Independent cafes not only fill us with caffeine, but they also provide us with space to work, socialize, and unwind.

However, different establishments have different rules about how long you can linger there without coming to the counter.

Recently, SLO BAR Cafe in Bacolod, Philippines, asked a group of ten students to leave after they bought just two drinks but ended up taking up three tables.

Feeling hurt, the friends then retaliated, flooding the joint with bad online reviews. So in an attempt to save their reputation, the local business had nothing to do but make the matter public, and turned to social media to describe the situation in detail.

More info: Instagram

SLO BAR Cafe in Bacolod, Philippines, has invested a lot of effort into creating a welcoming atmosphere

Image credits: Ketut Subiyanto / pexels (not the actual photo)

But lately, it has been getting a swarm of negative online reviews

Image credits: higgijns

Image credits: higgijns

The cafe took to social media to defend itself and its staff

Image credits: slobar.cafe

And explained that all of the criticism comes from the same group of people

Image credits: slobar.cafe

Image credits: slobar.cafe

Image credits: slobar.cafe

They included their followers in the conversation

Image credits: slobar.cafe

Handling the bad reviews

Image credits: Anna Shvets / pexels (not the actual photo)

Screenshots of the negative reviews were uploaded on the country’s subreddit, r/Philippines, and the post instantly went viral, generating 4.1K upvotes in just a couple of days.

“I remember you can appeal this in Google to be removed if there’s an event of dogpiling,” a Redditor said.

“The best approach would be to report them to Google as bullying/harassment and the Google Review team will be able to trace it back to their shared accounts and IP,” another commented.

Business owners or Google account holders can indeed request the removal of reviews from their pages through the company’s support page.

According to Google’s Review Policy, inappropriate content and behavior includes harassment, offensive content as well as gibberish and repetitive content.

It appears that SLO BAR has followed through with the advice, since it once again holds a stellar 4.8 rating on Google — the negative reviews seem to have been removed.

And people expressed support for the business

Thankful for the support

The management of SLO BAR saw many of these reactions. In the comments section under their original post, they expressed how grateful they were for all the positive messages.

“Hey guys. We are deeply thankful for the support…this has uplifted the team in many ways,” they said.

They also advised others to be “kinder” on social media, including to their non-paying customers, too.

“We were trying to open up a conversation as we feel that it matters to speak up for our staff but it doesn’t give us the right to berate other people. Let’s be kinder with our words,” their statement concluded.

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