United States: The ownership group of one of restaurants in Houston has made a statement that it was blackmailed by someone overseas who is continuously warning them to bombard them with negative reviews.
The partners have received an email to the main account of City Center restaurant, Daily Gather, ask for to send the blackmailers pre-paid gift cards.
And in case they didn’t agree with the ransom, their restaurant would be degraded online and bombarded with negative reviews.
Meanwhile, the director of operations and co-owner of Daily Gather, Trent Patterson, has been in the restaurant business for years. He mentioned, “I have seen a lot of things but never seen a situation like this before.”
Patterson added, “Around five or six days ago, we started to see we were getting one-star reviews consistently, around two-three in the same day. About three to four days into this, we have received the email from some generic foreign email address.”
Below is one of the emails that Daily Gather received:-
“Hello. Unfortunately, negative feedback about your establishment has been left by us. And will appear in the future, one review a day.
“We have no other choice. We live in India and see no other way to survive. We are begging you to send us a Google Play gift card worth $75.
“After selling this gift card, we can earn approximately $50, which is three weeks of income for one family.”
After coming to a decision not to agree with the ransom request, Patterson, as well as his business partners, have directly contacted Google to have the fake negative reviews removed.
Patterson added, “We have reported each & every one of them, and everyone can report every review. It is just Google is this big behemoth, and they will get to it when they get to it.”
At the same time, Patterson added online reviews are very crucial to any business, but restaurants are extremely sensitive in Houston.
Patterson mentioned, “Anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of our business is from people who have never stepped foot in this restaurant and might never step foot in this restaurant. The only way they have an idea of who we are is through those reviews online.”
Patterson and his partners took to social media, telling the public about what happened and why they had a one-star Google review.
