engine - 10:55 am on Dec 12, 2012 (gmt 0)

I'm ok with objective reviews, but people are often driven by emotion when they write a review of a bad experience.
In this instance, the case is yet to be held, and the evidence will need to be presented to the courts for them to decide.

It is a lot of money, but the loss of earnings might be the true impact of the bad reviews.

Not long ago there was a TV show investigating the effects of bad reviews on Tripadvisor. Agreed, bad reviews can destroy a business, and if they are false, there's no excuse, imho.
Looking at one of the reviewers on the TV show, they went out of their way to find things that were wrong. In fact, some of the observations were downright ludicrous. I find that rather sad, and not a true reflection.

In other instances, some of the businesses appeared to be mediocre, but that doesn't justify a bad review, imho.

I have taken to going out of my way of writing positive, objective reviews, and rarely write bad reviews. If I have a bad experience, i'll tell the business, face-to-face, and it's up to them to fix it. It doesn't happen often, thankfully. If it's something like a hotel, or a restaurant, the easiest way to deal with that is to not go back.

If a business gets lots of emotionally-charged bad reviews I tend to ignore those. If there are objective bad reviews i'll take more notice.