it would end up as one person's word against another. Tricky.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just rely on people to be decent human beings?

[giggirl]

Guys, thank you for saying nice things.

Some great posts and here are my thoughts in a rambling, unconnected, just had a glass of red wine, way.

The Forum is such a valuable resource for getting recommendations it would be a shame for it to become the wild west. My own view is that all genuine reviews, good and bad, add value and long may they continue.

The Forum has so much power that the reason I posted this (after a long absence) is that I?ve heard a few tales from local traders about being forced over a barrel and it crosses my sense of fair play and goes against the spirit of the Forum.

The tradesman I wrote about is someone I know to do high-end work and has lashings of integrity. He is fully committed until mid-2015 on word of mouth so he must be doing something right. So yes, he can take a hit, but it rankles as a good reputation does not come easily. He isn?t being asked to correct bad workmanship; he?s being asked to do things for free that weren?t in the spec. In my book that?s blackmail but at best it?s the school bully grabbing your lunch money.

I totally get that having building work done is stressful. I had a 9 month build 2 years ago and there were many times when I had to take a deep breath and count to ten to stop myself yelling at my builders. Sometimes I still yelled! There are differences of opinion but I believe that if the client and builder are both reasonable parties then most things can be sorted out. It is stressful and I?ve got the t-shirt.

Trip Advisor is a useful analogy (thanks Damzel). I'm all over Trip Advisor before I book a hotel and some reviews definitely stand out as spiteful rather than factual. I remember reading an article once about rogue guests putting the screws on small hoteliers with the threat of bad reviews. That?s nasty.

Whilst I?m not a fan of ebay and I don?t use it, there is an anti-extortion policy as regards feedback. If a buyer uses the threat of bad-feedback to leverage the transaction and then goes on to leave bad feedback, the seller can provide back-up emails to ebay to get that feedback removed and the buyer gets a strike. Even on ebay (which has little integrity IMO), threats are not tolerated as a bargaining tool.

I've read the Sweetgirl/Noodle thread and I expect that we will never hear from Sweetgirl again but she will likely re-surface with a different user name so as to draw a line under Noodle-gate. Hopefully she will have gained some personal insight from that experience and come back wiser. Not so easy for a business to move on with a name-change.

Rodneybews has a point; that could indeed be a viable scenario. Certainly I think we all need to keep our wits about us when reading reviews. Moreover, be prepared to call foul where we suspect there are rogue-reviews (good and bad). Self-policing I guess.

Yes Katanita, it would indeed be a better world if we could all be more decent.

It would be useful to hear directly from any local traders who think they have had the screws put on (you needn?t name the business).

OY VEY

Px

[rodneybewes]

That's exactly it. If someone posts a review you use your judgment to decide how much weight to give to it. Probably based on a lot of factors - provenance, tone of post, how many other people are saying the same thing. Banning people for giving a bad review means you can't trust the reviews any more. Think admin had too much coffee yesterday...

Not sure if the forum has quite that much power by the way, whenever I mention to people round here that I buy stuff from it they've never heard of it. And when it comes to procuring services I'd always rely on the word of people I know.

[giggirl]

I think you're wrong about the power of the forum Rodney B. For example, a couple of years ago I used a Bromley firm that a friend in Bromley had recommended. They were a new start-up and keen as mustard. On the day, I saw his van parked outside my house 20 minutes before he was due. I went and knocked on his window and it turned out he was so early because he'd never been to ED before and left extra time for the journey. I left a glowing review on the forum. A year later I called him back for another job and he told me that he was getting 75% of his work from ED as a result of good reviews.

We've all had a good laugh over the years when fake reviews have been exposed (there have been some real corkers), but the downside of that is that potentially they are taking business away from good firms that don't have to rely on fake reviews. I agree of course that we should all use our judgement, but more than that I think we should be self-policing and weeding out the fakes. I'm pretty sure Admin does that already.

I don't want to get off point though because I was meaning specifically malicious reviews, where threats have been used to leverage a transaction. I think Admin's call was a good one. Trip Advisor and ebay both police their sites and remove reviews that are proven to be malicious. It's a difficult thing the prove and like anything else is open to abuse. Tricky.

[rodneybewes]

The admin's call would only be a good one if you had proof. If so that's all to the good and you can show it and everyone's happy. If it is only hearsay then "ban the user, remove all their posts, shame them and help the trader if they need to push charges" is a poor call, surely?

If someone posts a bad review and you/the trader feels it was done maliciously surely you can say so and everyone can make their mind up about it? - people seem to respect your word. And if you can prove it was blackmail then do so and by all means go medieval in the internet age on their asses.

[Administrator]

I don't just do things just because people say, I do need proof and I when I get that (in its various forms) then I take action.

[rodneybewes]

Glad to hear it. Thanks for the clarification.

[Otta]

giggirl Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I've read the Sweetgirl/Noodle thread and I expect

> that we will never hear from Sweetgirl again but

> she will likely re-surface with a different user

> name so as to draw a line under Noodle-gate.

> Hopefully she will have gained some personal

> insight from that experience and come back wiser.

> Not so easy for a business to move on with a

> name-change.

Sweetgirl uses the family section and was greatly supported when her son was allowed to run out of his nursery and was found in the road by a (luckily) kind stranger. So doubt she'll disappear and come back with another name, but the noodle thread was ill judged. Luckily though everyone took the side of the business.

[Rolo Tomasi]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> giggirl Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > I've read the Sweetgirl/Noodle thread and I

> expect

> > that we will never hear from Sweetgirl again

> but

> > she will likely re-surface with a different

> user

> > name so as to draw a line under Noodle-gate.

> > Hopefully she will have gained some personal

> > insight from that experience and come back

> wiser.

> > Not so easy for a business to move on with a

> > name-change.

>

>

> Sweetgirl uses the family section and was greatly

> supported when her son was allowed to run out of

> his nursery and was found in the road by a

> (luckily) kind stranger. So doubt she'll disappear

> and come back with another name, but the noodle

> thread was ill judged. Luckily though everyone

> took the side of the business.

Agreed. The difficult second rant.