A restaurant in the U.K. has been lashing out in a sarcastic manner against one-star reviews on TripAdvisor.
The owner of Pinnacles Fish and Chip shop in Seahouses, Michael Armstrong, told MailOnline that “hospitality businesses have an awful problem with TripAdvisor” and “it can cause them to suffer through no fault of their own.”
The restaurant’s public relations manager, who uses the name Tommycat1, has defended the shop with quirky responses.
User Wes_Charles wrote: “Food was lovely, good mug of tea and waitresses were polite if a little ‘cold.’”
And Tommycat1 wrote in response: “You have misinterpreted someone doing their job quickly and in a professional manner as being ‘cold,’ which is most unfair.”
He added: “I am frankly amazed that coming from London you think £10 for a ’sit in' meal of fish and chips and a pot of tea is expensive, when in fact it is excellent value for money.”
“The only thing that is ’terrible‘ here Michael is the shocking standard of writing in your ’review’,” they wrote in another reply, according to the Telegraph.
The account later wrote: “We vividly recall your party coming to Pinnacles because you were the most awful, badly behaved group we have ever had the misfortune to encounter.”
Another customer was described as “an obvious low-life” and another was “dry, grey and tasted off‘ - is a great description of yourself and ’greasy and tasteless’ just about sums you up.”
One person wrote in a review: “Chips nice, burger not nice, drinks in a plastic cup like your [you’re] five, layout bad especially the loo staff not a happy person.”
Tommycat1 responded: “We won’t take any lessons from such an obvious low life as you, until you learn to use proper sentence construction like a normal adult.
“Meaningless colloquialisms, lack of capital letters and a total absence of full stops, indicate someone who is not fit to pass judgement on a goldfish.
“You will continue to be served your drinks in a plastic cup, with a ‘no spill’ top, until you stop writing like a five year old.”
Armstrong told MailOnline: “I support the comments - it’s our way of treating malicious intrusions.”
“We have our mission statement on the wall of the restaurant, which says that if anyone is not satisfied for any reason then they should get in touch with a member of staff,” he added. “We don’t need a malicious attack - we would fix any problem immediately. We would much rather that people with a problem picked up the phone or spoke to the staff.”
The restaurant, however, has received many more positive reviews, and it has a rating of 4 out of 5 stars on the site. Wrote one: “Very tasty fish and chips, any fresher it would still be in the sea!! We will queue in future and know it’s worth the wait.”
A few weeks ago, an Indian restaurant owner slammed negative TripAdvisor reviewers, including this gem: “The only thing poor here was you. You were poor in manners” and “you were unhappy as soon as you walked in.”
The owner, Waseem Ahmed, told the Metro that customers had essentially held his restaurant hostage via TripAdvisor.
