liveaboard.com Can I trust them?

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Dear Shannon,

i have spent 35 years teaching and developing statistical and mathematic systems. Your reviews don’t conform to any normal models. You are gaming the system. This has nothing to do with “abusive language” or “guidelines”. You simply exclude low ratings. Enough said.
 
Dear Tridacna,

We are very sorry to hear that you feel this way. We completely understand your concern and can 100% assure you that our review process is in no way a scam.

We have no deliberate bias when posting reviews from guests who have used our website to book a liveaboard and want to make sure we can reflect the experience onboard the boats as accurately as possible.

We do have criteria and rules that reviews must meet in order to be posted on our website. ....

.....

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Thank you,

Shannon
[Bolding is by me]

Hi Shannon,

I have some questions / concerns:

You have 17,900+ verified reviews, each having an overall score out of 10.

1/ How many have an overall score of less than 5?
2/ How many have an individual component* score of less than 5? (*vessel, crew, food, diving, value)
3/ Is there a reason why you won't/don't display the individual components? 3a/ Will you change that in the future?
4/ Have you shared / will you share how the overall score is computed?

Thanks.

J.

p.s. your Review Policy is impossible to find on your main website. A link was provided earlier ... can you make it easier to find it on your website please?
 
Dear Tridacna,

We are very sorry to hear that you feel this way. We completely understand your concern and can 100% assure you that our review process is in no way a scam.

We have no deliberate bias when posting reviews from guests who have used our website to book a liveaboard and want to make sure we can reflect the experience onboard the boats as accurately as possible....
Come on. We know this is a lie. We have example after example of your company editing and refusing to put up reviews only because they say something unflattering about your clients, i.e. the liveaboards. All your company is doing by persisting in this lie is further diminishing whatever credibility you had left.

I, for one, will not be using your company's services. Nor will I recommend anyone else do so. At least until someone there admits what we all know to be the truth and gives a satisfactory answer as to how they are going to fix this.
 
Thought I would check out Liveaboard.com on Trustpilot ... can't say it's getting better. Apart from the not publishing negative review aspect, there's a couple of price fixing / not honouring an advertised price (no manifest error), check this out:

Screen Shot 2019-12-11 at 8.49.53 pm.png
 
Dear Tridacna,

We are very sorry to hear that you feel this way. We completely understand your concern and can 100% assure you that our review process is in no way a scam.

We have no deliberate bias when posting reviews from guests who have used our website to book a liveaboard and want to make sure we can reflect the experience onboard the boats as accurately as possible.

We do have criteria and rules that reviews must meet in order to be posted on our website.These rules ensure that we are fair, impartial and follow all applicable GDPR laws, some reasons as to why we might not post a review are:

- When the review includes abusive language, swearing, discriminatory remarks, language that negatively targets a staff member, or personal political, religious, and ethical viewpoints

- If it includes personal information, like names, phone numbers, addresses etc.

- If we suspect that a review isn’t genuine and might be used to target a competitor

- If the review does not to provide any added value for other divers

- When the review is not about the service provided but another aspect on which either LiveAboard.com or the boat operator has no influence

- When the review promotes illegal activities

We do read each review thoroughly and because this is a manual process there is always the potential flaw of human error and if this is the case we will follow up and rectify immediately.

We take all experiences and feedback seriously and we would like to thank you for providing your own to us.

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Thank you,

Shannon
My bold.....
So, if a customer have a bad experience on a boat, whether it's food, accommodation, operating problems etc. you believe a review of that problem has no added value?
I beg to differ. I work hard for my money and have limited free time. I believe that it is a great value for me to learn about problems that I might encounter if I invest both money and time on that particular boat.
You are in service provider industry. I agree on censoring abusive, illegal.....but, you do not get to choose whether you like a review or not. I mean, you can choose to filter out reviews you don't like, but then you get yourself in a situation like this.
IME, people will start walking away from you.
 
Excluding LOW rated reviews IS deliberate bias. The strange thing is that that type of behavior triggers immediate mistrust. Poor corporate decision making trying to overvalue their brand. Usually backfires.
 
Screen Shot 2019-12-12 at 9.09.17 am.png


[Bolding is by me]

Hi Shannon,

I have some questions / concerns:

You have 17,900+ verified reviews, each having an overall score out of 10.

1/ How many have an overall score of less than 5?
2/ How many have an individual component* score of less than 5? (*vessel, crew, food, diving, value)
3/ Is there a reason why you won't/don't display the individual components? 3a/ Will you change that in the future?
4/ Have you shared / will you share how the overall score is computed?

Thanks.

J.

p.s. your Review Policy is impossible to find on your main website. A link was provided earlier ... can you make it easier to find it on your website please?

Excluding LOW rated reviews IS deliberate bias. The strange thing is that that type of behavior triggers immediate mistrust. Poor corporate decision making trying to overvalue their brand. Usually backfires.

Let's see if @LiveaboardCom decides to respond to the questions above. I sense it will be something like:

"1/ None of the 17,900 reviews had an overall score of less than 5, OR, it's not possible to check (yeah right).
2/ No individual component can score less than 5, OR, a decent proportion did, but for privacy reasons we can't share that.
3/ Yes, but won't say. Maybe, we value your feedback etc (but won't actually do anything)
4/ No or it's impossible to have an overall score of less than 5." OR, we compute averaging the top 3 components etc ..."

Then hopefully even they can start to see their bias. I'm sure it'll then become a pathetic corporate argument like there was "no deliberate bias", it just kind of occurred like that. Pretty poor form.
 
Please stop dogpiling. Give Liveaboard.com a chance to respond.
 
Chilly-why are you so defensive about LA.com? Their responses so far have been puerile and non-factual. I think that they have been caught red-handed with their unfair and biased rating system and they’re unable to respond. Not sure why you have to spring to their defense so vigorously. This is not a personal attack. Mares is a big company - they should be able to defend themselves quite comfortably (if they had a leg to stand on). I must say that I’ve never seen a Mod issue warnings about questioning bad business ethics before.
 
Liveaboard's had a decent chance to respond and they've decided not to.

It seems clear to me that there's nothing above-board about Liveaboard ratings system.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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