Trustpilot - not to be trusted so much

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  • MarkBargain
    MarkBargain Posts: 1,641 Forumite
    I looked up that aerial company featured on BBC Watchdog's Rogue Traders on Trustpilot. '9.4 Excellent' apparently!
  • Trustpilot is a scam, pure and simple.

    Businesses pay Trustpilot a hefty fee to appear on the site. In return, Trustpilot allows them to remove unfavourable reviews and turns a blind eye to fake reviews.

    Don't be fooled into believing the 5* reviews, most are written to order, paid for by the business.
  • scd3scd4
    scd3scd4 Posts: 1,180
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    Trustpilot suck big time. There business model is for the benefit of them paying the fees. By that I mean the companies not the users.


    They allow reviews to be removed and then for you to jump through hoops to have them reinstated. Most people just think, get lost I am reviewing in my own time for free so negative reviews are lost.
  • I have placed a number of reviews on Trust Pilot website, good and bad. A short time ago, I reviewed a survey company giving them one star and was then contacted by Trust Pilot to say that my review had been reported by the company in question because they believed it was fake. I notice that all the bad reviews for this company had been challenged. My review was genuine but I got fed up going back and forth to Trust Pilot and I finally told them I had published a review of that company elsewhere and that I would not be using Trust Pilot again. By the way, there were no good reviews on the company in question and when I look on other review websites, their reviews are bad. I used to trust Trust Pilot but not any longer.
  • photome
    photome Posts: 16,351
    Name Dropper First Anniversary First Post Bake Off Boss!
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    Trustpilot should be investigated ( not that i ever look on there) but if you join the wren kitchen disasters facebook page there are lots of examples of negative reviews that are removed straight away by wren and trustpilot even though there is evidence that these negative reviews are very real
  • From Private Eye 8th Sept - 21st Sept 2017 issue

    TRUSTPILOT WAILS

    Unicom, a telecoms and utility provider for small businesses, was fined £200,000 by Ofcom in 2015 for mis-selling telephone contracts to its customers and was described as "predatory" by John Healey MP in a Commons debate. After this ugly episode, the firms owner, Vitruvian Partners, changed its name from Unicom to Verastar.

    Now Vitruvian has lined up investment bankers to take Verastar public. The float has previously been mooted two years ago, until Uniocom's dodgy sales tactics and debt-collection methods came to light. After unpleasant dealings with Unicom, several former customers set up a website unicom-complaints.co.uk to keep an eye on the company and its many offshoots, such as Kinex, Woav and Clear Business Telecom.

    Presumably complaints are thin on the line since Unicom was rapped on the knuckles by Ofcom? Er, no. In the past month alone the eagle-eyed website team has spotted more than 50 complaints about Verastar's companies on various review sites. Of these, 11 had been deleted for not complying with the sites rules. All those deleted reviews were on Trustpilot website...which also happens to be owned by Vitruvian!
    The way things are going, soon we are all going to be victims of something or other.

    Who will we blame then?
  • Alpine_Star
    Alpine_Star Posts: 1,354
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Post
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    This is my experience of Trust Pilot and their whistleblowing function run via their ‘Compliance’ department. Everything I write here is true and could be verified by Trust Pilot, if they so wished.

    For the last 2 years I have been looking at a large B2B services company (who I shall call ACME) who behind a veneer of respectability, aggressively mis-sell expensive lengthy service contracts to unsophisticated micro enterprises and who are extremely litigious in enforcing payment. ACME have a digital reputation department whose policy is to whitewash the internet of any criticism, seemingly at any cost, including negative reviews on Trust Pilot and for which ACME is a paid subscriber. Additionally ACME appear to be placing a large volume of fake positive reviews on Trust Pilot themselves.

    Here is a summary of the issues I reported to Trust Pilot and the evidence I provided:

    1) A consistently large volume ACME’s 5 star Trust Pilot reviews are made by reviewers whose profile location is ‘United States’, despite the fact that ACME does not operate in the USA. In August one reviewer questioned why this was in his review, to which ACME’s rep responded that it was a ‘glitch’ in the review invitation links sent out to customers, that he’d reported it to Trust Pilot and that the issue had been ‘fixed’.

    However Trust Pilot’s privacy policy states that reviewers’ locations are automatically determined and inputted on to their profile by their IP addresses and Trust Pilot's geo location software. Despite the claimed ‘fix’ new reviews are still appearing from reviewers whose location is United States to this day.

    2) One star reviews are routinely suspended (permanently) pending verification of proof of purchase. I provided Trust Pilot with correspondence between ACME and it’s reviewer customers which substantiated that ACME knew full well that the reviewer was genuine before they reported the review as not from a genuine customer. I also know of instances where customers have provided documentary evidence to Trust Pilot substantiating that they are genuine customers but their reviews were never reinstated.

    3) Most concerningly, I provided Trust Pilot with gagging agreements that ACME offered to and obtained from reviewer customers that compelled them to remove their reviews from Trust Pilot and to undertake never to post any in future, as a condition for discontinuing legal action enforcing payment of mis-sold contracts.

    Although Trust Pilot’s ‘Enforcement Agent’ assured me that ‘’ these reports have been taken seriously and the relevant action taken’’, ACME’s Trust Pilot listing remains untouched.

    It is deeply concerning (and should be for anyone using Trust Pilot) that Trust Pilot knows the extent to which its paying companies bully genuine reviewers and yet continues to allow them a platform and take their money.
  • Yes, was complaining that Which was partnering Shoosmiths as a convening service.
    So i stated, Which a consumer mag should not partner a company with over 60% consumer complains.
    Silly me, thay just work together and with the Russians doing the software.
    Just use Martin Lewis from now on.
    Off there now to post, Can you Trust Trust Pilot ? no .
    Steve.
  • Had an interesting experience with Trust Pilot. I was curious about Purple Bricks, so I checked Trust Pilot. Great rating! So I signed up.

    Experience was a disaster. So poor. Total waste of time and money. And then I started hearing from other people who had the same experience. So I posted my experience with Purple Bricks on Trust Pilot. 1 star. Was removed within a few hours of posting because the company complained it was 'bogus'. Trust Pilot requested information from me to prove mine was genuine. I immediately sent them my Purple Bricks invoice as proof.

    No response.

    Emailed a few more times over a week. No response. Chatted with their tech support staff, who said someone would respond 'soon'. Had to keep hounding them.

    Eventually someone from Trust Pilot sent me back a form email saying I needed to provide proof for my review. For example, an invoice (which I'd already sent). So I sent them the invoice again.

    As of now my review is still off the site. So this is how businesses can get Trust Pilot to stifle negative reviews. Trust Pilot are complicit, because they will immediately act on the request of a business (who provide no proof a review is bogus) but then are super slow to respond to responses from customers (even if they do provide proof of purchase). I can see why most consumers just lose patience and give up trying to share their opinion.

    I no longer trust Trust Pilot.

    P.S. A ton of the 5* reviews for Purple Bricks on Trust Pilot are written by people who have never written a review on Trust Pilot before. Interesting that. It seems Purple Bricks are using the paid service Trust Pilot offers which makes it more seamless for customers to write a review on Purple Bricks. Nothing wrong with that, but it shows the issue with Trust Pilot's business model. Why would they ever want to offend a paying customer and let non-paying customers (like me) voice an honest, critical opinion?
  • jplevene
    jplevene Posts: 20
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker First Post
    Forumite
    I had some customers leave reviews just to see how it works by sending them invites through TrustPilot (free account). A few left great reviews, however they all got taken down as we don't have a paid version (any bad ones wouldn't be).

    It seems you can only get good reviews if you pay them and you can delete all the reviews you don't like, again only if you pay them.

    Not very trustworthy, then again neither are any of these review sites as they are full of fake reviews from the vendor, some are just so easy to spot.
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