liveaboard.com Can I trust them?

[LiveaboardCom]

Hi all,

I see there have been a number of comments in the last month and you have been waiting for a response to the questions raised.

I have been out of the office for a month and so I have only just seen these posts.

I am passing your queries on now to the management team and will be in touch as and when I have more information to share.

Many thanks,

Kathryn

 

[LiveaboardCom]

[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?

Hi J,

Just to confirm I have passed your questions on to the management and review team, who will be in touch if they have information to provide.

In terms of the review policy location, I have checked and can confirm this is sent out within the review request email so that customers have it to hand when creating their review.

You can also find it here if needed:

Review Policy

Many thanks,

Kathryn

 

[LiveaboardCom]

View attachment 554793





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.

Hi again J,

I'm just going through your posts again to see where I can provide more information. In response to this post:

1. Yes it is possible to check the overall scores of reviews and if you look back to Pg7 of this thread you'll see a selection of reviews, some of which scored below 5 and down to 2.

Many thanks,

Kathryn

 

[LiveaboardCom]

LiveAboard could have said something like:

- we're reviewing our Review System and Rules and will update that Policy in a month.
- we're amending the score calculation inputs and here's how it'll be computed

It appears that there is no input for safety related aspects, so a boat with a blocked fire-escape will score highly.

In my view a boat with a blocked fire escape should score zero.

It's taken Alberto too many emails, posts, over too many months. I wonder how many others simply gave up.

@chillyinCanada, the inappropriate moderation aside, any business built on some degree of dishonesty will be caught out somewhere, somehow along the line. How loud/impactful that becomes depends. On SB we have a chance to shape the industry we support with our $ and with our individual voices. Don't you agree that LiveAboard needs to fix their Review/Ratings system?

Hello J,

In response to this post:

- Yes, the review policy has been audited and updated. Changes to the wording have been made as a result of this.

I've also passed on your concern about safety related aspects for reviews and the suggestion to include a review section for safety comments/ratings.

Many thanks,

Kathryn

 

[LiveaboardCom]

Hello everyone,

Sorry went silent coz I went diving and I am terrible about everything else when I am diving. But now thats done I will follow up on this again.

I am still trying to post my review, since I think it is important. Almost half the people on my boat used Liveaboard.com to book their trip and everyone had many dives, so its not like they were new to the scene, yet they did not know to the extent that Liveaboard will go to hide reviews. I am trying to keep this thread alive and I am glad that it has gained this much attention because then when someone does a google search this will come up and show them that they cannot be trusted (again I would like to re-iterate that this is just with the review process, since I had acceptable service with everything else).

I have not heard back from them privately even though they keep on claiming that they are doing everything in their power. I am not asking for a crazy favor, I am literally just asking that my review be posted with a 1 star rating. It has taken many emails and dozens of posts here, and they cannot manage to do this. Hence if you are reading this, be very skeptical about trusting Liveaboard.com.

Hello Alberto,

Your review is now live on the JP Marine page. Here is a screen shot of part of your review and you can find the full review at the link below:

JP Marine

I have requested that the review also be published on the Orion page.

Many thanks for your patience. I appreciate this has been a frustrating process and I hope this goes someway to resolve that.

Kathryn

 

[LiveaboardCom]

.

I would suggest that you post reviews without editing. Or, alternatively, ask reviewers if they would agree to specific editing of their reviews. But don't just edit their reviews without their consent.

I recently did my first liveaboard.com trip to the Red Sea, and on the whole, I was satisfied with liveaboard.com as a portal, and with the assistance of the reps I spoke with. I also had a great time on the trip itself.

When I returned, I wrote a very positive review about the boat I was on. Just about the only negative comment I made about the boat was that while the food was generally good, breakfasts were disappointing and not nearly as good as lunches and dinners. When the review was posted, I noticed that liveaboard.com had deleted that comment about the breakfasts. Why delete that?

I will say that in originally selecting the specific boat that I booked, I did read a couple of negative comments, so it's not as if the censorship is 100%. But based on the general homogeneity of comments, I didn't really trust that the comments were unedited, and my experience upon my return (when my own comment was edited) confirmed that impression.

The boats in the Red Sea all pretty much look the same, and there are dozens of them. Being able to read unedited comments from previous divers would be the most useful resource in distinguishing one boat from the other. I realize that if several highly negative reviews are posted about a particular boat, the owners of that boat might decide to stop doing business with liveaboard.com -- but the flip side is that I think divers would feel much more confident booking a trip on a boat advertised by the portal.

Hello,

I have received a response from the review team who have confirmed they've checked your files and this is the text they received, which matches the published review at the link below:

Review Title :
Excellent experience
Best 3 Things :
The Tillis is staffed by an all-Egyptian crew, who work hard to provide a memorable experience. The guides were accommodating of photographer divers and allowed self-guided dive plans by teams of photographers were it was safe to do so. The owner takes a personal interest in the operation of the boat and does not hesitate to take action to make improvements where necessary.
How was it :
We had two fantastic dives on the Thislegorm, well timed so that we were the only divers in the water. We encountered thresher, oceanic whitetip, and gray reef sharks at Small Brother island, and did three dives in total at the Brothers. I encountered a female bottlenose dolphin and her calf at the wreck of the Giannis D, and spent two glorious minutes with them. The divers were a fun mix of Germans, Russians, Greeks, Brits, Canadians and Moroccans. A delightful experience.
Country :
Improve Service :

Tillis

They've also checked and seen you haven't reviewed any other vessels on LiveAboard.com, so its not possible your text has been misplaced.

In your comments on here you mentioned 'while the food was generally good, breakfasts were disappointing and not nearly as good as lunches and dinners'.

Would you like that to be added to your review? If so, please let me know and I can raise a request to do so.

Likewise, please let me know if you'd prefer to resubmit your review in full so you can add further details.

Many thanks,

Kathryn

 

[LiveaboardCom]

Pick one.

1. We've published a fair proportion of reviews that are less than complimentary of any of our boats.

2. We've published an honest review without censoring the content.

3. We've agreed to publish @Alberto Ruiz-Larrea 's review without dubious "gussy up" activities.

Hello,

In answer to your queries:

1. We've published negative and low scoring reviews. You can see a selection of them on Pg7 of this thread.

2. We publish uncensored reviews, including negative ones. Please see below.

3. Alberto's review has been published, which you can see above and within a screen grab here:

I trust that answers your queries but let me know if not.

Many thanks,

Kathryn

 

[ontdiver]

It would be useful to hear what JP Marine has to say about this review. Hopefully this review also gets read and commented upon in this space by other divers who were on the same trip.

Kudos to Kathryn for following up on this issue in such a comprehensive manner.

 

[Alberto Ruiz-Larrea]

Kudos to Kathryn for following this up and posting the review!

Now lets hope that this starts to be taken seriously and that next time someone posts a negative review it does not take 3 months to publish and as much effort as I had to put. However, I am still waiting for this post to be published on the Orion boat, since that is the boat I went on, not the JP Marine. I also wanted to point out that if this was 100% fair, I would give a 1 star out of 10, not 2.8 out of 10. I also find it crazy that I have to be ok with they didn't edit my review too much. But I still consider this a win non the less.

 

[ontdiver]

Now lets hope that this starts to be taken seriously and that next time someone posts a negative review it does not take 3 months to publish and as much effort as I had to put. .

In this age of entitlement and hyperbole, I think we need to remember that even on SB, we do not have the right to post anything we want.