Online reviews - can you tell the lies from the truth?
Looking at the words in True Crime or from people in the news is all good, but we can also use the analysis of statements in our day-to-day life.
Many of us have become used to using online reviews to guide us. Whether that is picking a purchase from Amazon through to where to eat out. But are these reviews always truthful?
Here’s a restaurant review that caught my eye thanks to the bizarre headline “Rude staff. Lack of legal knowledge more training needed”.
Let’s break it down.
On arrival we were shown to our table and we all ordered drinks and our meals at the same time. Husband and son ordered cokes whilst me and my daughter ordered a bottle of wine to share. Drinks arrived first.
This sits on the Trip Advisor website, which asks for reviews. The first words here aren’t a review. They’re statements of actions. This is storytelling.
Whenever I’m looking at someone’s words, I focus in on parts that don’t need to be there or weren’t asked for and ask “why had this been added?” Here it looks as if it’s been added to show a sense of the normal and to set a scene. It all appears direct and truthful, but it’s not relevant. A review is about how an experience was, not what events happened.
We don’t need to know they ordered drinks and food together, we don’t need to know the drinks arrived first.
If you have a genuine complaint about something, you’re generally sure the complaint will stand on its own, there’s no need to start storytelling in an attempt to make your complaint “stronger”.
Or is this scene setting hiding something? Did each individual order their own drink or was there a generic order from a family of 4 similar to “Two cokes and a bottle of wine please”? This may be the case, as we’ll see.
Whilst eating our starters the waitress returned and asked for id from my 19 year old daughter. She hadn’t brought it with her but hubby thought he had a solution and asked the waitress to give us a minute as we were eating our starters.
“Eating our starters” begins and ends this paragraph. It’s vital to this person that we know they were eating. It’s given to us as one of the excuses why they didn’t deal with the request for ID.
An ID request is a usual one for a 19-year-old drinking or buying alcohol in England, and many places are strict about it. It would be highly unusual for a restaurant to continue allowing someone they thought was underage to continue drinking because their family group was eating.
How long?
The waitress left then returned within a minute to take away our daughters glass of wine. Again my husband asked for 5 minutes.
It’s notable here that the reviewer says, “again he asked for 5 minutes” when in the previous paragraph he’d asked for “a minute”. As the story isn’t straight and is now contradictory, we should be on alert for deception.
There is no mention of what the waitress said, however from the words (and what comes next) it’s obvious that she didn’t take away the glass. It’s stated “returned... to take away our daughter's glass” not “returned and took away our daughter’s glass”.
Then we assume a manager (who did not introduce herself) came over. My husband had a copy of our daughters driving licence on his phone however this was not good enough.
What’s interesting here is what is missing. The reviewer doesn’t say that the husband showed them a copy of the licence on his phone, only that he “had” one.
We’re also not told what happened. There is no mention of the glass being taken away or an order that the daughter shouldn’t drink any of the wine because she failed to produce ID that showed she was old enough.
The reviewer signals their agreement and acceptance of the restaurant's standpoint here by saying “this was not good enough”. There is no disagreement with the decision made.
We did not make a scene but due to the impatience and they way it was handled we asked for the bill, left….
Let’s look at the order of the complaint here. The first thing they mention which is likely to be the most important to them is “the impatience”. Next is “the way it was handled”.
What they don’t say is that they had any issue with the outcome. In fact, they don’t ever say what the outcome was. Although we might get the impression their daughter’s wine was taken away, the reviewer does not say that. Why are they hiding the outcome and why do they have no issue beyond being asked to show ID? Possibly because they know the outcome was fair and correct.
Lost business
…and have since cancelled another meal that was booked at the Lyttleton Arms for another family event.
This is an old chestnut in bad faith online reviews. An attempt to show that the establishment has cost itself business. Look at these words though, and I think this is a lie. There are no pronouns to show ownership, it’s “have since cancelled another meal that was booked” not “WE have since cancelled another meal that WE had booked”.
The below attachment is taken from a government website that states that 16 year olds can drink alcohol accompanied with a meal if purchased by an adult.
An irrelevance, this wasn’t about age, this was about ID to prove that age. Also it was about a 19-year-old, not someone who is aged 16.
She was 19 but even so they handle the situation really rudely and badly! More legal training needed! Will not be returning!
Now, this is interesting. “She WAS 19” why is that in the past tense? Has she had a birthday in between the meal and the review being written? Unlikely.
Bad grammar? Possible. It’s also possible that for the purposes of this meal and their attempt to have wine “she WAS 19” as in “she WAS pretending to be 19 that day” but in reality she is younger.
It would explain the lack of ID being shown and why the laws surrounding 16 and 17-year-olds are brought up.
What is going on?
Look at the headline “Rude staff” is brought up first. However, the rudeness of the staff is never mentioned, if they were rude or unreasonable I’d expect to hear a description of what they did.
They mention impatience, but asking to see ID before a young person is served an alcoholic drink is normal behaviour. The impatience seems to have been on the reviewer’s side, they wanted to eat and drink quickly.
From the words, my guess is that the girl was younger than 19, this family didn’t like being caught lying so tried to carry on eating. Then they got embarrassed that the restaurant would not let them away with their deception, so posted this review, either to justify themselves or as “revenge”.
Whatever happened, there are enough signs in this review to conclude it is deceptive and should not be believed or taken into account.
Here’s another review of the same restaurant:
A modern spacious restaurant with good quality food and efficient staff.
I went for lunch with a friend and the only criticism was that despite the restaurant not being full we were seated at a small table, ok for lunch but if you were having a dinner with side dishes etc it would have been too cramped. The pizza described as "with the middle removed and replaced with salad" was delicious but still too large for a female appetite. A smaller pizza say 8 inch would have been more than enough so it was a shame to waste such a taste dish purely because it was huge. The welcome and service were polite and efficient and the ambience was pleasant.
Look at the difference here. It’s a review, not a story. They are specific about what they liked and what they didn’t like. There are no words that don’t need to be there. It’s easy to conclude this is a genuine review.
There is one place where this review is being deceptive, though. Can you spot it? Let me know in the comments.
