Advice on being threatened by 1 star reviews

LiE · 15 May 2023 at 20:05

Wizzkidy said:
Who cares if you have been left 1 star reviews, move on with life.

I care when they are fake.

LiE · 15 May 2023 at 20:51

Wizzkidy said:
Also, you go and get other "customers" to leave 5 star reviews after the fact, seems like a bit of fakery going on here as well

Wizzkidy said:
To much time spent looking at reviews for your business, get a boner over them?

What the actual **** are you on about.

LiE · 15 May 2023 at 20:58

Wizzkidy said:
Sorry I miss read above, they are new reviews so that's on me. I thought for some reason old customers posted up new 5 star reviews. I agree with just getting your rating back but all this court talk it ridiculous

You can't post multiple reviews for a business on Google, you can update an existing one. Unless you use other accounts to create additional fake reviews, like this customer has done for the 1 star reviews. So instead of 1 bad review which I'm completely OK with, I have 4 from the same person, all with the intent of blackmailing me into giving a refund when there is no fault with us.

I've already said I'm not taking any legal action.

LiE · 16 May 2023 at 12:22

2 of the reviews have been removed by Google, probably because they have very similar wording. They didn't say which policy it breached. I'll take that, just hope they don't leave another.

LiE · 17 May 2023 at 13:17

tom_e said:
Makes sense, it's got nothing to do with the product. If it's broken you get the seller to sort it and either refund or resend.
It's like when you see 1 star reviews "Product never arrived", tells me nothing about the product and due to the way Amazon works I probably wouldn't even be buying from the same seller anyway.

LiE · 21 May 2023 at 22:28

[FnG]magnolia said:
What's the latest, OP? Making any progress?

They removed 2 of the fake reviews, then one mysterious reappeared, so had to email them again and it's been removed.

No more fake reviews for now, so looks to have blown over.

LiE · 22 May 2023 at 10:29

GaryTheSnail said:
Are fake reviews illegal in UK?

Buying, selling or hosting fake reviews will become illegal as part of changes planned in new laws. The UK government's new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill aims to help consumers and increase competition between big tech firms

The difficulty is proving they are fake.

LiE · 23 May 2023 at 09:19

GaryTheSnail said:
You have the evidence? Right?

I know they are duplicate fake reviews but someone sat in Google had a hard time figuring it out. I think the only reason 2 of the reviews were removed was because they had similar wording and mentioned the same things. The 3rd one I wanted removed they went a different direction with the complaint.

We are back up to 4.8/5 now, we dipped to 4.7 while these additional 1 stars were there. Sounds minor and it is, but when it's malicious it's the principle.

LiE · 23 May 2023 at 09:21

SpellowHouse said:
It was to plant a seed. The person I left the review for, buried my review in positive reviews. Why not do the same here? Get everyone you know to leave a +ve review.

We made a big push to go out and get some more reviews while the 1 star reviews were still there. Offered customers a discount code to use if they did leave a review, people need a little motivation with Google reviews it seems. Our booking system we have nearly 400 reviews.