A coffee shop in Bacolod City received help from Filipinos online on dealing with bad reviews left by rude customers.
The management of Slo-Bar Café, a locally owned coffee shop known for handcrafted drinks, complained about ten young customers who occupied three tables in its small shop but only ordered two drinks.
Despite accommodating them, the coffee shop wrote that these individuals left bad reviews on their Google Page.
This incident prompted the management to speak up on Instagram on December 9. They also uploaded a picture of the young girls involved with their faces blurred.
“It pains us to get a mob of Google reviews from 10 unsatisfied kids saying that our staff was rude and that our food was bad when they occupied three tables and only got two drinks,” they said.
“We do not wish to engage but these things will happen again so it [is] better to confront them when we can. I wonder if they understand the damage it would do not just to our business but also the dignity of our staff who are just trying to make ends meet each day?” they added.
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The management then asked its Instagram followers what they should do to approach these types of people, whom they said wanted to be seated to “hang out for free.”
“How do we approach non-paying customers (mostly students) who want to be seated? We know that they only want to hang out for free and shoot their personal content, but to what extent must we share our space to please these guests?” Slo-Bar Café asked.
Handling bad Google reviews
Screenshots of the negative reviews were uploaded on the subreddit forum r/Philippines.
The post has been up-voted by community members 3,600 times.
Maybe Dale Philip was right
byu/ArgumentTechnical724 inPhilippines
Slo-Bar Café’s concern was also later talked about on Facebook and the X platforms.
Some Filipinos suggested that the coffee shop management file an appeal before Google or report the commenters for bullying or harassment.
“I remember you can appeal this in Google to be removed if there’s an event of dog pilling,” a Redditor said.
“The best approach would be to report them to Google as bullying/harassment and the Google Review team will be able to trace it back to their shared accounts and IP,” another Redditor commented.
Business owners or Google account holders can request the removal of reviews from their business pages through the search engine’s support page here Remove reviews from your Business Profile on Google – Computer – Google Business Profile Help.
They can also flag reviews as “inappropriate.”
In Google’s Review Policy, inappropriate content and behavior includes harassment, offensive content and gibberish and repetitive content.
Slo-Bar Café’s Business page currently holds a stellar 4.8 rating on Google Maps. The negative reviews also seemed to have been removed.
Update from the management
Several Filipinos, meanwhile, expressed their support for the coffee joint’s staff for speaking up about it.
The management soon saw these reactions. In the comments section, they expressed how grateful they were for the positive messages.
“Hey guys. We are deeply thankful for the support…this has uplifted the team in many ways,” they said.
They also told others to be “kinder” on social media.
“We were trying to open up a conversation as we feel that it matters to speak up for our staff but it doesn’t give us to right to berate other people. Let’s be kinder with our words,” their statement reads.
