Is Trustpilot an eloborate scam ?

wilsjames

Help and advice needed on how to fight Trustpilot.

So here goes we own a company and signed up to trustpilot for their free service to collect genuine customer reviews over the last 5 years we had built up a very good reputation as we operate a good customer service with around 90 percent of our reviews coming back 4 or 5 star from clients we offered our services to. Not everyone was happy but like with any company there will always be disgruntled clients.

Over the years trustpilot has been hounding us to take their paid subscription of 500 pounds per month ( 6000 per year ) which they kept telling us gave us the facility to edit or delete reviews as we deemed fit. We refused this service as paying 6000 a year to collect reviews is against all standards we try and set as a company. We want people to be honest on how they find us not try and manipulate or fake the system.

On the last call from them again offering us the service we do not want we had to tell them all calls are recorded and threatened to report them to the Ofcom ombudsman for unsolicited calls we did not ask for.

Within 3 days of this call they removed over 1000 positive reviews from our business page because we point blank refuse to pay them 6000 per year. Leaving a handfull of negative reviews only. We contacted all the clients who,s reviews they took down and asked them to leave them again. Trustpilot kept deleting their reviews telling them they could not verify the authenticity of the review.

Here is the thing they never contacted one of these clients asking for proof and our clients emailed them back to say they could show proof that they were customers by showing invoices and reciepts. All emails were ignored.

What is the point of a review site if they are manipulating companies into becoming their customers so they can then edit reviews ?

I have lost all faith in trustpilot I feel like it is possibly one of the biggest scams on the planet operating in plain site because it is set up as a company.

We have looked into suing them but their offices are set up overseas and do not fall under EU law.

We have now learned that all the companies with the glowing reviews are their customers who pay for the service surely that is not a fair and impartial service ?

How do we fight them or can they simply just do what they want ?

If i search for reviews on them on other review sites it seems we are not the only company they have done this to.

Any advice would be great.

JReacher1

It was probably a mistake to threaten a company who were providing you a free service.

JJ_Egan

Its not a Consumer Rights problem and you would be better asking in a business forum .

wilsjames

they were calling our offices 3 times a week to take a paid service we kept telling them no and it got to the point we had to do something to stop the nuciance calls

newatc

The time and cost of chasing them yourself would probably be prohibitive.
I think it is terrible predicament (as a consumer I have never trusted them ) but as a layman I doubt I could offer you much useful advise but I would:
1. Try to get yourself removed from Trustpilot.
2. Write to your MP about the situation
3. If you belong to a business group, see if they can help
4. Write out a factual description (as per your post) and be prepared to hand out to customers/prospective customer as seems appropriate.

Good luck.

wilsjames

we have looked into getting the company website removed from the platform they have told us that because it was added by an external source - ie one of our clients it has to stay there.

The money it would take to go after them would most likely bankrupt us we are not a multimillion pound company.

We did not authorize them to put our company on there in the first place we only knew it was there as one of their sales team contacted us to inform us.

It was most likely put there themselves after finding one of our paid google adwords campaigns for the company