Soldato
- Joined
- 12 Feb 2006
- Posts
- 17,727
- Location
- Surrey
genius. lets do it
How to deal with fake bad reviews online?
- Thread starter UberTiger
- Start date
genius. lets do it
I'm up for it.
this. im game
And risk them writing a 100% factual review saying the owner is harassing them?
I'd do this tbh, turn the negative into a positive, and show that you respond to and try to resolve any issues.
Every company makes mistakes/has a problem occasionally; it's how they try to fix the problem that makes them stand out
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 29 Mar 2003
- Posts
- 57,755
- Location
- Stoke on Trent
This
Multi quote seems to be playing up for me.
Thanks for all your support guys
With regards to posting the business details - I'm a little hesitant to post it in this thread as I'm not sure how things will pan out at this point.
With regards to reporting the review to Facebook, unfortunately it looks like you can only do that if it's got a text written review. This is only a star review, so I don't have the option to flag it.
I've just remembered I've got a friend on Facebook who is an engineer at Facebook...so perhaps I could drop him a message and see if he has the ability to do anything about removing it.
It's a shame really, I had one or two bad reviews from when I first started the business and the equipment I was using wasn't high end, like what I'm using now. These were picked up by Google. I completely agree about responding to bad reviews to put the situation right, so I did respond to these legit reviews offering to redo the work or provide a refund. Unfortunately these people never got back in touch.
We have a very simple policy, to do everything we can to make sure everyone goes home happy. If there's a problem or a mistake, we re-do it for free, no questions asked. If the customer isn't 100% happy we work with them to redo the work until they are happy. If for some reason we can't get it right then there's no charge and we try to put them in touch with someone else.
In order to overcome these legit bad reviews, I went on review push a while back to drown them out with good reviews and managed to get nearly 100 customers to reviews us on Google and we now have a perfect 5.0 rating there. Unfortunately this was before Facebook reviews picked up and we only have 2 on Facebook, one decent one and this fake one.
Initially I like the idea of a bit of OcUK support, however not if that entail tons of negative reviews for this other company. We're both very small, essentially one man bands. I remember when I got those initial negative reviews I mentioned above, I felt sick to my stomach that someone had taken the time to go out of their way to register on a 3rd party review site to put us down. I had no idea those 2 customers weren't happy and I wish they had said something before posting online. Edit, thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was my competition doing exactly what he's doing now.
I remember that awful feeling deep down, that those reviews were out there and potentially turning new custom away. It was horrible to read after all the work I'd put in. That's not to say they weren't valid, they had a point. We listened and long ago upgraded our gear.
The thing is, I don't like this person, and he's not been very kind to us over the years. But I don't know if I could put him through that, knowing what it feels like to have the public image of your company defamed online. If it was a larger, corporate company perhaps, but not this one. If it were me I would be personally devastated and I couldn't do that to him. Even if he is a ****.
I'm leaning towards gently calling the reviewer out privately, or I might skip that and message my friend first to see if he can simply delete it. If not, I'll have to do another review push, but for Facebook instead of Google this time!
I do wish he'd stop playing this stupid petty games and indirectly ****ging us off on his facebook account and to customers in person.
Thanks for all your support guys
With regards to posting the business details - I'm a little hesitant to post it in this thread as I'm not sure how things will pan out at this point.
With regards to reporting the review to Facebook, unfortunately it looks like you can only do that if it's got a text written review. This is only a star review, so I don't have the option to flag it.
Facebook said:
I've just remembered I've got a friend on Facebook who is an engineer at Facebook...so perhaps I could drop him a message and see if he has the ability to do anything about removing it.
It's a shame really, I had one or two bad reviews from when I first started the business and the equipment I was using wasn't high end, like what I'm using now. These were picked up by Google. I completely agree about responding to bad reviews to put the situation right, so I did respond to these legit reviews offering to redo the work or provide a refund. Unfortunately these people never got back in touch.
We have a very simple policy, to do everything we can to make sure everyone goes home happy. If there's a problem or a mistake, we re-do it for free, no questions asked. If the customer isn't 100% happy we work with them to redo the work until they are happy. If for some reason we can't get it right then there's no charge and we try to put them in touch with someone else.
In order to overcome these legit bad reviews, I went on review push a while back to drown them out with good reviews and managed to get nearly 100 customers to reviews us on Google and we now have a perfect 5.0 rating there. Unfortunately this was before Facebook reviews picked up and we only have 2 on Facebook, one decent one and this fake one.
Initially I like the idea of a bit of OcUK support, however not if that entail tons of negative reviews for this other company. We're both very small, essentially one man bands. I remember when I got those initial negative reviews I mentioned above, I felt sick to my stomach that someone had taken the time to go out of their way to register on a 3rd party review site to put us down. I had no idea those 2 customers weren't happy and I wish they had said something before posting online. Edit, thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was my competition doing exactly what he's doing now.
I remember that awful feeling deep down, that those reviews were out there and potentially turning new custom away. It was horrible to read after all the work I'd put in. That's not to say they weren't valid, they had a point. We listened and long ago upgraded our gear.
The thing is, I don't like this person, and he's not been very kind to us over the years. But I don't know if I could put him through that, knowing what it feels like to have the public image of your company defamed online. If it was a larger, corporate company perhaps, but not this one. If it were me I would be personally devastated and I couldn't do that to him. Even if he is a ****.
I'm leaning towards gently calling the reviewer out privately, or I might skip that and message my friend first to see if he can simply delete it. If not, I'll have to do another review push, but for Facebook instead of Google this time!
I do wish he'd stop playing this stupid petty games and indirectly ****ging us off on his facebook account and to customers in person.
Last edited:
Such an appropriate line, great quote!
Give your customers credit, any reviews like this tend to stand out, Amazon is full of them, 1 start reviews from people who bought the wrong thing, or who's thing was one of 10000000000 sold that broke. Trip advisor is another great example, why would I listen to a persons review of a hotel who lives in a bin and thinks a £29 motel on a service station is the BEST hotel in the world because it has 2 sachets of coffee FOR FREE.
Such an appropriate line, great quote!
Give your customers credit, any reviews like this tend to stand out, Amazon is full of them, 1 start reviews from people who bought the wrong thing, or who's thing was one of 10000000000 sold that broke. Trip advisor is another great example, why would I listen to a persons review of a hotel who lives in a bin and thinks a £29 motel on a service station is the BEST hotel in the world because it has 2 sachets of coffee FOR FREE.
That is a really good quote
lol @ Saul. I could team up with Slippin' Jimmy to get back at him
Seriously though, totally not worth it for this, it's only a small business and legal issues are the last thing I need.
I'm tempted to contact the reviewer and ask for details of the exact day we carried out his work so I can investigate the problem and put it right. I'm confident he won't be able to do so.
It's also tempting to point out his review history and observe how he doesn't seem to have much luck with businesses in our industry. Seeing as he seems to frequent so many and he only rates one of them highly, perhaps he was mistaken when he reviewed us
I also come back to agreeing to give customers credit to make their own decision. Maybe it's time for another review drive. It was incredibly hard work raising my average on Google back to 5.0
It annoys me that this bogus review will now make it more difficult on Facebook.
Ahh well, c'est la vie. I doubt I'm losing much, if any business due to it. Most of our custom is word of mouth recommendations anyway. Plus I got an extra like out of this guy, lol, probably so he can stalk my page for business updates.
My fake reviewer had a similar review history. All the books from this particular author were lavished with praise while other writers' works in the genre were totally slated. He even posted reviews on Harry Potter that mentioned his own books. His review of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is hilarious but I can't post it without editing his name out. I didn't ask them to, but OcUK down-voted his review on my first ebook just a little:
I've explained above that I've had negative reviews in the past and responded to them, I've got no problem dealing with real negative reviews and doing what I can to resolve issues.
Myself or my colleague deal with every client personally and I have every customers full name on record, I've never worked with this person and he's not on the books.
This reviewer has rated my main competition 5 star and four other similar companies between 1-3 star.
I've received new info that someone tried to book an appointment with this other company early last week. The other company then bailed on the appointment, wouldn't answer phone calls etc. This customer was freaking as needed the work doing by Friday and ended up coming to us. Dates of the review line up with the company perhaps getting back in touch with this customer only to find out that they had made other arrangements with us.
So, I don't know for certain. But it's the kind of thing he would do and I'm 99% sure it's a shill review. He has a history of doing stuff like this and bad mouthing us indirectly in his Facebook posts.
Myself or my colleague deal with every client personally and I have every customers full name on record, I've never worked with this person and he's not on the books.
This reviewer has rated my main competition 5 star and four other similar companies between 1-3 star.
I've received new info that someone tried to book an appointment with this other company early last week. The other company then bailed on the appointment, wouldn't answer phone calls etc. This customer was freaking as needed the work doing by Friday and ended up coming to us. Dates of the review line up with the company perhaps getting back in touch with this customer only to find out that they had made other arrangements with us.
So, I don't know for certain. But it's the kind of thing he would do and I'm 99% sure it's a shill review. He has a history of doing stuff like this and bad mouthing us indirectly in his Facebook posts.
Post the link and let the good folks of OCUK make their own judgements. What's the point of a community if we don't look after each other? Be good to see any of the folks here who have dealt with you post a positive review (assuming they had a good experience).
People like that who play dirty deserve everything they get to be honest, when I ran a small business I took all feedback to heart and we'd be genuinely upset to think we'd not done a good job for a customer. To go out of our way to ensure our customers were well looked after even if we got something wrong only to have some "Richard" post a fake negative review and try to tarnish our reputation would have been infuriating.
People like that who play dirty deserve everything they get to be honest, when I ran a small business I took all feedback to heart and we'd be genuinely upset to think we'd not done a good job for a customer. To go out of our way to ensure our customers were well looked after even if we got something wrong only to have some "Richard" post a fake negative review and try to tarnish our reputation would have been infuriating.
Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Feb 2008
- Posts
- 11,114
As a small business owner or sole trader, you live or die by your reputation. Unfortunately, the internet has made it too easy for unscrupulous types to pull things like this -- and it's surprisingly common.
In fact, you'll sometimes find competitors hiring dodgy "SEO" companies to inundate YOUR business with spammy backlinks in order to kill your position on Google relative to theirs!
Happens all the time.
But there's really nothing you can do about it. When it comes to dealing with it, well...
As long as you've got the business coming, just keep doing what you do: offering the best that you can and making sure customers walk away happy.
Run a review drive once in a while; just send past customers a letter after you've done the work, thanking them for your business, asking them to keep you in mind in the future, and pointing them towards writing a quick review for you on the site of your choice.
It simply depends on the language that you use in the letter asking them to do so. Make it sound like you've done them a great deed in the service that you provided, and they'll feel obligated to return that deed in kind.
Result: Far more positive reviews, and you bury the spam.
Hit me up via Trust if you want any more advice. I do that kind of thing for a living.
In fact, you'll sometimes find competitors hiring dodgy "SEO" companies to inundate YOUR business with spammy backlinks in order to kill your position on Google relative to theirs!
Happens all the time.
But there's really nothing you can do about it. When it comes to dealing with it, well...
As long as you've got the business coming, just keep doing what you do: offering the best that you can and making sure customers walk away happy.
Run a review drive once in a while; just send past customers a letter after you've done the work, thanking them for your business, asking them to keep you in mind in the future, and pointing them towards writing a quick review for you on the site of your choice.
It simply depends on the language that you use in the letter asking them to do so. Make it sound like you've done them a great deed in the service that you provided, and they'll feel obligated to return that deed in kind.
Result: Far more positive reviews, and you bury the spam.
Hit me up via Trust if you want any more advice. I do that kind of thing for a living.