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Fodors: getting user-generated content very, very wrong…

Andrew Edmunds | London Restaurants | Fodor’s Online Travel Guide

Who’d have thought it? Fodor’s, voted Most Trusted Brand by the travelling American Blue-Rinse Saga set (ok – I made that up) getting UGC so, so, so wrong…

I was inviting a friend to my favourite restaurant in all of London Town and – he being new to this parts – thought I’d send him an interwebnet link, entered “andrew edmunds” into google.

The Fodors review seemed the nicest but, upon looking at the site, I find the contribution of “Fernando Hemmingway from The Land of Confused Ducks”. Promising.

I’ve grabbed the entry (in case anyone from Fodors reads this) but it’s reproduced below – with full apologies to anyone who gets sacked as this is parsed by your firewall’s content filter…

The Cream at Andrew Edmunds Isn’t the Only Thing Being Whipped!
Posted by Fernando Hemmingway from The Land of Confused Ducks on 05/22/2006
I was delighted with this restaurant, until I discovered that it was actually a gay bar. I was raped several times by various people, including the head chef. I can only pray he remembered to wash his hands before preparing my meal!

UGC is all well and good, but while the consumer (joker, mendacious troll, saboteur) may _generate_ the words, you don’t have to accept them! It’s your brand, Fodor, look after it!

Now, let’s hope that they have the confit of duck on the menu next week…