Groupon/Stardeals & Urbanspoon Sockpuppeting/Fake reviews on a restaurant deal

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  ozhunter on 17/03/2011 - 16:44

  Lol, how embarrassing. Though I always thought to myself that restaurant owners, would always go on reviews sites and give themselves 10/10 rating.

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  h4lcyon on 17/03/2011 - 16:45

  There must be their 'Business Booster' :P - good work btw :)

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  moooooooo on 17/03/2011 - 17:14

  I've not paid much attention to urbanspoon before to be honest. I found it interesting at the bottom of the page there's a "vote" button which gives you a one-click choice to vote up or vote down the restaurant. There can't be many voters because I clicked "i don't like it" and it went from 56% to 52%.

  If my vote can change it 4% there's very few people voting. I think if you use urbanspoon, it would be worth reading the reviews but also voting before you go. If the vote percentage changes a lot, there are not many reviewers. If the vote percentage doesn't change a lot, then either:

  • the voting percentage is accurate because a lot of unrelated customers voted, or
  • the voting percentage is inaccurate because people like Farid Melhem and Christiane Melhem have got all the other Melhem clan to vote them up.

  Note: Although it appears Sahara Nights is engaging in dubious practices and voting on their own urbanspoon site, I have cleared my negative vote at urbanspoon since I believe it unfair to vote for their food when it's their business practices which I find disappointing

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  moooooooo on 17/03/2011 - 17:19

  @ neil: I suspect the reason Groupon linked to a different website other than www.saharanights.com.au is because the real website has a stupid Flash animation with swirling stars and a rotating restaurant name which you need to get past before you find the actual content.

  Which has no menu, and looks like it was put together by a 15 year old kiddie in 1996. If it wasn't for the Facebook reference in the text on the website, I'd have thought there was no attention paid to their website in the past 5 years.

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    neil on 17/03/2011 - 17:27

    Right. And that's fair enough. But surely if you are going to engage in building a website for a restaurant, you could at the very least link it to the saharanights.com.au instead of a bit.ly link redirecting to http://www.iloveaaafashion.com/.

    I have read that supposedly there are group buy sites (in the U.S.) that ask the business to increase their prices before the group buy deal is launched. I've yet to see it happen in Australia but my interest piqued when I saw that only the Stardeals website had the menu. The prices look alright to me although I'll see if I have a takeout menu at home.

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  finance on 17/03/2011 - 17:43

  i think raising your prices for group deal is kinda stupid, as you regular customers would see this and might not come back. i guess it'll be fine if you had no customers to begin with. but seriously it's only a pizza place you would they'd have some local biz.

  i think building a website for this biz by groupon is good business pratice bcos their actually site is crap.
  i usual dont purchase the coupons unless i know what's on the menu!
  but the link name is funny didn't notice that before…

  has anyone had their pizza before???
  found this review, which is kinda scary!!! but it was 3 years ago!
  http://www.greateats.com.au/restaurants/au/Melbourne_North/B…

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  issh on 17/03/2011 - 21:16

  You'd think the originator of group buy deals with billions of dollars of backing would make sure their copyediting/management of their deals is done right?

  no.

  EDIT:
  Looks like their Urbanspoon rating has gone from 80% to 56%, LOL.

  power of OZb

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  zhenjie on 18/03/2011 - 00:50

  I was the first to purchase this deal last night right after it launched. I did have concerns with the reviews, they do seemlingly look like they were posted by the people affiliate with the restaurant. However decided to purchase as I have credits and it looked like a nice place to try (Egyption and wood-fired pizzas, yum).

  In regards to the bit.ly link Last night it WAS pointing to the official Sahara Nights websites (which was pretty amateur). Must have changed sometime after when they got the new site up that is actually a better site then the official site.

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  neil on 18/03/2011 - 00:56

  +3

  So the Stardeals/Group deal ran out and just as that happened Spreets has a deal with them.

  It's actually more appealing of a deal. For $35, 2 drinks, 2 mains, and 2 entrees. May give it a whirl.

  But at the end of Spreet's writeup we have the all familiar reviews but conveniently leaving out the last names this time:

  Here’s what some recent happy diners had to say about the hotspot on www.urbanspoon.com…

  “The gourmet wood-fire pizzas at Sahara Nights are without a doubt nothing but perfect. With their thin, crisp, moist bases and fresh, homemade ingredients, they are exceptionally fresh and tasty.” – Farid

  “It's amaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing! Lovely place for family and friends too and good idea to have any function there. About the food − you will not believe me until u go try it. U never, ever gonna taste that quality anywhere else!” - Christiane

  Their Urbanspoon rating is down to 42%. Not sure why they would want to link to the Urbanspoon page but I'm guessing they write these up way in advance. While it reflects badly for the restaurant, it's really putting to light how we can't trust reviews on the web. This is a big problem as Google pushes their Places pages when searching for businesses. Anyway, let's see if Spreets checks their comments. ;)

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    moooooooo on 18/03/2011 - 02:42

    +3

    Nice work getting the comment in there on the Spreets page…

    On the topic of fake reviews I remember there was a pub in North Melbourne which, for a long time, had a giant banner across it stating "MELBOURNE'S BEST PUB" and then (in much smaller, but still easily readable lettering underneath): "As voted by the owner's mum".

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      Ashlea on 18/03/2011 - 02:50

      +1

      That's like an Indian restaurant in the CBD that says "THE BEST CURRY CAFE IN THE CBD" and has in far, far smaller text above it "are we"