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Australia: Country’s richest man embroiled in TripAdvisor censorship claims

By  |  November 27, 2016

Harry Triguboff, Australia’s richest person, has become embroiled in a dispute with the country’s competition watchdog, which is suing his serviced apartment business for allegedly preventing customers from writing negative TripAdvisor reviews.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleged in a Federal Court action on Thursday that Meriton Property Services had engaged in “misleading or deceptive conduct in connection with the posting of reviews of its properties on TripAdvisor”.

The commission alleges that between November 2014 and October 2015 Meriton took steps to prevent guests it suspected would give negative reviews from receiving Tripadvisor’s “Review Express” email. It alleges that Meriton staff attempted to do this by inserting additional letters into guests’ email addresses provided to TripAdvisor, which rendered the addresses ineffective, or by not sending email addresses to TripAdvisor.

Full Content: Financial Times

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