Of course, as a small business owner, you cannot help but feel wronged when you receive a shockingly poor review, be it on Booking or TripAdvisor or wherever your guest chooses to slam you. It’s inevitable that upon occasion a bad review is completely justified, it’s the nature of the game in the service industry, but to have spiteful reviews posted, is little more than an egotistical, petty, unthinking and pedantic fashion in which to strike back.
The most frequent threat disguised as a complaint, we receive from Colombians at the Casa Amarilla is that of: “publicidad engañosa,” or “false advertising.” And, usually this is in response to poor internet connectivity. Then, there’s a murmer or two about the road access, the power outages, the poor water quality and so on. You’ll have, of course, noted that there is little we can do about the aforementioned issues. We have a well, a filter, tanks on the rooftops so as to ensure that there is always water, we have a generator to use when the power goes out and we have all the routes to and from Mompós explained in an exhausting fashion on our website. We’ve done our bit in spite of the considerable challenges.
I suppose what bothers me most about this, coming from Colombians, is that they should be very aware of the urban/ rural divide in their country and the reality of how these forgotten towns continue to suffer a slow progress towards modernity. Mompós is by no means the worst and is light years ahead of many of her neighbouring towns. Don’t get me started on the visitor from Medellin who complained that we didn’t have the regional TeleAntioquia TV station available. I almost didn’t feel up to explaining to him that we are located – albeit a pretty distant journey – on the Caribbean coast, here, you get TeleCaribe.
Which brings me to two reviews received on Booking this year resulting from stays or non-stays during high season in Colombia.
This is our response, if you want to see the reviews from two parties and the nonsense being uttered, and have a laugh and feel our pain, read on here
For more fun and games and serious commentary on all things about Colombia, be sure to tune in to the Colombia Calling podcast. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
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