Mike Beasley's UnderSea
Adventures is a small, highly service-oriented dive
operator in Cozumel. They have been offered TV spots for such companies as
Toyota and have just shot a Direct TV Special. They do all types of diving,
but cater to high end, experienced divers (lot's of photogs and videographers).
They have been the victim of Cyber Diver slander for the past year. Here
is
their story:
About a year ago one of our clients told us they saw our rating on the scubalinx website and they were surprised that we came in at a little lower than the middle of the pack of Cozumel dive op's. Especially since we get very high reviews, on dive forums and to our knowledge we have never gotten a negative on-line review. We are also accident free (totally).
I emailed scubalinx and queried them on how they get their stats and the next day my rating went lower. At this point I contacted most of my diving clients and asked them to go to the site and give me high reviews (if they felt we deserved it--I had briefed them on what was occurring). Over the course of the next couple of days a few dozen people responded with all 10's in all categories on my rating page of scubalinx. A couple of days later my rating went down to almost 2 out of 10.
I then emailed scubalinx and told them that I had serious questions about their rating system. I also told them that I wanted to be removed from their list and webpage and I mentioned that I was considering legal action. The very next day my rating dropped to 1.97 where it has remained for several months.
After many more clients of ours responded to the site with high marks, it became apparent that no matter how many good reviews we got, our rating at scubalinx is never going to go any higher. We feel that we are being slandered via the internet, by a source that not only refuses to reply to our inquiries, but seems to be hiding their identity.
It is terrible to really try to be the best at what you are doing and then to have some unknown person slandering you an open, public forum.
Mike Beasley was not aware of all the other people in the dive industry who have been slandered by CDNN with their fake rating system. Its the same story we've heard over and over again. More proof that the rating system is totally fake, meant to manipulate you and the diving public.