QANTAS - They offer platitudes without substance

Firstly ...

Prior to our flight with Qantas this time we were given two passes to the Qantas club as compensation for another Qantas flight which they screwed up.  That ‘honeymoon’ flight was somewhat ruined when our allocated seats were ignored and Qantas reallocated us rows apart.  After I complained to the desk crew they once again reallocated us but to the last row and by the time catering got to us they ran out of food.  Two passes was totally inadequate.  Qantas even said that even though one can book specific seats there is no guarantee that you will ever get them.  Misrepresentation and unfair terms all spring to mind when the ‘fine print’ denied responsibility for advertised benefits such as seat allocation.

Then ...

This time we had time to spare so we used our two passes and entered the Qantas club in Melbourne.

The only acceptable thing about the experience were the women on the front desk who were polite, respectful and helpful.

Picture a Coles cafeteria of the 1960’s awash with people and mess.  This is the sight which greeted us.  Down market is an understatement.  No available seats, piles of used plates and mess everywhere.  Still, our passes were now taken away and we persevered until someone left and we grabbed their table.

We thought that perhaps a glass of bubbly would be nice only to find just over a glass left in the self serve which was not replaced for the 45 mins we were there.  No staff!

Try breakfast.  There must have been over 100 people in the largish facility yet the hot breakfast options consisted of 6 getting cold tiny sausages, a small bowl of scrambled eggs which should have been replaced hours before and slices of warm tomato.  That’s it!

We then sought coffee but found a problem as there were no cups.  We scavenged the entire lounge for cups to find two and tried the machine coffee.  It was undrinkable and we left same.

An original Qantas screw up leading to this ‘compensation’ which proved well below any standard.  No bubbly, food we couldn’t eat, coffee we couldn’t drink and all in a dirty space. 

One has to ask just what Qantas are doing.  What sort of management lets this happen?  Obviously management were incompetent and needed help if not look for another job.

Move on a few weeks to Qantas club in Heathrow and the whole experience was vastly different.  Good front desk, good staff, a clean lounge, a snack buffet of fresh food and nice wines served by great staff.  Toilets immaculate as were the showers.  A good relaxing place my wife and I enjoyed during our forced 10 hour break between flights.

Pity Melbourne is managed so badly.

Then ...

Our actual flight from Melbourne to Singapore was barely above Neanderthal with extremely tight seats further disadvantaged by almost non-existent service.  Cabin crew are wait staff and as such bear a huge responsibility to make customers feel special and to cater for their every need.  Staff chatting in the back of the plane instead of looking after customers is offensive to paying guests. 

The catering offerings were as down market as the Qantas club.  The bread roll was inedible being nuked too long as was the so called pizza.  The blade ‘stew’ was below first year apprentice standard and the mash had the consistency of yogurt.  Absolutely awful.

Then ..

We were told our next flight from Singapore to London [QF1 on the 20th of December 2018] was running 3 hours late with no explanation.  This meant we would have missed all connecting flights to Helsinki et alia despite allowing a 2 hour window.  No reason or alternatives were given despite asking for same.  We found a Singapore flight which would have lobbed us into London with time to spare for the connection.  We asked Qantas to re-book us on that flight and they did but somewhat grudgingly.  We were glad to get rid of Qantas.

Qantas, just what are you doing?

Qantas, like some others, have developed a ‘commuter bus’ mentality rather than a ‘tourist coach’ mentality.  This also applies to the so called club at Melbourne.

Do Qantas care?  Definitely NO!  They offer platitudes without substance.

ZOMATO

We have owned and run a boutique restaurant in Fitzroy Melbourne called 'Mon Ami' for some 15 years, have been ranked within the top 2% of restaurants globally and are lucky enough to be full most of the time. 

With the rise and rise of everyone's capacity to post their opinions online there are now a plethora of sites which purport to just publish others comments without bias.  Unfortunately this is rarely the case where defamation is rife and so called 'algorithms' are advertised as perfect yet fail time after time.

Zomato is such a site. 

I have complained to Zomato without success with just the latest below:

Zomato,

In simple terms, you are attempting to separate restaurants on an overall spectrum [bell curve] by arbitrarily [in both senses – your use of unrestrained authority and on the basis or random thought] changing the ranking pursuant to the number of businesses on a ranking rather than independent reviewer scores even though even though the respective businesses may be vastly different.  This is a mathematical nonsense because you are not changing scores based on independent grades but based on your assessment without having been to each establishment.  For example you mathematically compare as equals say a pizza shop and a fine dining restaurant where the offerings are different as are the clients.  A dish which takes 2 days to prepare has nothing in common with a dish which takes 15 minutes, yet you ignore the reviewer and arbitrarily change their score . Undoubtedly, your issue is that you will have a lot of restaurants on 3.5/5 because people tend to vote around the mean.  Instead, separation should be based on a more extensive spectrum [maybe out of 100 in decimals from .1 to 10.0] and mathematically weighted by a number of parameters such as cuisine, service, ambience etc.  All of this without independent mathematical influence by Zomato.

It’s the reviewer which should determine scores, not Zomato.

In our case our score drops to 3.9 when the average of actual reviewers scores is circa 4.5 just because there are others on the same score.  Just common sense says look at the reviews and establish whether we sit at 3.9 or 4.5 [?].

If all this was just esoteric argument then it would be an interesting mathematical exercise but in part our business is affected by Zomato based on their changes.  If a potential clients tipping point is say 4.2 then we would be ignored despite past clients ranking us at 4.5.  This can cost us business and is most certainly inappropriately influenced by Zomato AND it misrepresents our business and is thus possibly unlawful.

In addition, we treasure both professional reviewers and blogging diners and take all comments seriously.  However, we do get annoyed when some disaffected keyboard warrior says nice things to us and ferrets off to anomalously write vitriol.  [Why would anyone do this?]  Thankfully, these cases are very rare albeit there was one quickly refuted [by others] chunk of inappropriate vitriol posted recently on Zomato which we demanded to have modified to remove the defamatory comments.  [What sort of people do this?] 

Note that Zomato are responsible for publishing defamation when they are in full knowledge of content.

This unfortunately gets much more important for a new restaurant depending on public reviews to build business.  Zomato can kill them based on their so called algorithm. 

Not good.

Zomato, you need to deal with your methods.

Regards,

Jon

Opera [house] in Melbourne ..

I wish to thank the Sydney Opera House Trust from a Melbournian’s perspective for their decision to downgrade and make Bennelong restaurant more 'accessible'. 

That pesky Frenchman created a beautiful multi-hat restaurant called Bennelong within our national icon.  A first class affair befitting its status.  Guillaume Brahimi, being  that pesky Frenchman, sought to create something special in the space as has Ducasse who leads the restaurant Jules Verne within Paris’s Eiffel tower.  Little compromise in either ‘wonders of the world’.

However, Australians it seems, according to the opera house trust, want an ‘accessible’ venue similar to the dozens of cafes and restaurants in the immediate vicinity. 

The Utzon hating Ryan Committee of yesteryear seems reborn – ‘don’t bother to create something really special because us Australian’s just want pub tucker – no need for that smancy stuff – just give us another café/bar’.

Nothing special or world leading, just average so us average people can go there and feel, well, average.

As Sydney does not seem to appreciate how to deal with ‘first class’ I wonder if we could shift the opera house to Melbourne where we would indeed laud the brilliance of Utzon and create a world class experience decidedly away from average.

This is not a slight on the successful van Haandels and we wish them well but my question remains, ‘Do we want yet another café / bar and importantly, do we want it in our one-off wonder of the world?’

My thanks, as a Melbournian, to the trust for downgrading Sydney.

Response – ‘Heads on a platter’ by Colman Andrews and ‘It’s a tough job ...’ by Joanna Saville and ‘Food critic’s demise’ by Suzanne Carbonne.

Tuesday’s Epicure in the Age September 25 2012 and Wednesday’s Age in Entertainment 26th September 2012.

It is indeed a pity when self-devotion to the aggrandisement of the self proclaimed professional restaurant critic’s expertise [apologies to Dickens] is toppled by Joe the blogger blob. Food reviewers are crying foul as their level of self proclaimed importance and vitriol is replaced by the equally self proclaimed but now collective vitriol of the unsworn albeit anonymous masses. For years so called food writers have survived on sensation and the negative such as demonstrated by the dubious literary eulogies of ‘Close ‘em down Downs’ [Stephen Downs – since fired] or the recent court case against a Sydney newspaper when they had to pay out millions because of a ‘review’ [Mathew Evans – no longer reviewing] which closed a restaurant. Something about the pot calling the kettle black comes to mind.

If nothing else the Evans case solidified defamation and liable laws where food writers and I suspect bloggers can not just wax lyrical with impunity from their own egomanic distortions of the real world. Say or write something untrue and the doo doo bucket just got deeper. We, the beleaguered restaurateurs, have a precedent!

Coleman Andrews said in his article, “We have to write better and more intelligently...” when referring to bloggers as competition. May I ask, “Why hasn’t this been a guiding principle for any article written about anything, ever?”

We own two restaurants and suffer the same indignities by food writers and bloggers as everyone else yet we still enjoy blogger ratings of 92% and 73% which, in the first case, outranks nearly all the hatted restaurants for a dining experience. We have had extremely negative blogger reviews removed from Google and Urban Spoon from people who never dined at either restaurant - having to do this really sucks. A published review on one of our restaurants a couple of years ago castigated us when the reviewer made some ‘interesting’ claims about a piece of metal the size of a kitchen knife left in his meal but post publication refused to provide any evidence preferring to hide behind a legal wall [He has just been given the flick from The Herald Sun]. Fortunately, after nine years, our business is strong and it made no difference but I wonder what would have happened to a new venture?. If we had a legal precedent then, all would have been different. The key change is that food writers can no longer say what they feel like and feed the malcontents in print just to sell papers. It got harder. The same publisher as the ‘metal in the food’ review named us as one of Melbourne’s best restaurants just two weeks later. Doesn’t say much for ‘professional’ food writers me thinks.

The problem for a reviewer and indeed any ‘food guide’ publication is that bloggers are finding the cracks. If a reviewer gives a restaurant two hats but the blogger collective gives them a mediocre score then who is right? If democracy is alive and well then the bloggers must be heard and perhaps the hat system needs to be revised to remove inconsistencies.

As a restaurateur, my challenge is to provide a ‘product’ consisting of the design of a space where people want to be, service which surpasses expectations and food aimed squarely at our target markets. Add on to that, making a profit and getting time enough to play golf and go on one of those strange things called, holidays.

A ‘reviewer’ [as distinct from a blogger] needs a proven level of expertise, relevant qualifications and must be prepared to take responsibility as does a ‘trouble shooter’ or a ‘consultant’ for what they do. It is not good enough to just feed the face and pontificate in print when the reviewer can destroy a new business costing ‘someone else’ their invested capital whilst they retain their impunity and ignore contributing factors.

The blogger will be with us forever but hopefully will be seen as the uneducated and unprofessional opinion albeit, an extremely important opinion as our efforts as restaurateurs are laid bare by their comments and, others of like mind will listen and make decisions based on those bloggs. The challenge is to remove comments by bloggers of low intelligence or whom have not raised themselves above toilet humour or who think that writing something nasty will bring them closer to nirvana. The answer is that we can’t remove them in total but we must make sure the idiots are seen as idiots and we must also make sure everyone realises that bloggs are manipulated by people seeking advantage – like advertising the more money you spend the greater the impact.

The way to do this is to make sure future professional reviewers are and are seen to be expert, above complicit activity [see article on Downes by Suzanne Carbonne in The Age September 26th] and support restaurateurs, not destroy them [see Coco Roco Vs Mathew Evans].

The newspapers and glossies like Gourmet Traveller along with the rest of us are subject to pressure by media marketing companies and it really is a joke the amount of free publicity some people receive before opening, during opening and post opening their next big foodie venture [see Epicure and Gourmet Traveller current editions]. Or indeed, how the level of advertising in a particular publication translates into positive publicity or the level of kickbacks taken to give a positive review [see article by Suzanne Carbonne].

The reviewer must rise above this underworld of kick-backs, bribery and bulsch [euphemistic interpretation of doo doo] to become a guiding light - not a ‘critic’ but a professional ‘reviewer’. Not a reporter but a journalist with opinions based on expertise, qualifications and a recognisable face. Just saying you have eaten out for 20 years therefore you are a qualified reviewer is not good enough. This is blogger territory.

We don’t need the vitriol, we need reviewers who are seen as honest but supportive and delve into why a particular restaurant is doing what they are doing. The blogger doesn’t give a toss other than what’s put in front of them and neither they should as their experience is one dimensional. [But that singular view is of enormous importance because they are our clients and like it or not they will have very valid opinions albeit not necessarily right.]

The reviewer on the other hand must be ‘three’ dimensional and above the underworld of the holier than thou’s.

Sorry but I’m on a roll now – personally, as restaurateurs, we don’t pretend to offer multi-hat cuisine [with one cook/dishwasher it’s impossible] but we do offer reasonable food, great atmosphere and service. We rank at 93% on blog sites which means 93 people out of 100 liked our total product and had a great experience. Our ‘blogger’ reviews are for the most part,sensational and we are full most of the time. This is despite Mr Downes and despite the fact that neither of our restaurants has featured in any Good Food Guide [nine plus years in business] and we have no media company selling us and we do not give kickbacks and we do not advertise and we grudgingly welcome bloggers.

This is what the reviewer needs to focus on, a total product but from a professional point of view. It’s not all about the food! It’s about an individual restaurateur’s investment in a great experience and the review must be cognisant of the hopes and dreams and indeed strategies of all the people involved in the restaurant.

Let’s take the review up the food chain a few notches! [pun intended].

Jon Langevad MBA

Director Cafe Dansk Pty Limited

Trading as:

Mon Ami Restaurant & Gallery - 144 Nicholson Fitzroy 94173220

Deco Bistro - 49 Beach Street Port Melbourne 96461101

Langhill Consulting - langhill.net

Jon Langevad Photography – jonlangevad.com

FOOD BLOGGERS – CURSE OR SAVIOUR A RESTAURATEURS POINT OF VIEW.

Unfortunately there is a perceptual difference between a lowly food blogger and a closer to God professional food reviewer. The reviewer sees the blogger as a threat to their ability to wax lyrical without legal responsibility whilst the blogger sees the reviewer as a bit of a wanker devoid of a real life understanding of the dining ‘experience’.
As a restaurateur, we find the most value in the blogger because they represent our customers with all their foibles, idiosyncrasies and misunderstandings of food. Despite their food knowledge being passé at best they are the people who actually pay the bills. Even if they mistakenly castigate a dish, we must heed their opinion.
Fortunately for our business, my partner locks me in the kitchen when someone inappropriately complains because I don’t deal well with idiots who believe their opinion is sacrosanct. The same for professional food writers - don’t be misguided into believing their opinions. For example, how does a pizza shop score 17/20 [hat territory] or how does a restaurant deemed by another food writer as one of the worst ever receive an accolade by the same publisher two weeks later as one of Melbourne’s best restaurants?
May I make the bold assumption that food writers as a rule have missed the point in that dining out is really a total experience meaning the combination of food, ambience and service dictate a great night. All three have to be present, not just food. The acerbic crap they write is designed to sell news-papers to people who feed on malcontent.
I read Stephen Downs narrative in the Virgin magazine wherein he expressed just how miffed he was that mere customers could offer an opinion on their dining experience and publish same as a dreaded ‘food blogger’. He seemed concerned that the bloggers lack of food education and their me me me attitude should prohibit them from offering an opinion. ‘I mean, how dare they have opinions when I as a food writer should be the only one with the talent and the capacity to write.’ [not his actual words]
All of which quite clearly begs the question, ‘Are food writers still relevant?’ or are they like the carpetbag steak; best forgotten. Many restaurants will not serve food writers because, like politicians, they need to get more and more out there and vitriolic to sell newspapers. They HAVE to get controversial! And, there are indeed many restaurants that seem to have fallen off the wagon in terms of food yet still maintain their multi hat-ted status. Beats me!
Enter the blogger. Judging from most blogs, their level of knowledge is passé at best and they are also very keen on having their words in print, yet, they represent the real customer. But most of them wouldn’t know good food if it bit them on the bum. Albeit Mr. and Ms. Blogger do follow the trendy places so they can be seen to be having fun and being totally cool. They feel pressured to blog blog blog because all their friends are also joy-oh-joying at the same place. ‘One must be gregarious you know, be the first to be in print and agree with all our friends’. OR ‘I want to be seen as different so I will make something up – stuff the restaurant – it’s all about me me me’
Question: ‘Why are holidays so much fun?’ Simple, because we can do something different, pretend we are more than we are, talk rubbish and enjoy sensations away from our normal circles where peer pressure normal y intervenes. Damn good fun because we open our minds to new stuff without the impediment of others knowing what we are really like.
Question: ‘Why is dining out so much fun?’ For exactly the same reasons. We enter an environment created by the restaurateur to move us away from the hum drum, are waited on instead of chasing kids detritus around the lounge room and get to use all our senses when we partake in one of the few things we all enjoy and on which we can and do offer opinions. It’s a bit like psychology, we all have definite opinions but few of us know what we are talking about and indeed rarely get it right.
Whilst we would all love every restaurant to be magnificent in everything it does - it won’t happen. If the total experience is good then enjoy it as value for money. For example, there is one well known hat-ted beachside restaurant we have been to a few times where the food has always been a major disappointment but the room is fantastic and the service professional. Overall good experience. Food is third on the list.
Re-enter the blogger. They can be anyone they like by hiding behind some non de plume, pretend they are expert, offer their opinions and make themselves feel important. A thoroughly healthy and democratic way of life. I have a blog on which I publish various essays about things I find important. I don’t care if anyone reads it but it makes me feel better by transferring thoughts to paper. [nothappyjon.blogspot.com]
However, there is a downside. A vitriolic blogger is the same as a vitriolic ‘professional’ food writer. They are both destructive.
Some places deserve to be castigated and perhaps should not be in business. Many of our well known restaurants fall into this category. They must hate bloggers because there is no possibility of plying the blogger/reviewer with bubbly to iron over that errant cockroach hiding in the soup or providing a junket to somewhere in return for some positive words. But of course this level of corruption never happens because our industry is so squeaky clean. Isn’t it?
Perhaps it’s all about taking responsibility. I chased one idiot blogger in print for posting drivel. I responded to her comments suggesting amongst other things that she learns how to eat before waxing lyrical. The sort of rubbish this girl posted we can do without and indeed has no place in any forum. The idiots need to be curtailed and be held accountable for massaging the truth and defamation. We had a very destructive ‘review’ by a blogger on our Port Melbourne restaurant. Unfortunately he/she got the name of the restaurant wrong, could not have been there on the night they said and offered comments on the decor which had changed some months previously. Obviously they never came in but pretended they did and hid behind an anonymous tag whilst playing me me me at our expense. This entry has been removed and I am pursuing the person.
We can keep professional food writers out of our establishments but we can’t keep the bloggers out. We need to accept both as a fact of life BUT also must pursue those who take advantage of their positions for misrepresentation, defamation and damages.
There is no free lunch and people must be accountable for their actions. All actions have repercussions for someone. An idiot blogger is the same as an idiot reviewer is the same as any other dysfunctional person and must be stopped and held accountable.
However, as a general rule, keep blogging. Enjoy your experiences and tell the world but, if you don’t enjoy it tell the establishment – to do else is spiteful and immature.

What is happening at Port Melbourne? Basically nothing.

Maybe there are monsters roaming the streets which remain just out of sight but everyone knows they are there so no one dares venture out at night, lest they be torn limb from limb.
We own a restaurant [Paris Grill] opposite the beach which we opened a few months ago expecting to take advantage of a veritable avalanche of customers enjoying our beautiful bay for both summer and winter.
Great theory, but absolutely wrong.
Quiet would be an understatement. Not just for us but for nearly every one of the restaurants within coooee. We do a walk around each night to gauge how everyone’s doing and sad though it be, staff often outnumber customers for some of the larger, well known and GOOD restaurants.
There are only four major considerations for a profitable restaurant – décor, service, food and customers. All eight of our immediate beachside restaurants look good, provide good service, serve great food at acceptable prices but just don’t have enough customers.
Our other restaurant in Fitzroy [Mon Ami] is over-full most nights with the same food, same service and a similar feel, yet in Port Melbourne we are surprised to see someone walk past after dark.
What happened to winter evening promenades by the beach? Where are the 4 million Melbournians? What has Port Melbourne done to reap the wrath of so many? Is someone not telling us we have collective BO?
Who is responsible?
We personally have seen big chunks of the world where people celebrate their sea, river, lake or indeed any puddle. Paris has the Seine, Chamonix has its beautiful grey blue glacial river, Sorrento has the Tyrrhenian Sea and Cassis the Mediterranean, but none have the waterfront or beaches to match Melbourne.
Yet we ignore the sheer pleasure of being able to winter promenade along the beach in Port Melbourne where we have action – ferries, ships, restaurants, trams, views, wine, coffee, lunch, dinner, wind, cold, excitement, sunsets and its all here at Port Melbourne all the time.
Where is everyone?
In other parts of the world strolling and chatting followed by some sort of repast is an art form yet in bayside Melbourne we seem to stay at home and watch TV. Go figure.
Get out of your air-conditioned cocoons and enjoy the winter-scape which our beautiful Melbourne does so well. Embrace the cold as if it was your long lost sister – enjoy the warmth of a relationship with the elements whilst looking forward to an embracing Aquavit or Gluhweine or dinner or coffee or even a splash of icy seawater on the face.
Aren’t we lucky.

Food – ‘Fine dining wank to street side woofing’.

I do in fact feel sorry for some people because they obviously miss out on one of the great pleasures readily available to nearly all people on a regular basis. We all eat to live but most of us actually enjoy the look, smell, texture and taste associated with eating. Not as one so called journalist wrote “..shoving it in [our] deluded gobs..”. This rather quaint turn of phrase seems to remove her from us mere and deluded mortals who enjoy nearly everything we eat. This is true all the way from woofing a ‘dimmy’ covered in soy sauce standing on a street corner at 1am to sipping on a fantastic local merlot whilst tootling through say 5 courses of some degustation repast that a chef has spent a reputation producing.
The fact is we are all different and that is the beauty of enjoying food, whether that be as a visual treat, a perfect aroma, a textural balance and/or a taste sensation. All four or just one, it’s still a treat.
Take the ‘dimmy’, open the double layered bag, close your eyes, smell the aromas of dodgy product and soy sauce and look into the bag to the white-ish blob dribbled with black stuff and let the thought of all that flavour wash over your ‘what is it’ fears. Squeeze two fingers into the bag and try to come to grips with a very hot lump. The path from bag to mouth is quick to avoid blistered skin only to transfer that risk to tongue and teeth. But once the dimmy is firmly in place, all that salt in the soy sauce erupts the saliva which in turn helps cool the super tasty chunk of indeterminable but super tasty substance. A couple of bites and woof, it’s gone. Wow.
How do I know? Because we did just that last night on the way home after closing our very well known fine-ish dining restaurant and we followed that evening sensation with a jam doughnut. Fantastic.
Incidentally, for our dinner earlier we had a fine Italian risotto created with locally grown red onions, freshly cracked black pepper from Madagascar, pink Malden sea salt, house ‘Danish’ cured King Salmon from New Zealand, beautiful Canadian sea scallops and Manuka smoked salmon all drizzled with slow roasted house made vegetable nage and gelatinous seafood stock made from the bones of contented fish.
See, both sides of the culinary divide from fine dining wank to street corner woofing.
May I suggest everyone enjoys all aspects of this simple and delightful past time all the way from people who like to pontificate at length with words none of us have heard before to dimmy munchers using only single syllable utterances such as mmmmm.

STEPHEN DOWNES AND THE HERALD SUN

We own a restaurant. Mon Ami Restaurant and Gallery is an ‘awarded’ restaurant which has been fortunate enough to enjoy a 90+% average occupancy for the last 6 years and has been subject to a number of very positive reviews including ‘Melbourne’s Best’ by the Herald Sun on the 31st of May 2009. Our website [monamirestaurant.com.au] has several of these reviews/awards listed.
We had never had a negative review until Mr. Downes went to press in the same Herald Sun.
Contrary to every other review or opinion, Mr. Downes defamed and castigated our restaurant, my partner and me by name, when he published his opinions on the 31st March 2009. It is so malicious and vitriolic and so opposite to any other review or customer opinion that it beggars belief. We can’t help but assume some other motive other than a desire to produce an honest and balanced report.
Our customers who read the Herald Sun dismiss Mr. Downes as a joke but there must be others who read his words and believe them or, even if they don’t trust all the comments, are dissuaded from booking at Mon Ami. Worse, because of the way the internet works, Mr. Downes’ vitriol is inexorably and permanently linked to my name and our restaurant.
Even the Herald Sun seems to treat Mr. Downes as a joke. As mentioned, just eight weeks after his review, within which he labels us as possibly the worst restaurant of all time, the Herald Sun through another review summarised us a ‘Melbourne’s Best’.
Unfortunately, the print thieves then take Mr. Downes words, in whole or in part, and republish them on their own website. This exacerbates any misrepresentations and indeed further damages our previously excellent reputations. Mietta’s website is one such example.
It is appalling that the Herald Sun [HWT – News Corp] supports Mr. Downes and his views by publishing his material and providing him with legal counsel to fend off subsequent objectors.
This complicity by HWT is evident by the fact that Mr. Downes reported within his review that he found a 12cm piece of metal in the food – as long as a small kitchen knife! The legal counsel for HWT refused to provide the object and photos of it in situ despite having already gone to press and accusing us to a reading audience of 1.5 million people. We contacted the health department and asked them to investigate Mr. Downes’ claim and we have also involved Police in the matter.
If such an item ever existed we needed to know. If something had disintegrated in the kitchen without our knowledge then it was Mr. Downes’ responsibility as a professional [sic] reviewer to inform us so that we could ensure others were not similarly affected. His negligence put others at risk. We believe he wanted to go to print for self gain as both victim and saviour.
We are disappointed that people accept the Downes’ style of journalism when overwhelming evidence from other reviews and customers shows his words as wrong, malicious and defamatory.
Our society does not need this low level of journalism.

PRINT JACKALS

What sort of world do we live in where people try and live their past glories by merely transcribing other people’s written work? Take the internet. Someone writes something, right or wrong, then the ink-jackals steal that work and republish it on their own website. They may even try to justify this theft as ‘doing a service’ in the interests of ‘spreading the word’ and indeed hope that people will read their website and give them credit by association. Sad people.

But what happens if the original material is wrong, defamatory and/or creates disunity or sedition? Does the ink-jackal escape scrutiny and punishment because he or she is just re-publishing others work? One would hope not.

In my opinion, the actions of the print-jackal are far worse than the original perpetrator. The author may be guilty of defamation, negligence at torte or even endeavoring to create dysfunction or riot through misrepresentation but, the print-thief is far worse because he or she doesn’t have the knowledge or the plain guts to research or write something themselves but instead chooses to hide behind someone else’s persona and just re-publish others works.

It is a sad indictment on our society that we accept this drivel.

In our case we do not accept it and will force remedy by exposing the theft and shaming the thief.

Mon Ami Review