The ABC News website has an article today advising that Meriton Serviced Apartments have been fined $3 million by the Federal Court for their behaviour in regard to TripAdvisor reports.
It follows an ACCC investigation following another article that the ABC published on 21.10.2015.
Great to see these sorts of illegal behaviours being dealt with.
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Whilst illegally trying to avoid bad publicity viewed only by TripAdvisor readers, they have now managed to get national bad publicity.
Perhaps it would have been cheaper and simplier to have fixed the problems that the guests were complaining about.
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Just had a look at Meriton on TripAdvisor.
Despite their illegal tampering with reviews, the negative reviews posted for the various properties are absolutely scathing.
One place in Singapore scored an average rating of just 2 out of 5 from 43 reviews. I guess the management there was not participating in the deception program.
As the old saying goes, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
There is also another old saying, “Honesty is the best policy”.
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This subject reminds me of a couple of less than satisfactory experiences we had with Sheraton Hotels.
In 1995 we were on a reward trip and we stayed at the former Sheraton in Darwin on the final night.
I called reception for a second pillow around midnight. After 3 calls, it was finally brought to our room some 90 minutes later.
Then in 1997 after we flew back from LA, we had to stay overnight in Sydney before catching our flight to Cairns the next morning so we booked into the Sheraton at Sydney Airport.
My wife wondered what she felt under the sheet and found a hairbrush. Presumably the sheets had not been changed after the previous occupants.
When we used to stay at the former Sheraton when we drove to Brisbane, we always took our own pillows so as to ensure we did not have any problems, irrespective of what the doorman may have thought.
So much for 5 star hotels. What a shame that TripAdvisor wasn’t around back then.
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