Negative Review Due to wrong placement on booking.com MAP
Hello, I am asking the forum member's help and assistance on how do I get what we consider an "invalid review" discarded against our total review score. The problem is we are 100% sure that during the listing process, the pinpoint/marker of our site was placed on the correct spot. It was working okay until recently, one of our guests got very upset of how misleading our map location was in booking.com that resulted in all the review parameters to get dragged down by a negative review on the map location. The customer was confused with the map and ended up circling around the dirt back roads locating our site. We are however correctly placed in google map outside of extranet/booking.com but we were placed on the wrong spot in our listing. This is of course fixed now but we are certainly demotivated by a negative review that we have nothing to do about.
We have a couple of listings and all were on the correct spot so we certainly know how to place markers. We tried to reason with booking.com to discard the score while keeping the review of the guest as-is since the guest was honest about their whole experience. We contended that we are fair enough to accept any negative review as long as it is something that was caused by us or our service and something we can work on. However this negative review about our location on booking.com's map was clearly not our doing. I am trying to wrestle with booking.com on fixing this issue but after about 5 emails now they keep answering this whole thing in a "cold manner" as if we are not partners at all.
We are concerned about our review score because it is our gauge in evaluating our staff and service levels with our guests. Booking.com is not addressing this part. I am making this post so others are aware how our partnership with booking.com is working out or should be and as reference for those who might encounter the same or similar incident as ours, not only limited to map location. We are asking forum members for opinions and/or solution if they have encountered a similar or like incident before we decide to end our partnership with booking.com
Sincerely...Thanks.
Hi there,
To be honest, i don't think there's a single one of us out there who hasn't experienced this exact scenario, be it with your map, or wrong listing, description or whatever but i've never heard of BDC removing a review for any reason.
I've got one that says my place is a scam and i am a conman, all because they thought they had booked a hotel but arrived at my 'bed and breakfast' which unfortunately had no bar or jazz band! To make matters worse, 5 people have now said that they found it 'helpful'! I tried to get this removed but got absolutely stonewalled by BDC, they wouldn't even remove the text but leave the score in place even though, in my mind, it's insulting. It annoys me all the time as you've got no realistic chance of getting back your previous score once you've got a 4/10.
BUT
My advice would be to let it go, it's going to drive you crazy, you'll get nowhere so deep breath and take some comfort in the knowledge that we've all got one or two of these, and if you haven't got one now, you'll get one in the future.
It does suck but as long as the rest of them are ok all your guests will see that it was just a one off and pay it no attention ... your personal pride however is another thing though,
Kind regards
Matt
Hello Matt,
Thanks for giving us advice that is full of wisdom and experience. This whole thing is definitely driving us crazy now just like you said. While it is easier if we could just look at this incident from hindsight, we can't let it pass at the moment. Something has to be done. I previously worked as part of executive relations and I have a good sense of what it means to have good partnership with clients. It is never a good idea to have your partners or clients feel that they are at your MERCY. We are still 4 months old in this business which is why this whole thing has been very demotivating. We got two sites and both used to enjoy a consistent 9.6 rating until the recent review that came in that pulled the other's score down to an 8.8. We appreciate your concern about how this could all turn out okay however for the meantime, "okay" only means being fair and reasonable. Thanks again for being kind enough in taking the time to comment for us.
Cheers,
Chris