At the beginning of August someone called Gary O’Sullivan posted a fake, malicious and defamatory review on Dogs at Home’s Facebook page and Google Business page alleging that he had boarded his dog with me, that it has been attacked and that I didn’t care about the dog’s injuries. This was done with the intent of extracting money from me in exchange for him removing the “reviews”. I found out that this man lives in Spain and runs a carpentry business called Sullys Complete Carpentry and Reform Services based in Calle Trossets 03740 Gata De Gorgos Valencia. I had never had any dealings with this person, despite his claims and despite the fact that he purposely used my first name so as to make out that we were on familiar terms. When I challenged him robustly on Facebook over the fact he was not my customer and we had never met he then changed his story and claimed the dog in question actually belonged to another family member!
I naturally flagged up these “reviews” with both Facebook and Google, however to my disgust neither have done anything about them and they have not been taken down. Facebook actually had the nerve to comment that the “review” wasn’t defamatory and that maybe I should contact this person to discuss him removing his “review”. Facebook didn’t even bother to reply when I pointed out to them that this “review” was fake and made claims that contained serious uncorroborated and defamatory allegations, which were presented as statement of fact, intended to lower my credentials in my peer group and cause me financial loss and that I was not going to contact someone who was seeking money from me in order to take the “review” down. In effect Facebook by their total lack of action are facilitating extortion by offering a platform for scammers.
In complete contrast, when Gary O’Sullivan also attempted to post the same “review” on the Find a Pet Boarding website where I advertise, he did not succeed as the website only accepts real reviews from genuine customers and as he was asked to provide proof that he was a genuine customer and was unable to do so, they did not publish his post. Here at least I had some protection against this scammer as I pay to have a presence on the Find a Pet Boarding site so I am their customer, but as I do not pay to be on Google Business or Facebook they feel they can do whatever they like and act in a totally unethical manner allowing anyone to post any “review” they like about anyone’s business. The only remedy on Facebook is not to allow any reviews of your business at all, but this then removes all the other positive reviews which allow prospective customers to see how happy my current customers are with the service they receive.
Google and Facebook’s inaction and disgraceful slipshod policies with regard to verifying the veracity of reviews they allow to be posted has resulted in my 100% positive reviews and 5 out of 5 rating being lowered to 4.7 out of 5 which is unjust. However I will not bow to extortionists and scammers and refuse to pay any money to anyone to have fake reviews taken down.
To add insult to injury Gary O’Sullivan was slandering me by making out that I did not care about “his dog’s injuries” and that he found it hard as “a dog lover” to understand that. This claim has to take the biscuit as I found out on Facebook that Gary O’Sullivan attended the horrendous Pamplona Bull Run 4 years in a row and enthusiastically posted about this on his Facebook page. This event consists of hounding terrified and confused bulls through the streets and taunting and goading them only for them to be barbarically slaughtered for the entertainment of small minded cretins. One of his photos, which he appeared to find amusing as he flippantly commented “Nice view from up here”, shows a poor terrified bull that has ended up climbing on some kind of scaffold to get away from its tormentors. On the evening of the Bull Run at 6:00 p.m., the bulls are killed during the Bullfights in the bullfight arena (Plaza de Toros).
My final response to this man addressed the Pamplona Bull Run issue and asked him who the real animal lover was. Him who attends the Pamplona Bull Run where he tries to pose as some kind of macho man to boost his ego, as seen in the photo of him dressed in red posing in the bull ring, or me who donates money every month from my business to the following wonderful charities, because I cannot be there on the ground myself to help the animals who are in such desperate need:
World Horse Welfare - caring for horses and equines worldwide and especially involved in campaigning against the live transport of horses for slaughter.
Soi Dog - Saving dogs from the horrendous dog meet trade in the Far East and finding them new forever homes worldwide.
Compassion in World Farming - campaigning for the welfare of all farm animals around the world and in particular against the live transport of farm animals for slaughter outside the UK.
I finished my response to Gary's "review" by posting a link from the League Against Cruel Sports entitled “Profiting from Pamplona”. Funnily enough Gary O’Sullivan has since deleted the photos with the bulls from his Facebook page. I wonder why?