Chippy Gary Moss has developed a reputation for giving online critics a battering if they leave a one star review, but he insists he’s justified in his responses and has no plans to tone it down
Britain’s rudest chippy boss has revealed why he warns off moaning customers by telling them where they can shove their unbattered sausages.
Gary Moss, 59, has become renowned for putting bad reviewers in their plaice, but insists he hasn’t got a chip on his shoulder and hits back at them as he’s sick of “entitled people”.
He recently hit back at one online critic who accused him of serving “the worst fish and chips ever” by branding the reviewer a “tight ars*d tw*t” and a “lying bast*rd”.
And hitting back at another alleging raw chips were dished up at the The Old Smithy in Ambleside, Cumbria, Gary simply wrote: “Firstly, f*ck you. Secondly, f*ck you. And finally, f*ck you.”
Gary, who lives in Windermere, has ran the chippy for 20 years and has often gone viral with his fiery ripostes, including telling one unhappy customer to “take your unbattered sausage and stick it right up your a**e.”
He said: “I’m not the sort of person who’d just say ‘okay sorry’ when it’s not justified. I’m not saying we never get things wrong, but we don’t deserve one-star reviews.
“There was one saying the chips were raw – but they’re cooked on a seven-minute timer. Sometimes, if it’s a really pathetic troll, I try not to answer it – I just say ‘get a life’.”
Customers have also left one-star ratings when Gary refuses unreasonable demands, he said. And he claimed many of the reviews are from fake profiles trying to sabotage his small business that have never been to his shop.
He added: “We find that when entitled people leave us these bad reviews, it’s nothing to do with us being rude to them, it’s often them that’s rude to us.
“One of them left us a bad review because they couldn’t have any more napkins. He said he was going to ‘reflect that in his review’ as he walked out the door. Another was a takeaway customer who complained because they couldn’t use our restaurant toilet.
“But it’s not for takeaway customers – otherwise we’d have 100 people using the toilets and we’d not have time to clean them. We’re not a massive company with lots of staff.
“Eating in is built into the prices of our restaurant – it’s 25 per cent extra – but for some people, even that’s enough to leave a one-star review. Because we went viral, we sometimes get trolls that haven’t even been in the shop.
“The thing is: if you don’t reply to the trolls, people think you agree with them. If you get a single one-star review, it drags your overall rating down. It takes about 20 five-star reviews to get it back up.”
The Old Smithy has 3.8 out of five stars on Google, based on more than 400 reviews. But Gary said numbers can change dramatically overnight depending on what’s being shared online.
He had a sudden influx of reviews when YouTuber ‘Gary Eats’ recently visited the shop and shared his review of the shop. Owner Gary said: “Most of the new reviews were five stars. But the algorithm spots when there’s suddenly been a lot of reviews and thinks it’s fake.
“Google just deleted the lot. Since that video, there’s hardly been a single good review go up – but there have been a couple of one-star reviews.”
With the cost-of-living crisis, Gary said it’s already hard enough to keep a chip shop running without dealing with online abuse. He added: “We’ve got a lot of energy bills with all the fridges and freezers. We’re talking about £1,000 a month.
“There are a lot of expenses, like the price of oil – which has doubled. People haven’t got as much money to spend either. We trade more in the summer during the tourist months and less in the winter.”
“When a business suddenly gets a lot of one-star reviews, maybe Google needs to look at that. Trolling is a big problem. If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
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