Trust Pilot - can they be trusted?

stattman

I noticed on TrustPilot that they accept AI responses to reviews. So all the 1 star reviews have the similar formulaic response with the same email address. Therefore as per the earlier response, focus on the poor reviews to get a feel for the company. But then if you need to check Trust Pilot it may be a sign not to transact with the firm…

rollingmoon

It's common knowledge that Trustpilot is a paid for service - companies who 'subscribe' can remove bad reviews at will. So, no, you can't trust them.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-7549909/Can-trust-Trustpilots-reviews-firms-dont-pay-it.html

GraceCourt

Of course you cannot trust Trustpilot - anyone who wants to warn other consumers about a scammer or a trader operating illegally will have their post taken down by Trustpilot because the poster has never actually purchased from, or been a customer of, the rogue trader that you're trying to warn others about!  Never mind, of course, the not-insubstantial fees being paid by the scammer/rogue trader to Trustpilot...

And you might think it a peculiar arrangement, but although there's a company called Trustpilot Limited (registered number 08595623) registered at Companies House, and another called Trustpilot Group PLC (registered number 13184807), the domain trustpilot.co.uk redirects to uk.trustpilot.com, which is actually run by the parent company in Denmark, Trustpilot A/S - which is reached by post c/o Trustpilot Limited in London!

So if you have to make a legal claim against the operators of the site, you'll have to travel to Denmark... so much for being able to trust the companies listed on the site... not!!

I know this from trying to warn about a company that is listed by Trustpilot, not by the company name, but under a trading style (the brand name of the product that it now sells) - I had better not mention the brand here, as the "new" trader spends a lot of money on late-night TV advertising - the new trader purchased the assets and goodwill from a now-liquidated UK company that went bust.  Customers of the first company awaiting delivery of the product lost all their money, unless their purchase cost over £100 and they paid on a credit card ["Section 75 CCA protection"] because the new company was "nothing to do with the old company". Yet if you read the Trustpilot review, there's no mention whatsoever of either of the company names, just the product's trading brand.  Only time will tell if the new company is doing well or on the edge of bankruptcy, but surely that's what customers need to know before parting with their cash?

But you won't find out from Trustpilot!

sonofmerton

There is a well known dating app used by older gentleman that has either 5 star reviews from newbies and 1 star reviews mostly from regular trust pilot reviewers.

A local eatery near me, no longer there, had their staff 'bump up' poor reviews on there. I had recognised some of the names, spoke to a couple of them when I was in there and they said the manager had 'encouraged' them to give good reviews. I only drank in there, the food was not good though.

I've had reviews removed from TP following company complaint even following some shocking service from them.

I now no longer use TP.   

[Deleted User]

I won't bore everyone with the details, but no. After reporting to their Content Integrity Team (I know) that a 4.9* business was consistently threatening anyone who posted a 4* review or below with legal action, thus getting almost all of them taken down, and emailing TP 20 pages of evidence including emails from the business showing them openly doing so, they did nothing. Actually, that's not entirely true. The next month I submitted a review for a different company (a 5* review) and immediately TP banned my entire account for 'spam'. When I contacted them and asked what that even meant, they said I needed to produce 'proof'. What I asked, proof of what, they said, and I quote, 'We don't have that information. If you upload proof then that will allow us to validate your review." Which review are you talking about? "Sometimes we ask for additional information on reviews in order to prove they are genuine." And so on until I couldn't take it any more.

robatwork

The lesson seems to be that the only pilots you can trust are those on aeroplanes

Vj2194

Companies are allowed to flag every review even though it's against the rules to flag every one, but nothing is done. 

I've sent proof in, and they say we can't tell you why we're not reinstating your review to protect the integrity of the platform, and that's the end of it.Hilarious

The content integrity team have to be the most ignorant lot I've dealt with.  Impossible to speak to a real person via email and all you get are copy and paste responses no matter what you ask. 

Lots of 5-star reviews which are only a few words. Surely if a company was really that good, people would write more than 'it's great' – very, very suspicious.Of course the integrity team never takes these down.

They also have their own page on their own site, which they fill with hundreds of invited 5-star reviews every day. Their own rating on their own page is great.Talk about conflict of interest. 

sonearandyetsofa

I did my research for my company to see if we wanted to be listed on trustpilot, and discovered that companies that use their "free" service are often mysteriously inundated with 1* reviews with little detail and no proof of purchase, which of course you cannot apply to have removed unless you sign up for their subscription service. You can find a lot of small companies complaining about this, it seems trustpilot don't do anything to check whether reviews are real or not.

Despite this I was pretty much forced to open an account there for us, after another company with a different name, different location and different web address but similar initials suddenly became #1 search result on google for our company name + reviews. The other company has been out of business for over 2 years and it seems they took all of their customers' money with them when they went, so not something we wanted to appear to be associated with.

I made multiple attempts to contact trustpilot and ask them to deactivate the other company's account, or at least reduce its' visibility. They never responded. 

Our own, new account, has received precisely one review from one very happy customer who left us 5*. Despite this, and multiple positive reviews on other platforms over the last 16 years, our rating on trustpilot is 3.7*.

So no, you can't trust them - not as a consumer, and not as a business either. 

sarahTT

Hubby is doing most of these things here and he keeps telling me to ignore all 3/4/5 star reviews and also to ignore one-line reviews for all stars... especially if from someone with just 1 review

Like others have suggested he's concentrating on what looks like "reasonable" (I know...) 1/2 star reviews, ignoring those which are dealing with other companies (not that rare, he says) or unrelated problems. He tries to get a feeling for what goes wrong and importantly, how well the company responds (if it does).

In general, he's not a fan of Trustpilot and has himself given up on posting further reviews after three or four (negative) reviews were removed by their automated system. He still has around 30 reviews there but sometimes mutters that he'll kill them all.