The popular tourism search engine, TripAdvisor, has banned Mordidas. The listing is still there but I am not allowed to even change hours of business, much less answer any reviewers’ questions.
As a result of being banned, since they will not remove my listing for Mordidas and since I am no longer under any obligation to honor their rules (which I did totally, in spite of their claims), I am offering a free drink of your choice to anyone who writes a good review of Mordidas on Tripadvisor. Just show me the review and the drink is yours…
The following are transcripts of the emails banning me:
ME:
August 23, 2016
My account has been disabled and I don’t know why. I have a restaurant on your site, Mordidas in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and I cannot access it. I also wanted to book a hotel through you but I cannot do anything.
What is up?
TripAdvisor Community Support Jane (TripAdvisor Support):
Aug 24, 2016, 13:12 BST
Dear freeeye,
Your access was disabled after we received complaints from other forums members that you have posted messages promoting on behalf of several businesses you represent, offering links to your own webpages pvscene.com/vallartascene.com, and making negative comments about competitors to the businesses you represent without advising our members of your status as Business Representative. You have also engaged in hostile exchanges with other members, and solicited members to participate in surveys created for the purposes of improving your site’s visibility and attracting traffic to the site.
Our forums are intended as a place where travelers can share information on a wide variety of travel subjects. We ask all Business Owners and Representatives to keep their forum messages free of self-promotion, advertisements, or solicitation of any kind. Business Representatives must refrain from posting any negative comments about their competitors, and inform our members of the Businesses they represent, so that our readers will be aware of the potential for bias in their comments. Hostility, disruptive arguments, and harassment of other members will not be tolerated from any author — regardless of status as Business Owner/Representative.
You may review the Community Mission and posting guidelines for the TripAdvisor forums by following these links:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/help/what_are_the_guidelines_for_posting_in_the_forums
https://www.tripadvisorsupport.com/hc/en-us/articles/200613717We will reinstate your access upon receipt of your acknowledgment of this warning, along with your direct statement that your future participation on our site will comply with all of the Guidelines. If we discover new posts that do not meet our Guidelines after the date of this message to you, or if we discover that you have created any new TripAdvisor Memberships in order to persist in publishing content that does not meet our Guidelines, we will permanently remove your access to participate in TripAdvisor’s forums.
Sincerely,
Jane
TripAdvisor Community Support
ME:
August 24, 2016
If you could send me examples of what you are saying that would be great. I rarely, if ever, post on your forums and don’t remember anything like you are describing. Or is this some kind of guilty until proven innocent thing where the accused never gets to see what he is accused of or who is accusing? I truly do not understand what you are saying.
I certainly have never said anything like you are describing on my restaurant listing.
TripAdvisor Community Support Jane (TripAdvisor Support)
Aug 24, 2016, 17:45 BST
Dear Rick,
It has been over two years since you participated in the forums under your account as freeeye, so I assume you don’t remember anything that you published in the Puerto Vallarta Travel Forum between October 2004 and February 2014.
An example of negative commentary about competitors to one of the businesses you represent:
This is from me in response: If this was truly all one review, it was written probably in 2004-6, long before I was employed designing websites or running a bar here in Vallarta and it was when I was just visiting. I think the Frankfurt has been closed for about 10 years. Everything I wrote was a personal impression, independent of any commercial considerations (since I had none then). Also, all of my reviews have both good and bad in them because that is how life is. Notice that the reviews are cut short, purposefully hiding this fact…
And none of these businesses are competitors in any sense of the word to any businesses that I did websites for.
“*Frankfort Hotel is probably the strangest room I’ve had here. It was a dungeon, room #13. No windows and you had to climb over the toilet to get into the shower. I transferred immediately into a corner room with lots of windows and lots of noise. This hotel is now gone.
-Posada Lily. You had to climb a dark stairway to get to a windowless room. Great location and it was clean, but…
-Eloisa. Primo location and nice people, very nice roof wadiing pool but it lacked the comforts of home that lower priced hotels here have.
-Villa del Mar. Pretty nice hotel if you disregarded the signs warning you not to engage in child sex (maybe these signs are obsolete, now). *”
From the same post as above, an instance of promoting on behalf of the businesses you represent:
“Casa Isabel. Well, this place is exquisite. The only drawback, for walkers like me, is the walk (back) uphill to it after a night out. If you like to take cabs, it’s beyond exquisite.”
And another promotion of a business you represent:
ME: This is too stupid of a charge to comment on but I will… This post was a response to a bad review of a restaurant that I knew well and it was meant to apply to all simular negative reviews, as is obvious… this was before I worked with him on his website, when I was writing restaurant reviews here in Vallarta.
“Bruce has given me a free meal to review at Teatro Limon and I liked it a lot, not because it was free but because it was good. Since I run a tourist website here, I get many comp meals and I definitely don’t like them all. The ones I like more than I dislike I write about, the ones I don’t like, I leave alone unless asked specifically and then I tell the person(s) what I think. I also don’t condemn any business because of any one-time experience. Life is too full of vagaries, accidents and luck for that type of narrow minded approach, especially on a public forum as large as this. My perspective is broad and my reviews are selective. Cynicism is fine and prudent when based on knowledge and experience. It’s silly and petty when based on fear and jealousy. Take it or leave it.”
Challenge to credibility/allegation of fraud aimed at a reviewer of a business you represent:
ME: same as the previous but after I became his webmaster… It’s hard to stand by and watch, turning a blind eye as someone unjustly attacks someone you know. And I identified my relationship with Bruce plainly.
“Excuse me, but I have to jump in here. I edit a lot of Bruce’s writing on his website (I’m his “webmaster”) and this is definitely not Bruce. To be honest, even with the misspellings and incorrect grammar, this person writes much better than Bruce. His talent is in the kitchen, not in print. Whoever this person is questioning this review is way off base.If I were the tripadvisor management, I’d check the authenticity of this person attacking Bruce and this review.”
And out of your 100 posts published in the Puerto Vallarta forum under “freeeye”, dozens included self-promotional commentary and links to your websites vallartascene.com and pvscene.com
ME: And HERE Tripadvisor wants to control what I write on my own forum !!!!! They accuse me of promoting links to vallartascene.com on vallartascene.com! Neither of these websites are commercial. I make absolutely nothing from them. They are informational and I assume that people really would like to know the source of the information that I have posted. My reviews were all honest and without any commercial considerations.
According to TripAdvisor requirements stated above, I would not be allowed to comment on any restaurant or hotel in Vallarta.
Sincerely,
Jane
TripAdvisor Community Support
As a postscript, be aware that, for years, the “#1 Restaurant” in TripAdvisor ratings for Vallarta was a bar that did not serve food. Money talks at TripAdvisor….