Pub boss accuses customer of ‘blackmail’ after they claimed to have got food poisoning and threatened bad TripAdvisor review unless they got refund
Piers Baker, 41, hit out after the customer contacted him to say they had become ill three days after eating at his pub - The Sun Inn in Dedham, on the Essex-Suffolk border
A PUB boss has blasted an angry customer's attempt to "blackmail" him after they allegedly threatened to leave a bad TripAdvisor review unless he gave out a refund.
The diner claimed they had suffered food poisoning after eating lamb at the Sun Inn in Dedham, on the Essex-Suffolk border, which 41-year-old Piers Baker owns.
Piers was called three days after a meal by a member of a party who had dined at the historic 15th-century former coaching inn.
They demanded their money back for the meal on November 27, and while Piers expressed sympathy for them, he said he could not offer a refund unless the illness was confirmed by a doctor or environmental health or Food standards Agency investigation.
In response, the diner said they would post a bad review on the well-regarded travellers' website TripAdvisor if they didn't get any money back.
The threat was carried out three days later.
Piers, who also runs the Church Street Tavern in Colchester, Essex, said: "It's extremely frustrating.
"If people don't like the decor or something that's up to them.
"I have no problem with opinions, I do with a distortion of the facts.
"We get it frequently, people who sit in and say 'if you don't take this off my bill we will put it on TripAdvisor'.
"We will take it off if there's something wrong with it, the threat is irrelevant.
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"If they behave like that we don't want them back anyway.
"We value feedback, it is important to improve.
"But with this one they are saying we caused illness. It's libellous."
The furious businessman added: "I have replied to the comment which I don't like doing because I don't agree with it and don't want to be involved.
"I said when they called 'you are blackmailing us' and they said 'no, we feel you should inform people of it'.
"We know the meat came in good order, was stored correctly and cooked at the right temperature.
"We served 180 people that day, 48 had lamb - plus some staff - and we have had no other reports of food poisoning."
He said the victim could have easily caught a bug or virus off another person.
TripAdvisor now appears to have taken the comment down.
Mr Baker said in his 14 years in the trade he's had to have such reviews removed from the high-profile site twice before.
A TripAdvisor spokesman said: "Our advice to business owners if they feel they have been threatened with an unfair review is to use our dedicated tool which allows them to report such threats to us before any review is published.
"Our team of specialists will then investigate and take action to prevent reviews that breach our guidelines from making it onto the site.
"For reviews that are published and do meet our guidelines, we give owners the opportunity to put their side of the story across by publishing a reply to each review."
The Sun Inn was rated in the top 50 pubs in the Good Food Guide 2016, and scooped the top title for Wine List of the Year for pubs and restaurants across the country in 2014.
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