SAN ANTONIO – Two San Antonio restaurants are thanking their lucky stars after their clients stepped in to save their sinking reviews.
The Wriggleyville Grill and the Cookhouse Restaurant were both victims of Facebook spam attacks. The hackers left hundreds of one-star ratings in a matter of hours, causing their stellar online reputations to suffer.
The Cookhouse’s owner, Susan Kaars-Sypesteyn, said her business relies heavily on social media and word of mouth as advertisement.
“We were at 4.8 rating, so we've always had a high rating on Facebook,” she said. “Just overnight, basically, ours dropped from a 4.8 to a 2.2.”
Across town the same thing happened to Jim Tingas.
“We got 600 reviews in four hours and they were all one-star reviews,” he said. That number climbed to 1,600 a few weeks later, all of them coming from accounts overseas.
“We didn’t know what to do. Me and my wife, Maria, were trying to figure out how do we get ahold of Facebook.”
The company’s response took time. So the two owners independently reached out to their clients on Facebook for help.
“Ever since we put it on Facebook that this happened, our Chicago family in San Antonio, all our guests and customers have been so positive with us,” Tingas said.
Clients began to leave stellar reviews and, thus, boosting their rating with five stars.
After several weeks, Facebook finally rectified the problem on their account but it left them with fear.
“I worry that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
A quick online search shows this similar problem has happened to other businesses.
Both owners urge other business owners to monitor their accounts closely and reach out to Facebook administrators immediately and continue to pursue them until the problem is fixed.
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