Lessons from traveling abroad: don't always trust review websites

My hostel in Northern Ireland left a lot to be desired.  Between masturbating roommates leading to me sleeping in mildewy staff quarters to seeing the staff constantly mistreated and thinly veiled racism from the man running the place, I thought it was high time to let the world know.  HostelWorld that is.

I left a review detailing the situations I found myself in and the conversations I was unfortunate enough to overhear, then repeated the same thing on TripAdvisor (where a man claiming to be the owner belittled every negative review left for him).

Here is the big lesson of the day: Review sites like HostelWorld and TripAdvisor apparently let the owners have a lot of control over the reviews.

Within a day or two, both of my reviews were taken down.  When I contacted HostelWorld they pretended they didn't see any of my reviews as having been deleted and it was restored the next day…..only to disappear again shortly thereafter.  When I contacted TripAdvisor they told me they couldn't accept my review because I hadn't actually stayed at the facility.  I told them I had indeed stayed there and had a receipt to prove it, and they never wrote me back.

During this same period of time I received multiple harassing emails from the man who claimed to own the hostel.  Emails that included gems like

Needless to say I contacted my credit card company right away, but they told me they couldn't do anything about blocking the fraudulent charges.  They said I could only take action after he charged me, not before.  I then spent several days obsessively checking my cards to ensure he hadn't maxed me out.

But not all was lost.  It made for delightful entertainment for my friends back home and the new friends I met at my next stop: Edinburgh, Scotland.

It can also now be delightful entertainment for you as well!  Here is a copy of our correspondence starting with my reply to the insane ramblings above: