Tripadvisor

I had an incredibly unpleasant encounter with Viator TripAdvisor, FlipKey, and Holiday Lettings recently. Despite making a reservation well in advance for one of the homes listed on their site, I fell victim to a fraudulent scheme. A month before our scheduled travel date, the supposed "owner" contacted me with a suspicious request to send money via Zelle payment. Recognizing the red flags, I immediately reached out to the TripAdvisor fraud department for assistance. After conducting an investigation, they confirmed that the listing was indeed fake.
As a result, our group found ourselves without accommodation for a trip that was just around the corner. To make matters worse, the area we were visiting was in high demand, causing prices to skyrocket since our original booking. Despite this unfortunate turn of events, TripAdvisor offered no compensation to help offset the price difference. Additionally, their efforts to find a suitable alternative that matched the original accommodation were lackluster at best.
This experience has shed light on the fact that TripAdvisor and its affiliated companies do very little to vet and verify the listings on their platform. The lack of oversight has created an environment where criminals can take advantage of unsuspecting customers, and it appears that TripAdvisor is turning a blind eye to these issues. Based on my personal experience, I strongly advise seeking alternative travel booking services that prioritize trustworthiness and reputation when planning future trips. It is crucial to avoid such atrocities.
In conclusion, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend TripAdvisor's services based on my recent encounter. The lack of accountability and the potential for fraudulent activities make it imperative to explore more reliable and reputable options for travel bookings.

Actually always found places recommended by Tripadvisor much worse and discovered by my self or another websites much better. Its just promoting big businesses and the rating stars are not reflecting the quality at all...

They don't check if the business that's listed is legit. They answer emails not for quality but quantity. They don't even read them. They approve businesses that don't have websites or any online presence. Just don't use them. Beware

Why when you do a search does it give you an excursion 8 hours away?
Then Refuse to refund after you have to cancel it

I used TripAdvisor on my recent trip to Nashville, TN and they COMPLETELY misrepresented the Motel they recommended. They had to of weeded out the back reviews.
I wasn't able to arrive until bedtime. I have no choice but to stay the night. This Motel is absolutely unacceptable. I walk in the room and it smells like poop. I am not exaggerating. This room smelled like someone hid poop somewhere. There's no clock, no lamp, no outlets by the bed.
I had to go to Dollar General and buy 2 pillows and a blanket so I could sleep that night. So much for trying to save a bit of money and staying at a Motel. I feel as if you misrepresented this location immensely. This supposed Handicapped room has a bathtub with high sides that I cannot get into even if I wanted to. I am so upset. I have to sleep there because I can't possibly look around for another place at that late time. I left the next morning and I will not be using your website again.
When I woke up that morning, there were smooshed I don't know what kind of large bugs in several locations and pieces of the mattress on the floor like something had gathered them or was living in the mattress. I paid $83.86 PLUS your fees. This is unacceptable. You misrepresented this place.

Don't book through them. Drove 4 hours to only find out that the hotel canceled my reservation because trip advisor didn't send them my card information. I ended up having to pay an additional $300 so me and my children would have somewhere to lay our head. They did not try to compensate me one dime. The hotel blamed them and they blamed the hotel. Totally ruined our trip. Save yourself the trouble and don't book through them ever. Let's add that the room looks old outdated and dingy

My husband and I traveled to Quintana Roo specifically for this experience. I am a teacher and teach about the Maya empire.

Our tour was confirmed for 6:00 am., and we arrived at 5:45 am to be safe,but nobody showed.

After many attempts to contact the tour operator, (the number listed in the booking was incorrect) he said they changed the pickup time to 5;30 am the day before travel, but he couldn't reach me because Viator/Trip Advisor had relayed to him the wrong country code and now it was too late to get us.

Trip Advisor/Viator has refused to refund the $318 we paid despite all of the printed and screen-captured evidence. After years of only booking through them for everything from Viking tours on Icelandic horses to Stockholm ferry-rides, this will be my last tour with this company. Can't express enough my disappointment that this company worth 200 million can't give a teacher the price of her no-show tour back. :(

When booking a tour in your app, I accidentally selected the wrong one. I contacted you immediately, literally within 1 minute. You refused to cancel without a 100% cancel fee, even though my intention was to cancel and book the correct one.
I understand that it was a late cancelation but it was also a late booking and the tour company would not have commenced any plans for my tour and were most likely not even aware of it within the few minutes it took between booking and cancelling! I feel it was very unreasonable and unfair, to not offer any type of leniency in this situation. Especially when your whole product is based around the customer using a self-serve app. This cost me $1500. I better not use you again in case I make a mistake, best to use an agency or book through hotels.Thats the message you're sending to customers when you don't provide any cooling off period for mistakes/errors. I mean- seriously- even a 10-20min window.

Company allows fraudulent reviews to be posted under false identities and doesn't request any proof of visiting an establishment from the user (like sitejabber and trust pilot do - funny that?!). They instead request business owners to provide proof that the review is fake. In ordinary circumstances this would be impossible, but in this instance I was able to provide a crime reference number to prove that the particular individual was under investigation for stalking, harassment and common assault against me. Key things they were under investigation for, they had mentioned in their review which proved who it was written by. Despite this, Tripadvisor who works solely on corruption has chosen to leave the defamatory review up, and instead provide me with a postal address in the USA (when I'm in the UK) to appeal.

Additionally, they have no complaints department or process and multiple emails have been ignored by their incompetent CEO who's probably busy relaxing on Epsteins island.

Disgusting - avoid.

This "community as they call it" consists of very rude people. They give their opinion on every word you say BUT answer the question you are asking! It's actually frustrating to post something on their forums.

I am host on Tripadvisor.com.The poor level of customer service and delayed payments is astonishing.I have emailed, been calling them daily for at least two weeks because I haven't received a payment after a guest checked out(a week ago) but until today no progress.Yet if you refuse to host a guest they charge you USD180.
Apparently they have a finance department that no one can talk to or email directly.
Its an experience I wouldn't want anyone to go through.
I'm still waiting for the issue to be resolved.

Booked a hotel in August for a March stay through TripAdvisor. The Strand in Myrtle Beach cancelled one day before arrival because they are doing renovations to two buildings! Called Trip Advisor for help and they said they would call and try to work it out with the hotel and never called me back. No reason to book through their site when they aren't willing to help if there is a problem.

Tripadvisor.com forums consist of volunteers from the online public. Therefore, one will find an array of characters and personalities. Some are scammers pushing their wares. Others (the majority) are fellow travelers. However, there are some specific forums (e.g. Paris) that consist of regulars (some residents of that particular city/country) and they can be absolutely rude and nasty. What is very frustrating and galling is when people get their posts deleted arbitrarily by other forum members. That's legitimate if the posts were indeed inflammatory or 'inappropriate' (Tripadvisor's term). But what's happening more and more nowadays is that some of these forum posters, who have a personal dislike towards other forum posters, report innocent posts as being 'inappropriate'. There is no way to prove that is happening other than what you witness yourself. Don't even bother arguing your point with the Tripadvisor personnel as they could care less.

In short, Tripadvisor may be a good way to learn about traveling. But you need to keep in mind that there are quite very nasty, negative types who are there day and night hoping to make things difficult for others.

Tripadvisor has turned into a one stop shop for everything travel, or so they want you to think. The problem is that you book trough them and pay them money. But then you are on your own when the booking does not go through or there are problems. I used Tripadviser to book a rental car. Trip advisor offered a pre-payment with a discount. I did this as it was a much better deal. When getting the car, Budget Car Rental put a hold on my card for another $900. This didn't make sense as I prepaid and bought the insurance, but I grudgingly went along with it. Upon return of the car I assumed everything would be released. But after the long flight home I noticed that they charged me for the full price of the rental? What happened to the prepayment? They charged me twice.
I of course went to Budget with no response. Then I went to TripAdvisor as they are the ones that made the booking and took my money. They say it's not their problem...I think it kind of is because they sold me a booking that THEIR vendor did not support. I paid TripAdvisor the money initially and not Budget. Tripadvisor should not be selling services that they cannot support or have the power to help when issues arise such as this.
The simply say its not their problem and they are simply stealing your money.

After the traveling resumes, my account couldn't log in by Facebook.
I write in thru email but there wasn't resolution from anyone ever.

There was no longer a travel trip planner function. The reviews were out dated.
Please close down your site if there isn't anyone working anymore!

Thanks

They profit of most of the businesses that are listed on their site and claim to have a very high standard to list your products and remove products from businesses from their Viator site and allow other businesses that rebrand with a new name the same business that had awful reviews before to start over and offer their services with lies about their destinations...
I really think that if you are looking to but a service please go directly to google and research the company and buy directly from the supplier.

TRIP ADVISOR has allowed 1,bad business review, Buckingham place guesthouse to be prominent for 5 years on their site. Ive been going 25 years. The bad review, is pasted all over the net. Im still going strong. Im one of the oldest guesthouses in my city. Im disgusted that this untrue outdated review of Buckingham place guesthouse port elizabeth is still prominent. Hurting my business 5 years later. Come on TRIP ADVISOR Unacceptable. Everyone knows that anyone can put up good or bad reviews. Untrue. Outdated... Ive stood the test of time. My business survived Covid 19. Im still going strong. This reviewer could be dead for all we know. TAKE IT DOWN. Useless company.

I put a review on "Agoda Online" as a Fraudulent service provider but the Trip Advisor hasn't put that review yet. They are still reviewing it. They probably put only the good ones, I guess.

Recently I was traveling in Spain with five friends. We went to Granada to see Alhambra. We went to the TripAdvisor App to see if we could get tickets. I entered the date for site visit (4/24/2023) and TripAdvisor showed a guided tour that was available. I purchased 6 tickets.
The next day we went to the site, and found that we were booked for May 24,2023 and not April 24,2023. We could not get the tour, nor could we even get into the site. If you've ever hiked all the way to the top of Alhambra, you would know how especially frustrating this was.
Apparently they did not have tickets available for 4/24, so they just showed the available tickets for a different date, which happened to be exactly one month later.
When TripAdvisor sends you the many-many emails they send you, or you go to TripAdvisors App or website, they are constantly stating how you can cancel an event up to 24 hours before the event. This was once again stated when I was looking for this event, however, the specific event I booked was not one of these, so I did not get to see the historic palace and I got to pay TripAdvisor $435, with no refund, even though I cancelled the event on April 29,2023.
I also called TripAdivsor, and they were unwilling to help or refund even part of the money.
I will never use TripAdvisor again. There are plenty of other good sites for booking activities...they just don't pay Google as much money to get repeated over and over again in the listings when you do a search (on Google or other search engines).

We had booked a stay through TripAdvisor in May 22. Full payment had been made. Two weeks prior to our stay we received a call from Vacation Strategy LLC at 3:30pm informing us that the owner of the facility had cancelled and they would try to find a place for us. They further stated that in order to get a full refund we had to do it by 6pm. There is no ability to contact TripAdvisor in a timely manner in order to get problem corrected. We had to jump through hoops to get a replacement through another vendor. Due to short time and peak season we ended up paying more money for inferior facility. This took over three hours of time that we needed to be be doing something else. TripAdvisor to their credit issued a refund within three hours. There needs to be a contact number at TripAdvisor that can handle situations like this without the onus being put totally on the customer to rectify the situation. We will never use TripAdvisor or Vacation Strategy LLC for anything in the future.

I was recently writing a review and one of the questions. Was did they provide a mask for unvaccinated. First off how the hell I am supposed to know. Is the restaurant even allowed to ask. Lastly vaccinated still spread the virus. What a stupid question

I tried to post something to help people. The site seems poorly maintained compared to before. The rules are unclear. The post would not go through. There was a notice about limiting posts by new users. What is the limit? They won't say and neither will the internet. One tiny little insignificant post did go through. Their notices implied that I might be able to post again in a while. Hours later, I tried again. No luck. Other posts online said they had also encountered capricious posting limits. This is unprofessional. It also hurts the site. Trip Advisor used to seem to have better content and fewer fraudulent posts than Smelp. Not sure what's going on now.

Trip advisor only allows favorable reviews, not honest and or authentic ones. They asked us to review our stay but when the review was made, they sent an Email saying they will not post it.