AN online comment originally intended to urge a business to improve their products could instead lead to a torrent of verbal abuse. A man surnamed Cui and his friends just became victims of this kind of pratice, SZTV reported yesterday.

Last November, Cui and two of his friends had a meal at a ramen restaurant in Ping An Financial Center, after which they felt the food was not to their liking.

According to Cui, as they felt the ramen had a fishy smell and the overall dining experience was not good enough, one of his friends left a negative comment on Meituan-Dianping, one of China’s largest providers of on-demand online services.

Cui said the comment was meant to attract the business owner’s attention so that the restaurant would provide dishes with better taste and quality. However, a user suddenly appeared this month and began verbally attacking all of the users who had left negative comments about the restaurant.

In the screenshots provided by Cui, the user appears very active in the comment area and kept responding to users who gave negative comments. Moreover, some of these comments were personal attacks related to regional discrimination.

The dramatic responses made Cui believe that the restaurant owner had probably hired an online ghostwriter to post comments attacking these customers.

A reporter from SZTV went to the restaurant Sunday afternoon, but the restaurant declined to comment on the issue, saying the manager was not there at the moment.

The incident was later reported to Meituan-Dianping. The platform said it had carried out an investigation into the accounts involved in the case. (Zhang Yu)