Broad Nosh Bagels loves to tout its almost 8,000 Google reviews for its Columbus Circle location. So much so that co-founder Robert Farrell has been talking about it on social media. In the past two days, Ill-Ant-8943 has created and reshared two posts. These posts scream Look at me as they appear to be self-promotion. Robert states, “As an owner I have a great engaging team and managers that live and breath guest services.” The Google reviews contradict this.
I have found several reviews complaining about the staff being rude. I asked Ill-Ant-8943 how the business addresses complaints and negative reviews. I already knew the answer to this, but I was curious to hear their answer. You can imagine my shock when Ill-Ant-8943 replied with, “With pure kindness and inviting them back for a do over and that usually results in either a 5 star or a review deletion – 4 of our 6 locations are 4.9 on google maps.” While I saw some replies that echoed this, others contradicted this statement.
In one review, they replied with the following:
“Paul news flash – perhaps you don’t realize every top bagel shop gets their nova from Acme – they have been smoking fish for over 100 years
So if your giving us a 1 star that means every top bagel shop in NYC is a 1 star and 1000s of our daily guests knows That’s not true – perhaps you never had real. Authentic premium nova lox before – either way if you were not happy we are in the service business and are the best rated bagel shop out of over 270 in NYC – you could have easily asked for a replacement or a refund – but it’s over the top mean spirited to give a top rated well lived bagel shop a 1 star – so sadly all your selfish 1 star does is hurt our hard working dedicated team members
It was a pleasure to have you as our guest – but your rating is not very nice Paul – enjoy your day
Btw I see based on your review history you love trashing places with 1 star reviews- wow 😂”
In another review they replied with:
“You outed yourself Marianna and we will
Report you to google – we are a top rated bagel shop – you will lose your google account for telling lies trying to harm a business. It’s obvious you have an agenda – good luck keeping your google account – google takes fake false business harassment very seriously – plus your review is fake this is west 58th st you were at east 58th st – nice try Marianna look at your review history all
One stars claiming horrible business- stop the lies”
Here is one more reply to a review:
“Update
I thanked you for being my guest and was respectful in my response / sadly Jo Jo
You have anger issues and there is nothing I can do about that
As stated sadly yes mistakes can happen / but why did you not give yourself the opportunity and my team the opportunity to fix it Jo Jo ?
I apologize for the mistake Jo Jo
But Respectfully it’s an ugly thing to play the race card – our entire team is from South America and east Asia – sadly mistakes can and do happen rather than complaining why not give yourself and our dedicated team the opportunity to fix the issue.
If you say nothing while here how can we fix the issue – look at our amazing rating – we are a top rated bagel shop with almost 5000 reviews out of over 200 NYC bagel shops and we have the best prices
Thanks for bring our guest
Happy new year
Ya know you get more bees with honey than with vinegar”
None of these replies are “pure kindness and inviting.” These replies are mean-spirited and dismissive of the feedback being left. It doesn’t appear that the business is taking the feedback seriously and addressing the issue. As I am writing this up, Ill-Ant-8943 replied to me with, “I see you here to cause trouble I should have know you were a troll clown go away or I will repost you for Harrament.” Notice the typos, grammatical errors, and missing punctuation in this and the replies to the reviews. Does this person have anger issues? Ill-Ant-8943 blocked me after they replied.
Ill-Ant-8943 stated that one of their marketing tactics is, “We do simple 4:3 food posts every other day.” One of their Google Business Profile (GBP) posts cropped the image from a negative review and used it to show off their food.
The bottom line is that if this business doesn’t start addressing the issues leading to the negative reviews and stops being rude in their review replies, they will be out of business. If anybody who recieved one of their nasty replies posted this on social media, this business could go viral for all the wrong reasons. If Robert or Ill-Ant-8943 respond in person the same way they do online, they could get captured on video and go viral. This also highlights the dangers of social media. Anybody can say what they want online, but that doesn’t mean that they are always telling the truth.