deceitful self advertising by tour company or individual??

Some of you may have read the post by Robinzhere about someone 'borrowing' her review on another cruise review site and adding plugs for tour companies. The person was mka1934 otherwise known as jbrown on cc. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=1588789&posted=1#post1588789

I did a search on all the posts that mka1934 or jbrown made:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/search.php?searchid=61315

What the person has been doing is posting to several cruise forums with the exact same review and plugs for the tour companies, but using different ship names! It always starts: "Last year My husband and I did a Med. Cruise with ...(fill in the blank with a new ship)" This appears to be shameful self-advertising that is deceitful and I feel very badly for all the people who have taken this person seriously. If I am wrong about this, please correct me, as I would hate to have incorrectly assumed so. Here are the posts:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=1375313#post1375313

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=1375650#post1375650

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=31886

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=1374931#post1374931

It kind of saddens me that this site is being used in this way. It is supposed to be a gathering of people who are looking forward to their next cruise, and a forum for advice to fellow cruisers alike, so that they may have the best vacation yet.

Let's hope that by you alerting everyone that it will drive away any business they might have gotten.

that's just wrong!

Report those post to Cruise Critic board (little diamond in upper right hand corner). They may pull them. Good detective work on your part.

How can anyone believe what the other person is saying and recommending now. What a terrible sham. Hopefully now that that you have alerted us to this practice we may all become aware of what tricks these tour guides can get up to and how low professionally they are.

Jennie

I think this is something we need to keep at the top of the first page for people to see. I just posted on the Ports of Call board too in order to try to alert people to this scam. It's a shame that now we have to be skeptical of reviews and hesitant to book with recommended tour operators.

Jackie

The tour company's name is Byzance. It's nice to know that the message is getting around to the people who signed up with this company.

Thanks for the heads up, it makes me sad that people are so deceitful. I hope you will take the posters advice and report them.

J. Brown just posted a review of the Star on this board giving the Star a poor rating and the excursion a high rating so you know what his agenda is.

:confused: :confused: I think this is just awful that someone would do this. What a deceitful thing to do. There must be a way to ban whoever did this from these boards. If not, at least we have been alerted to this fraud. It's too bad that we will now have to be distrustful of reviews. I know I will be unless I recognize the name of the poster. I will be looking for similarities in the writing. Whoever did this, shame on you!! Sorry to come on so strong about this but it's just not right.:confused: :confused:

I remember reading that review and thinking, what they said didn't match the rating at all. They were going on about how they had such a wonderful time, but only gave the trip a 2 star rating overall. It seemed like everything was horrible except the shore excursions which had 5 stars???!!!

It really is out of hand on the europe board. They keep posting new threads and are in cohoots with 2 other names. Brownj posts the 'borrowed' reviews with the added plugs for the companies which include marcello's and byzance.

From the europe board:

Haven't you figured it out yet? It looks like three posters are in cahoots. Brownj writes the trip report, SPDavid thanks them and then says he is going to book, and our friend, Peter, then comes in with his comment trashing cruiseline tours. This is a pattern I have been watching. Just click on their names to see the other posts and when all this started. The pattern is just too coincidental. Methinks a tour guide figured out how to beef up his business. The same thing is going on over at the CruiseAddicts board too. Same people, same modus operandi. This could be one person using alias' or several people posting. I have tired to send an e-mail to each of them and it says they request no e-mails. There is next to no info in their profile and they are fairly recent posters. We need to stop this exploiting of our CC board for these guys profit. Cruisers look to this board for information and will be innocently falling into the trap of booking with the tour operators that they are promoting. We need to keep alert for this type of self-promoting posting. If they have a wonderful tour it needs to be promoted the same way others have been, by actual trip reports not stolen reports where they just change the info for the port. If they are so unscrupulous as to act in this manner it makes me suspicious as to what else they may be up to. It's unfortunate that we can't trust the postings anymore due to a few individuals.

 

Seem like they were caught over on the CruiseMates board also and their posts were deleted.

 

Jackie

Thanks for the info.!

I did report it to the board moderators, but nothing has been done yet. :(

Good for you! Keep us posted.

I really hate to be so distrustful about posts but have you seen this one on the Europe board by a first time poster? :(

What do you think? :confused:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=52444

Sounds like an advertisement to me! Notice that the poster never once mentioned the ship (other than the suspicious Star) or dates of sailing. Also, she mentioned the tour guide by name. VERY suspicious!!

you'd think if you came back from a huge trip like that....a cruise, and you had a fairly good time, you would mention something more about the ship or the rest of the other ports that were visited other than the one where you had a private tour.

The princess tours are looking better and better, thanks to brownj, spdavid, peterhart, and now the elusive johannawhitehead. Thanks for making me so much more comfortable with choosing princess for shore excursions.

I agree, floofy! Thanks to the lurking frauds (mentioned above), and their links. we will know which private excursions and tour guides to avoid! I hope that Princess (and other cruise lines) is tracking these links, and will avoid contracting with them for excursions. I really hate to say this, but the whole thing sounds very Eastern European/Russian to me! I mean that I REALLY hate to say that, and don't mean to offend anyone.

Haha so cliche....you are right!

I just checked and the CC Board has pulled at least one of J Bronws postings on the Star. I haven't checked them all. Thanks for reporting the fraud! It looks like the CC Board does listen;)

Thanks for exposing the situation. Great work.

I just checked and the CC Board has pulled at least one of J Bronws postings on the Star. I haven't checked them all. Thanks for reporting the fraud! It looks like the CC Board does listen;)

That's great now if they will pull all of them and the rest. I imagine each one of the posts will have to be "flagged" to accomplish this because many are still there.

Wow I am impressed that they did do something. Chalk up a victory for the little people!

both spdavid and brownj have been banned from the boards! finally the review in member reviews has also been deleted.

I guess we'll have to watch out for the companies to pop up again under different names.

Awesome, CC. :D We are smarter than they thought. We give valid and honest info here, and will keep it that way. :)