Do reviews have to be either honest OR kind?

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Do reviews have to be either honest OR kind?

Where would we be without Groupon? I would have had a lot less massages and experience days!

Just before Christmas I went on an afternoon canal cruise with my fiance. We had bought the coupon as a birthday present for my Dad but he developed a knee problem and couldn’t get down the tiny steps onto the canal boat – and the coupon was due to expire. We decided not to waste it. My fiance is fond of canal boats – they’re generally really long, colorful boats with cheery painted canalware on top, buckets, pots, and the like.

The colorful items that appear on other canal boats!

So off we trotted to the meeting point, which was a restaurant overlooking the canal. This was in the morning so the restaurant wasn’t serving food and there weren’t any staff around, which was a pity as it left us and three other couples to stand around wondering if we were in the right place. After a little while a member of staff wandered out of a back room and told us we were and they were just waiting for the boat driver. 40 minutes later we were still waiting.

When the driver arrived he just called us to go with him – no apology. I don’t mind having to wait (I have the Kindle app on my cellphone!) but I do find it irritating when the people keeping me waiting don’t apologise.

So I, for one, wasn’t in the best mood. But this is Britain, where people are used to queuing and being kept waiting and generally do so without complaining – just some low level grumbling when they think no-one can hear them!

Our first view of the boat that we were going to be cruising on didn’t lift my spirits. It was small, about the length of a van. It looked like it had been used for moving freight in the past, with high, solid sides and very small windows above them. That was where we sat, the eight of us, around a table.

The driver busied himself in the kitchen area (two cupboards and a kettle) of the boat, clanking around. He eventually explained that he was late because he wasn’t the scheduled driver (who had been held up in traffic) and had had to come a long way.

He then started serving our lunch, before we set off. Fair enough, it would have been dangerous to try to drive the boat while serving hot food! Unfortunately, the only food was a meat stew – I’m vegetarian and my fiance rarely eats meat. No alternative. I was quite glad I wasn’t eating it when I saw it! Afterwards we were offered coffee or tea – without milk, as the driver forgot to pick some up!

So off we went on our ‘cruise’. Due to the height of the sides of the boat, we were unable to see out while sitting down. Standing on a slow moving boat isn’t too much of a problem if you’re fully able bodied, I guess, but I’m not (my ankles were crushed in a car accident years ago), so that was annoying. There wasn’t a lot of point standing up anyway because the windows were made of some kind of see-through plastic, which held onto rain drops so it was hard to see out.

So we had occasional periods of standing to try to see where we were, and long (LONG) periods of sitting looking at the passengers around the table.

After a while we came to a bridge. The driver – without a word of explanation – stopped the boat near the canalside, hopped off, and threw a rope roughly in the direction of a little pillar. Then he went to the bridge to operate the controls that would swivel it to let us through.

He apparently had some trouble with it as he continued to stab at the control panel for some time before picking up a telephone handset and shouting into it. We all peered through the little windows to see what he was up to.

It was one of the other passengers who first noticed that we were moving, drifting gently towards the middle of the canal and the bridge that blocked our path. We weren’t in any real danger – a small bump into the bridge was about the worst it would get – but it was a bit disconcerting and one of the other ladies got panicky. Thankfully, humor helped, with people wondering out loud if anyone had ever been lost ‘at sea’ while on a Groupon experience day and others responding that the rescuers would hopefully be able to redeem their own Groupon vouchers to charter a boat to come and find us.

Then, like a scene in a 50s movie, a small boy on a bike came along, whistling. He stopped on the bridge, saw us, and called out to the driver (who had his back to us the whole time). The driver was able to run back in time to catch the rope before it plopped into the water. He tugged us back. The little boy told him that the bridge’s control panel was broken and had been for some time, and that we wouldn’t be able to go through. Then he rode off, still whistling.

So we had to go back the way we came and take the rest of our cruise past the industrial part of the canal.

A less than ideal experience, would you agree?

Now here’s my problem. What did I write in the review? The ‘cruise’ hadn’t been good value for money and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. However, the company offering the deal was obviously a start-up, just trying to make a living, and the driver turned out to be good-humored and full of interesting information about the canal, the boats, and the people who used to make their living on it.

I didn’t want to trash the company and put everyone off going on their cruises but I did think some honesty was called for.

It was difficult. As an author I know the value of reviews – both good and bad, because they are all valuable market research – but I also know that a bad review on the likes of TripAdvisor can really damage a company’s business.

In the end I went for offering some suggestions on how they could improve: apologies if they keep people waiting, alternative options for food, a note in the description saying that standing is necessary to get a good view. And I sent them a private message going into more detail!

Last week a student on one of my courses sent me a private message to say that she was disappointed that I didn’t include instructions for Mac users. I was very grateful that: a) she sent it to me privately rather than write it in a public review and b) she let me know, as I am now aware there is some [small] demand for Mac instructions.

But here’s the thing: my Mac died recently and I’m not planning on getting a new one yet as we’re heading to the States on an extended roadtrip (I’ll get one soon after I walk out of the airport, I miss my Mac!). So I’m not able to do anything at the moment about meeting her need. The canal company probably can’t lower the sides of their boat or improve their emergency driver procedures too much. They – and I – are now aware that there is a need, though, and sometimes that’s all we can hope for when we write a review. That the person/people concerned will be made aware of our issues.

There’s no point getting stressed about something you can’t change but knowledge is power and being aware of it is useful. So if the canal boat company are offered a good deal on a boat with lower sides, they’ll know that that is something their passengers would appreciate. If someone offers me a deal on a used Mac I’ll probably take it, as I know my students will appreciate me being able to offer instructions for Mac users.

I don’t think reviews have to be either honest OR kind.Try telling that to some reviewers though! I’m very grateful that my readers and students are both naturally kind and helpfully honest.