Tripadvisor Troll Made To Pay Over £7,000 For Leaving Fake Reviews

SWNS

A Tripadvisor troll who left fake negative reviews has been made to pay up over £7,000 in compensation after messing with the wrong restaurant owner.

Restaurant proprietor Steve Hoddy began to suspect something was amiss after a number of bad reviews were written about his Blackpool based eatery, Bispham Kitchen.

Ten spiteful reviews were left between October 23 and November 16, 2018, with the reviewer, Martin Potts, claiming in one that the food had made he, his wife and their children sick.

SWNS

In another review, the troll claimed the haddock served at the establishment was in fact ‘catfish’, complaining that the chips had been ‘fried in burnt oil’. He even alleged that owner Hoddy ‘glares at you weirdly as you’re trying to eat your fish and chips – not a nice experience’.

Unbeknown to the malicious reviewer, Hoddy holds a law degree from Cambridge University, with a specialism in defamation law. Deciding to take action, Hoddy began looking into the reviews, with the aim of tracking down the troll.

Hoddy, who works as the managing director of six restaurants and a takeaway, said:

It was a whole catalogue of bogus reviews. He later put up reviews of some of my other businesses too. But he’d made the same spelling mistakes throughout the different reviews, so it was obvious it was the same person.

With four of the usernames, he had done about a hundred reviews of other places, so I was able to piece together a picture of who he was. He knew exactly what he was doing. I traced him and I went and confronted him.

Hoddy determined the troll was Potts and wrote him a letter demanding an apology , threatening to sue should he choose to refuse. He then brought Potts before Manchester County Court where it was ruled the repeat reviewer had indeed been involved in malicious falsehood.

SWNS

Hoddy represented himself during the legal proceedings, and put together charts to show the estimated losses he’d incurred. He was able to provide bills proving that his fish was indeed haddock, not catfish, and was also able to prove Potts was not married and did not have any children.

According to Hoddy:

At first [Potts] denied he had done the reviews. But when I presented him with incontrovertible evidence, he drip-fed admissions, but still resisted the case.

On July 19, Judge Craig Sephton ordered Potts pay £7,455 worth of damages and costs to Hoddy, which was more or less the sum he had requested.

If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com

from UNILAD https://www.unilad.co.uk/news/tripadvisor-troll-made-to-pay-over-7000-for-leaving-fake-reviews/
By Julia Banim December 17, 2021 at 05:25PM