How do you know what's true?

In today's world, anyone with access to the Internet can go about ruining a business's reputation. Review sites are everywhere; oversight is non-existent; abuse often reigns.

In the hospitality industry, many travelers turn to Trip Advisor or to Google pages to read reviews before booking a reservation, whether at a hotel or at a restaurant. And here's the first problem with those reviews: No one has to provide any proof that he or she stayed at the facility or ate in the restaurant. The second problem: The owners have no opportunity to respond to reviews, whether positive or negative.

Here's an example, based on what happened to us yesterday. A potential guest called with a request that we could not honor. He was unhappy with our answer to his (ridiculous) question, and ended his call by telling us that he was going to "go onto Google and write a bunch of bad reviews."

Why shouldn't he? There's no way to prove whether he's telling the truth or not. There are several reviews about our business at Trip Advisor that we know are untrue, a couple of which we also know were written by people who, like yesterday's caller, were unhappy that we either required them to honor the cancellation policy they agreed to or otherwise were unable to meet an unreasonable request.

What I wonder is why people are interested in ruining someone else's reputation. Why go to all that trouble just to cause trouble for someone else? If a business is badly run, it will fail without the assistance of bad reviews. But if it is well run, it may also fail due to those who choose to post dishonest comments.

Small business owners already have their hands full trying to survive in our economy. They don't need this kind of dishonesty also working against them.