Redacted - I shamefully need your help!
Posted: February 25, 2009, 6:38 pm
by Xyun
- [Show]
Once again, I come to you guys for a little help.
As many of you may know, I lost my job in December and was rejected unemployment benefits because I was "discharged for misconduct", which I am contesting. Nonetheless, I haven't been able to find work and have been unemployed for a couple of months and my savings are reaching nil. I've secured a temporary (2 month) job in Las Vegas dealing the World Series of Poker but that doesn't start til May. In the meantime, I have decided to leave Florida and visit some family and friends around the country as I make my way out to Vegas (which keeps me from having to pay rent for a couple of months). But money is still a huge problem.
A few weeks ago I had a job interview with a resort motel owner for a front desk manager position. I didn't get the job, but he did offer me some freelance online marketing work. What he wanted was for me to write good reviews about his properties online, especially at tripadvisor.com (google), travelocity.com, yahoo.com, and other sites. He even provided me with a list of sites, some of which don't seem to be operating or are just really shitty sites. Then there is the problem that most of the sites monitor their reviews and if reviews are submitted from the same IP or even the same laptop from different IPs they are rejected. Yet, no one in the industry seems to give a shit that writing fake reviews is fraudulent, and thus, neither do I. Many hotel owners bypass the monitoring by having their employees and their family and friends submit reviews from different locations and such and so he is getting crushed by the competition. Since he offered me this work a few weeks ago, his main hotel has dropped from 5th to 7th on Trip Advisor.
The money he is offering me is not much (about $3-4 per review), but it will help keep my phone on and put gas in my car and food on my plate for a couple of months if I can crank out a couple hundred. While I realize most of you won't give a shit, I come here to see if anyone is willing to register on one or a few of these sites and submit my reviews by proxy. You don't even have to write the review if you don't want to, just PM me and I will write one and you can copy/paste. The only hassle is that most of the sites require email verification when you register, though a lot of people here will already be registered with the big ones like google and yahoo. You can use a dummy email acct if you want. It just takes a few minutes.
Ok, if you can and are willing to help here is some information:
First and foremost it is important to give the highest possible rating the site allows to bring the average up.
There are 3 hotels he wants me to advance. I'm just going to start with the main one for now. Below are direct links to reviews of the hotel on websites, Google (tripadvisor.com) being the most important. Once registered, you can submit reviews to each hotel with the same account, but not multiple reviews to the same hotel. You can even submit the same exact review at all the links - Most of the sites have a max of 300 words, and you really don't even need all that, just a couple of sentences and max rating. I can write something up if you want. I'm going around town to libraries so I can get different accounts and post reviews also, so I may not get back to you immediately, but will get back to you ASAP. Here is the first hotel:
Plaza Beach Hotel Beachfront Resort - http://www.PlazaBeach.com
This is the main property. It is on the beach side of the island and the beach is right behind the hotel. The other 2 are on the bay side of the island, where there are docks and boats but no beach. But the island is so narrow that you literally walk across the street and you're on the beach. It's just a few hundred yards. You can read some of the reviews to get an idea of what its like.
The other 2 hotels are below, I'm going to do direct links to their review pages in the next few days.
Bayview Plaza Waterfront Resort - http://www.TheBayviewPlaza.com
Bay Palms Waterfront Resort - http://www.BayPalmsResort.com
Finally, if you do submit a review please let me know in this thread or in a PM which site and under what name you did so I can claim it with the hotel owner. Thank you very much to those who can and will help.
The practice is garbage, and a common game. Sadly, those companies that lose the most are the ones not doing it....
