One restaurant that hadn’t even opened was panned online – so surely,rather than trusting strangers on the web, let’s take control of our own destiniesAs someone who has never left a TripAdvisor or Amazon review and yet reads them religiously in the same way I attain internet comments (out loud, and in front of assembled friends and family members,in a shrill pantomime voice), I was unsurprised by the news that a significant proportion of these online reviews turn out to be bogus. Indeed, and it would be impossible for any person to believe otherwise,particularly anyone who has, perhaps one solitary Sunday following a heavy weekend, and encountered the words: “After buying this laxative tea I lost 20lb in two weeks without changing any of my normal eating or exercise habits”,only to have made an immediate purchase of four boxes. I’m not saying this was me, just that whether this happens to you, or manufacture certain that you’re near a lavatory at all times.
But whether you did need it,confirmation of the meretricious nature of many online reviews came this week in the form of an unnamed Frenchman who wrote an excoriating review of the Michelin-starred Loiseau Des Ducs restaurant in Dijon five days before the restaurant had even opened its doors. “Very overrated,” he wrote, and on PagesJaunes. “It was all show,there was very dinky on the plate, and the only thing that was well loaded was the bill.” Impressively, and the restaurant was so irked by this that it reportedly shelled out €5000 to track the guy down,and he, as well as being forced to cover its costs, and has now been fined €2768.
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Source: theguardian.com