[Sometimes gripes are legitimate.]
[Unrelated note: To see me all macho-like (yeah, worse than usual), check out my guest post at White-Collar Redneck today.]
When we travel, I like to read reviews of places on TripAdvisor.com because you get the real deal versus the standard PR campaign. That said, there are a lot of morons traveling/offering reviews and you have to take what you read with a huge grain of salt. No joke, there's at least one of these on every place reviewed on TripAdvisor:
- "I loved everything about this place but gave it an overall lousy rating. Did I mention how great the food and the service were? And the view, OMG the view! And they were constantly cleaning but not in an intrusive way! It was the best place we've ever stayed at! But where do they get off charging that much money?"
- "I had a lousy trip in because the airline sucked/my travel agent lied. Even though I'm in paradise, this ruined my mood and my entire trip and you shouldn't come here because of that."
- "My kids were in the adults only pool/I demanded a late check-out when the hotel was booked to capacity/I wanted a burger and they only had filet mignon/I wanted a raspberry margarita and they only had strawberry margaritas/I ignored the posted dress code for dinner. Can you believe they were totally inflexible!?"
- "How come nobody speaks English here? What the hell is that? Okay, it's a foreign country but sheesh!"
- "Even though every other review claims the resort is spotless and the rooms are spectacular, our room was covered in mold and dead bugs."
Also, every one of these will start out with the words "I'm not a picky traveler but..." It's like the ubiquitous words in porn letter mags: "I never thought this could happen to me..."
