Trust Pilot - can they be trusted?

flaneurs_lobster

me_bex said:

@flaneurs_lobster then they would need to suspend nearly every account on trustpilot if they didn’t like it 😅

Fair enough, maybe they've made a start with yours?

I've no idea if TrustPilot give a hoot about how their system is used, suspect they just want to get high traffic stats to persuade businesses to sign up for the paid subscriptions which is where they actually make money.

knightstyle

Have a listen to this on BBC Sounds.  

Radio 4,·19 Jan 2026,·53 mins

Fake Expert Reviews, Standing Charges and Insulation Complaints

madcap99

TrustPilot is like an online mafia, really, except worse. If you don't pay them, you will get bad reviews which escalates into increasingly bad problems for the company. You have to pay to prevent irreversible reputational damage.

Pescur

I used to find Trustpilot an interesting business although I did not try to join them until a short while ago.

I don't think they are a mafia as such, for a small to medium business I think you need to understand how to respond to bad reviews, that means you never feed the troll with arguments, never become defensive and never copy and paste the same reply to all negative messages.

Just be seen to reply in a caring positive way saying you are disappointed to hear of their experience, you would like to address their issues and list a dedicated email you create to handle Trustpilot reviews.

I do find it entertaining how some Restaurants reply in a defensive and snide way that would make me think 100 times before eating their, who know what they are doing back of house to my meal.

Of course there are companies like EVRI who used Trustpilot to reinvent themselves from MyHermes, they implemented a system to capture positive reviews by asking how the delivery went, but if you use that same system to leave a negative review they do not post it on Trustpilot but dump it into their computer, no follow up, nothing.

One only has to look at the YouTube videos of people working at EVRI to discover why things are so bad there.

I think a business that cares about it's reputation can learn a lot from reading the 1 star reviews of their company. Take Octopus Energy, first thing I would do is create a separate TP listing for the EV side of the business, especially installation. It may only be 3% of 1* reviews but for a company with millions of customers that is a lot of negative reviews. I had a real laugh when I heard that Octopus are spinning off and selling their Kracken software for £8bn, honestly it is pretty awful, it seems to work well for a certain profile of customer but when things go wrong they go badly wrong and tend to drag on for months. Then you get a foreign call centre who are poorly trained or not equiped to deal with issues. Maybe I should try and join Trustpilot again just to share my experience of Octopus Energy!!

What Trustpilot needs is a decent competitor.

Salicylic

I found this thread on Google, so I hope it's okay to post.

Has anyone complained to the Competition and Markets Authority? Is it worth it or are they toothless?

TP is the most arrogant company I've ever encountered, and they just do as they please.

I left a genuine review, and the company repeatedly flagged it multiple times, which must be against the rules, and demanded proof it was real. I sent them proof, and eventually TP told me they wouldn't be putting my review back up and couldn't tell me why, to "protect the integrity of the site" (the irony).

They contracted me from a site called fabricated review in the email address so obviously insinuating I'm telling lies

The company I reviewed seems to fill their page with questionable 5* reviews but TP doesn't seem to care about that. Lots of employees being name checked. It's a shambles

So I then left a review for Trustpilot on their own page, and they took that down as well, citing "suspicious pointers" and pompously claiming they'd made the right decision

They demanded proof, and when I told them I don't need proof as it's just my opinion of them, they just kept sending me the same copy-and-paste reply and made it impossible to speak to a real human. There's no common sense at all with this company. It's full of AI.

Most of the 5* reviews are only a few words long, it's almost as if the people have been nagged into leaving a review they didn't really want to do and have just done it to stop being hassled especially on their own page on their own site.

robatwork

They're a company, and in business to make profit, like all companies

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/08595623

They aren't offering a benevolent public service, and sadly some of the places that did (local councils approved trader lists, Which trusted traders, trading standards approved) aren't what they were, or just aren't.

I take their reviews in the same way as Amazon reviews - I lend some weight to them. But just some. With a pinch of salt.

Yes it's annoying when they take down a well-intentioned and fabulously written critique of a company - been there - but they can. There's no Ofrev - a regulator of review sites.