Trust Pilot issues

[onlineseller2018]

Hello Guys, listen to this one! (Long rant ahead)

A customer places an order on our website, uses multiple cards to complete the order and finally succeeds, having entered a billing address that doesn’t match his card.

His order comes through as High Risk of Fraud on Shopify (which is rarely wrong), so we proceed with our standard procedure of requesting further validation from the customer for their proof of billing address and ID.
We email them and have no response after a day, two days, three days…
We attempt to call them a number of times, but the phone line is dead.

To anyone who ever sold anything online, this will look like a scam. So we do what any other lawful company would do, email the ‘customer’ and tell them that the card has been refunded and order canceled due to the high risk of fraud and no verification received.

Give it a few days and the fraudster leaves us a 1* review on Trustpilot.
What a cheek we thought!

It gets better though.

We write to Trustpilot and provide all the proof showing that the order has been refunded and that it is definitely fraudulent.

We get told to reply to it officially online and to report it via the report tool. Great service we thought from our account management, seeing as we cannot actually supply any proof via the report tool and that there isn’t actually a section for ‘report as fraudulent’ on there. But hey, we follow the instructions.

Give it a couple of days and we get a response, saying that in their wisdom, TrustPilot has decided to keep the review on our account as it does not match their criteria for removal.

So let’s get this straight. Trustpilot is now encouraging fraudulent behavior, by allowing fraudsters to further abuse and antagonize the retailers, affecting their online presence and reputation, also giving the fraudsters extra power by blackmailing the retailers with bad feedback.
Well played TrustPilot, well played.

Our care as a retailer at Trustpilot has been terrible from day 1, but this really is a step above anything I’ve seen before.

I might go shopping at some online stores later, claim my money back with the bank and then leave them negative reviews.

As a B2C business, we understand the need to align with customers and doing everything in your power to work with them, but where do you draw the line? What proof do they need?
And why the heck would you completely ignore a report from a retailer that has been with you for over 2 years.

My advice would be to stay well clear and look at using reviews platform that is honest rather than side with the credit card fraudster

 

[Marketgarden85]

I can't say I'm particularly familiar with the platform but yeah, I agree this is unfair. I would contact the trust pilot support team and discuss this matter further, hopefully they will finally take action and take down this sketchy review.

 

[onlineseller2018]

I can't say I'm particularly familiar with the platform but yeah, I agree this is unfair. I would contact the trust pilot support team and discuss this matter further, hopefully they will finally take action and take down this sketchy review.

Emailed 20 time and they are not budging and we have to wait for the chargeback before its removed.

Guilty until we prove we are innocent. Great unbiased platform

 

[Marketgarden85]

Maybe post a 1 star review of Trustpilot on their own Trustpilot page!

Seriously though, that is very unfair. Such sites should require "proof" for people to leave reviews, its a sad fact but malicious reviews from fraudsters and competitors are rampant these days, its too easy to post a nasty review without any sort of confirmation of your supposed grievances.

 

[onlineseller2018]

Maybe post a 1 star review of Trustpilot on their own Trustpilot page!

Seriously though, that is very unfair. Such sites should require "proof" for people to leave reviews, its a sad fact but malicious reviews from fraudsters and competitors are rampant these days, its too easy to post a nasty review without any sort of confirmation of your supposed grievances.

I agree 100 percent and I'm having a big battle with trust and they decide to side with a credit card fraudster rather than us the retailer and to add been in business for 3 years.

I bet when we opened the trust account we were credit checked and numerous other checks run but a customer can leave a review with no proof or checks on the reviewer

 

[EmployMe]

Unfortunately, Trustpilot is considered as a trusted source by Google. It's listed in the "Where ratings come from" section as a source of feedback from the independent review websites.

 

[Nochexman]

Emailed 20 time and they are not budging and we have to wait for the chargeback before its removed.

Wow - I've never heard of this before. Trustpilot told you they will remove a review if you can show that the reviewer has made a chargeback?! Is this true?

 

[mirunchained]

Hello to everyone and thanks for the help.

Unfortunately, my company is having huge damage by a fool who is creating fake reviews on Trust Pilot, and Trust Pilot approved these fake reviews.

So the best way at this point is to be removed as happened to this company. liberidalavoro.it (if you search on Trust Pilot you see the company is removed, but there are many examples).

Someone was able to be removed? Anyone has ever talked with a Solicitor about that?
Thank you

 

[MBE2017]

You could sue the reviewer and Trustpilot potentially, but it would be expensive to do. A legal letter from a solicitor could get the right reaction, including getting the reviews removed.

A solicitors firm won £25k against a reviewer on Trustpilot a year or two ago.

 

[AABBCC_CCBBAA]

I have been trading online for over 20 years and I still get that sinking feeling in my stomach whenever we receive a negative view on ebay or Trustpilot.
It's because we care about our business and know that no bad review is ever justified.
We would have done the exact same thing as you did and cancelled the order.
You can't stop people leaving negative reviews and again as you have found, trying to get Trustpilot to remove them is nigh on impossible. So, what I do now is reply to the negative review setting out in great detail exactly what we did and why. In one review a customer mis-identified his own philishave cordless shaver and ordered the incorrect battery. He contacted us via email and said our website was giving wrong information. We looked into this, identified the correct model of his shaver, sent him a PDF file of his shaver from the Philips website, told him we didn't stock this battery for his shaver but if he returned it we would refund the cost of the battery, we sent a link to a competitor company who did sell the battery he needed and pointed out that the information on our website was actually correct...when he received his refund he was beside himself because we had not refunded him the £2.50 he'd paid for postage as the battery wasn't faulty and it was his error. So, 1 star review on Trustpilot!
We think by replying in detail to the 1 star review readers will draw their own conclusions and will assume that a company which makes that much effort to explain what happened is indeed a good, honest company and that the 1 star poster has a single digit IQ!
AJ

 

[Paul Carmen]

I'd suggest looking at other review platforms; e.g. that work with you and are more transparent, plus don't let customers create an account for your business to leave a fake or spurious review...

 

[fisicx]

I'd suggest looking at other review platforms; e.g. that work with you and are more transparent, plus don't let customers create an account for your business to leave a fake or spurious review...

What they do is create a new profile with the same company name and a bit on the end. They can then get a load of negative reviews. There was someone on freelancer offering a negative review service a while back, don’t know if they still trade.

Fake and fraudulent reviews is big business. There are thousands of people doing this full time. I had one on my GBP from a chap in Italy saying how nice it was to meet me in the office.

 

[Paul Carmen]

@fisicx I know, but Trustpilot shouldn't allow anyone other than the business owner to create an account.

We'd recommend using a different review company, that doesn't allow that process and works with you, or only allows verified customers to leave reviews. You then contact Trustpilot with a standard legal letter saying remove the entire reviews/listing from your platform.

 

[SocialChameleo]

Aside from the obvious answer of getting TrustPilot to remove any fraudulent reviews, which should absolutely be pursued, you won't have much luck with them if they aren't technically fraudulent. And by that it means the person is actually a legitimate user of your services, end of the day it's someones choice if they choose to put a 1* out there, however unfair, I could do it for a business that I use and have a great relationship with if I choose.

What you can do, is respond to any 1* or negative review, reasonably, to highlight what has happened, what been done. A lot of the time these can be valuable as people will always read the negative reviews over the positive. If you can show that you correctly deal with them it can look favourably.

 

[fisicx]

@fisicx I know, but Trustpilot shouldn't allow anyone other than the business owner to create an account.

Totally agree. But it’s not in their interest to verify business owners. They are only interested in getting to upgrade to premium.

The whole review thing across all platforms is broken. And it’s not going to get fixed anytime soon.

Someone did a test a while back on a totally fictitious business. They had a website and GBP and social profile. After a bit of marketing they started getting reviews. Which was bonkers as the business was fake.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Someone did a test a while back on a totally fictitious business. They had a website and GBP and social profile. After a bit of marketing they started getting reviews. Which was bonkers as the business was fake.

I know it's poor and some of the big players are actively making it worse by having a business model that's geared towards them, and effectively leveraging bad reviews. The industry needs more regulation, but there are honest players too.

We work with lots of clients to whom good reviews make a massive difference to conversion rate, and as we don't do any shady nonsense, we have to ensure they're actively generating them from real customers. There are some cost effective ways to do this, but it isn't easy to do well and needs focus from the client.

As Google and brand/product reviews are vitally important to local/organic rankings and conversions for many business, it's a verified and non verified multi platform review processes, plus fighting any fake reviews, but we don't tend to use Trustpilot.

It's kind of a secret sauce process, so we don't reveal the full processes publicly, but can help anyone if they have a sensible budget to do it.