If your business model builds on user generated content – hell, don’t fuck with the users! Yes, I’m looking at you, TripAdvisor!

While researching hotels I not only rely on the HRS ratings but also look the hotel up on TripAdvisor for even more reviews. As this works pretty well I decided to give something back to the community by rating the hotels we stayed.

Signup is easy as you can use your Facebook login. Reviewing is also quite easy, however, your review goes to a pending queue, more commonly known as a black whole and this is where the fun begins. It stays there for some time. The FAQ says 24 to 48 hours, however mine are in the queue for more than 72 hours each. This is quite anoying, as they pile up while you write new reviews and don’t even know if they are helpful for the community, as nobody can read them. On the first review I thought this might be because I’m new to the platform but also with more reviews written nothing speeds up.

But here is what really sucks: Some of my reviews got deleted while pending. No word about why TripAdvisor trashed them, not even an email and there have been reviews for hotels that have only one review to date. And none of them was rude or anything like this, just honest reviews.

I wrote TripAdvisor about this five days ago but haven’t heard back yet. The contact form is also pretty hard to find and the issue ‘My review got deleted’ is not even an option to select.
So all of you who rely on user generated content: If I spend my time to improve your site, let me know what’s going on! Learn from the TripAdvisor desaster!