Marketeers = ?

We have just been watching an amusing pattern forming on Pubs Galore, and I thought I would amuse myself and possibly others by blogging about it.

We regularly see Landlords review their own pubs, and the more credible ones admit in their review that they are the owners. We are happy for owners to review their pubs, but do hope they will say in their reviews they are the owners, personally I think it makes them more credible. I find it hard to trust anyone who posts 1 review where they popped into the pub, can name all the beers on tap, name the landlord/landlady and will be going back (but don't post any other reviews on the site so that we know what other good pubs they will be going back to). I frequently think of outing them and have thought it would be a fun thread on our forums, but to be honest hold back due to the kind of arguments it could produce.

We also occasionally see the chains come in, and to date they have normally been relatively honest, in that it is fairly easy to see from their review that they are part of the company, again we have no problem with that. More amusingly though today we have been watching what is presumably 1 person involved in the Vintage Inns chain or its marketing setting up an account, posting about 10 items, then moving on and creating another account before posting 10 items. All the accounts are set up using the same type of free email account and are following the same pattern, so for instance see the following reviews:
The Fetykil Fox
The Curlew
The Cuckoo
Flying Fox
4 Different users who within 24 hours have reviewed in surprisingly similar fashions, and in fact we can see that in certain cases are clearly the same person.

As well as the reviews they have posted pictures clearly ripped off from the Vintage Inns sites and some of our competitors, so whilst they may hold the copyright for their own sites stuff, it is unlikely they do for the ones stolen off other sites. And also posted web links to the front page of Vintage Inns. We have rejected the photos, if you are honest and stop trying to camouflage your relationship to Vintage Inns we would accept the ones from the Vintage Inns site. We only accept links where the page linked to contains more information on the pub, so we are rejecting the links to the Vintage Inns front page, they don't contribute anything new to the pub.
We don't mind owners promoting their pubs on our site, but please be honest about your interests, this sort of bad practice is universally hated by users of these sort of review sites and can cause more damage than a negative review to my mind.

To be clear, I have no idea if these reviewers are involved in Vintage Inns, and I am sure that the individual pubs will be a reflection of how they are cared for by their landlords. But if you are a marketing company thinking of doing this sort of thing, PLEASE DON'T! Just be honest, it is still a valid review even if you have a vested interest.