rateyourlandlord.ie

Coriolanus

Yeah, maybe.

I'm wondering now would yelp allow submissions for residential addresses. They already have the infrastructure etc and anyone can "add" a business, so a tenant could add the address they're staying at and leave a comment. Not sure how much control registered/confirmed owners have over the page for their business however.

Treehouse72

Nevore wrote: »

Hmm. Was thinking about this today. How is it any different to the likes of amazon user reviews (this electric shaver came to life and raped my prize poodle, 0 stars) or something like yelp (the staff in this restaurant followed me home and raped my prize poodle, 0 stars).
Plenty of slanderous, probably untrue stuff gets posted on online review sites all the time, how do the likes of the above avoid lawsuits from McDonalds and Philips?

Couple of things spring to mind.

1. Law of large numbers: Complaints will always be a minority for any popular venture. So the odd complaint about a Phillips razor isn't likely to go against the greater flow of opinion, so Philips probably don't mind about the odd untrue statement. That would not be the case with an individual landlord where he may only have 1 comment about him.
2. Fair comment. It might be fair comment to say a Big Mac was the most disgusting thing you ever ate, if all you ever ate was Truffles and Foie Gras. By contrast, saying Liam the Landlord did something terrible is either true or not true - it is less likely to be an opinion and more likely to be a statement of fact (true or false).

BostonB

Treehouse72 wrote: »

...1. Law of large numbers: Complaints will always be a minority for any popular venture. So the odd complaint about a Phillips razor isn't likely to go against the greater flow of opinion, so Philips probably don't mind about the odd untrue statement. That would not be the case with an individual landlord where he may only have 1 comment about him....

Well thats not strictly true its mainly its only the people with complaints who would bother to post. The vast majority of people who are happy, don't bother.

IMO.

Monife

Nevore wrote: »

Hmm. Was thinking about this today. How is it any different to the likes of amazon user reviews (this electric shaver came to life and raped my prize poodle, 0 stars) or something like yelp (the staff in this restaurant followed me home and raped my prize poodle, 0 stars).
Plenty of slanderous, probably untrue stuff gets posted on online review sites all the time, how do the likes of the above avoid lawsuits from McDonalds and Philips?

Or the likes of tripadvisor? Some people really go the whole hog when slating a hotel, but tripadvisor has the below quoted text under each review:

This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC Report problem with review

And it gives the manager/owner of the business the chance to post a reply to the review. That could be an option with Rate Your Landlord...

Treehouse72

BostonB wrote: »

Well thats not strictly true its mainly its only the people with complaints who would bother to post. The vast majority of people who are happy, don't bother.

IMO.

Sure, but if you are selling 1m Big Macs a day and one guy on the internet says the meat is made of cardboard it's not going to worry them too much.

BostonB

Yes but your comparing a huge faceless corporation vs an individual. Also the scale of customers is completely disparate. They might have one customer a year, MD's has 47 million customers a day.

mari2222

perhaps people could post that they are willing to receive a pm or give a pm opinion on a particular property

Treehouse72

BostonB wrote: »

Yes but your comparing a huge faceless corporation vs an individual. Also the scale of customers is completely disparate. They might have one customer a year, MD's has 47 million customers a day.

This merely backs up the original point about LL's and tenants: the small number of tenants that any LL would have would amplify libellous remarks made by those tenants.

Such libels are diluted with a large corporations who have many customers. Not that they wouldn't action it, but the law of large numbers means it will be proportionally less important to them, thus less injurious. There's nowhere to hide when it's just a small number of tenants and LL's.

scaryfairy

I don't know, have been thinking about this whole tenant-LL relationship (even before the thread started) and I would definitely not want to post reviews about LLs or be reviewed by LLs on a public site... however, I think that the current system is very one-way and in many ways, understandably so: landlords have loads to lose, much more than a 1-month deposit.
Having said that, when a tenant is locked in a lease (for a year usually?), and that apt/house is hell, because of landlord or neighbours etc, it's also quite a subtantial commitment, and which is normally based on a 10-min viewing...

What I am trying to say is that I think it would be quite logical to build into the system as a routine the provision of references by tenants who are moving out on the property + on communication with the landlord or agency. The landlord wants to know before a tenant moves in whether s/he is capable of paying the rent and would keep the property tidy from previous landlords (and as such, receives quite intimate details about the tenant: salary info etc). In the same way, us, tenants could find out from previous tenants whether the place is OK to live in and that the landlord is fine to deal with.

I think most people (LLs and tenants) are honest and decent and it should not be a problem. I have to say all but 1 landlord was great and have been renting in several countries, but I do feel a bit unconfortable about this lack of balance...