Company Goodwill

[Gary&Tracy]

Hi All
Firstly I'm not sure if this is the correct thread to put this on, so if its not could someone let me know and I 'll move it.
Unfortunately, we have recently had to put our business into liquidation. The business was a pub / restaurant trading under the pub name. Now normally this would have been sold as part of the goodwill, but as the company has gone into liquidation I'm not sure how this works. The new owner of the lease is wanting to take over the listing of the business and has applied to Google to take over the listing which will have all our past reviews on it. He has also registered a new domain with just a hyphen in it, we still own the other domain name. I'm guessing soon he will want to take over the TripAdvisor listing which has all the reviews of satisfied customers that we have created and not down to him. Is there anything I can do about this?

 

[fisicx]

Easy peasy. Don’t give them access to either the Google or Trip-advisor accounts.

 

[Gary&Tracy]

Interesting, I'm of the same opinion. The incoming tenant is being a bit of a know it all and is throwing his weight around. If he had bought the business then it would not have been a problem.

 

[japancool]

Why don't you want to give it to him?

 

[fisicx]

If they want the accounts they can pay for them.

Unless of course they are linked to your personal email address in which case they can go swivel.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Who owned the IP?

If it was the business it probably isn't yours now, anyway!

Two choices - fight over a few quid or give it up and move on!

 

[cjd]

For god's sake give it to him, it's hard enough trying to make pubs work as it is (you should know).

Call it Karma.

 

[WaveJumper]

I am with the above unless it has some sort of value just hand it over .......... sorry the business has failed under your watch give the new owners at least a fighting chance

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Can you notify Google and Trip advisor that the business has now changed hands with new owners taking over from xx/9/2024 or make a post about it

 

[fisicx]

Google really doesn’t like reviews being transferred. The only way you can make it work is if Google doesn’t know about it. This means keeping the same email address, account name and to a certain extent the same IP address.

I knew one business made a big song and dance on their website and socials about being under new management and how it was all going to change. Google’s algorithm spotted this and dumped all their reviews as they no longer applied.

 

[Gary&Tracy]

I'm reluctant to just hand it over as this is a reputation that we have built over the last 5 years. To be honest the bloke is been a bit of a cock about it too.

 

[antropy]

I'm reluctant to just hand it over as this is a reputation that we have built over the last 5 years. To be honest the bloke is been a bit of a cock about it too.

Are you thinking of starting another pub/restaurant that you could transfer the reviews to, seeing as they're essentially reviews of your management?

If not, I guess either give them up or request the accounts are deleted if you really want to be spiteful to this guy.

Paul.

 

[japancool]

I'm reluctant to just hand it over as this is a reputation that we have built over the last 5 years. To be honest the bloke is been a bit of a cock about it too.

Hate to break it to you, but the business is no longer yours. The reputation belongs to the business.

The reviews and goodwill are an asset of the business, and the selling price should have reflected that. It is something that should be in the hands of the liquidators, it isn't your property to dispose of.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

I'm reluctant to just hand it over as this is a reputation that we have built over the last 5 years.

So what are you going to do with them now?

Add them as a manager/admin for GMB then they can remove you.

 

[HFE Signs]

It has no value to you at all, it only has value to him, personally I'd give it for free, you could ask for a few quid but then its a matter of does it belong to you anyway now. Best option is to go and have a drink with the new owners, share some advice and hand it over, you'll go away feeling you've helped someone out.

 

[NickGrogan]

I'm reluctant to just hand it over as this is a reputation that we have built over the last 5 years. To be honest the bloke is been a bit of a cock about it too.

The business went bust, not sure how good the reputation could be.

But there are lots of fake reviews on all the platforms, so I guess there are some fake pubs too.

 

[antropy]

The business went bust, not sure how good the reputation could be.

It could be fantastic, they might have been providing an incredible service and not charging enough which would have created a lot of happy customers and not enough profit.

Paul.

 

[NickGrogan]

It could be

 

[antropy]

It could be

Plenty of excellent and well-loved businesses go out of business, usually because they don't charge enough, or the market won't bear the price increases they need to make. Or their customers love them but there are just too few of them.

Paul.