09/13/2023
TrustPilot is Not so Trustworthy
When trying to navigate the internet and its scrupulous players it allows to run around selling products that either do not work or that may or may not and are work in progresses, there are not too many places to turn for help. In many cases, Internet Companies use this shielding term known as ‘Safe Harbor’ making lawsuits versus them a complicated issue. Most people in business and many consumers of services and products depend on opinion based sites such as google and Yelp. Many people in the programming and computer industry have even less to fall back on while also being more susceptible to being scammed.
Companies such as TrustPilot should have a spirit of free speech in a free marketplace, however, it does not work that way. There are independent investigations that suggest that review websites such as TrustPilot may have fake reviews. There is controversy about the legitimacy of some of Trustpilot’s and other consumer review websites’ reviews and the way that it deals with complaints about them, although TrustPilot claims that it strives to only include genuine reviews.
For instance, TrustPilot allows businesses to pay them to access its marketing services and use TrustPilot technology to filter reviews—normally selecting only favorable posts—that customers place on their own Web site or other places. This may violate certain laws or regulations.
Then, TrustPilot published fake reviews for Bizzyloans; it deleted them after they were brought to light by KwikChex, an online investigations company. Fake reviewers often steal the identities of real people to falsely build up reviewed companies’ reputations.
TrustPilot denies that it permits any known fraudulent reviews on its site. On September 14 2017, TrustPilot issued an open letter clarifying its review policy following allegations concerning the ‘validity of reviews of [online estate agent] Purplebricks by customers’.
On March 22, 2019, The Times reported that estate agents Purplebricks and Foxtons are “gaming” TrustPilot feedback by paying it to help gain better scores.
In August 2016 five reviews of Foxtons were published on TrustPilot, with an average score of 2.2 stars out of five. The following month there were 467 reviews, 90% of them awarding five stars.
On February 6, 2020 industry publication Property Industry Eye reported that TrustPilot was looking into reviews of estate agents ‘at large’ after claims from property review website allAgents that 70% of their reviews could be fake.
In May 2020, an episode of Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back ran an experiment in which a fake company was created on TrustPilot, demonstrating the various ways of manipulating reviews on the site. TrustPilot published an online response, noting the value of the show’s experiment in highlighting fraud on the site, and promising to implement changes to tackle the problem better.
WSCA itself along with its staffers also conducted a test throughout the last month using FIFTEEN (15) separate accounts all with very specific and detailed issues and of them, FOURTEEN (14) of them came back flagged and were deleted with the following stock message each time:
Hi #########xx,
Thanks for writing a review about ############ on TrustPilot.
As part of our efforts to ensure that our community can trust the reviews they read on TrustPilot, we’re constantly on the lookout for unusual activity. We do this by using customized software, dedicated Content Integrity Agents, or a combination of both.
In this case, your review of hostinger.com has been flagged because we couldn’t verify its authenticity, and on that basis we’ve removed your review from our platform.
While we’re confident that this is the right call, we appreciate that sometimes we get it wrong. If you think there’s been a mistake here, please do let us know by replying to this email and a member of our Content Integrity Team will review this decision with you.
Thanks for your cooperation.
TrustPilot Content Integrity Team
WSCA targeted not only companies that had incredible problems and that were reoptred scammers, it also had an idea of the types of industry that does indeed need to pay into this type of platform as a way to lie about its reputaion and business practices.
In fact, we thought this was an easy, concise and great way to show TrustPilot the issue by providing even more than what was seemingly requested, however, when the staffers showed them receipts, screenshots and actual payments made to these companies. There was still never any response to it. Nor were any of the posts made live again.
Further, one staff person at WSCA created a fake post that was positive in tone. That post was allowed to stay live without any issue to this day and nor was it flagged however and again, it was clearly fake. Therefore, the ONLY post that was allowed to stay alive was ironically the only fake one that WSCA finally did on the last day during the test. Not one of the tests subjects had thought that all FOURTEEN (14) reviews would be left deleted after TrustPilot had been shown documents and proof of every mishap and issue, and after they had been showed absolute authentication between any two parties at issue.
When asked repeatedly how much it would cost for companies to get their negative posts deleted, there has not been a response about that either. It is very clear that part of this business model and its revenues are to collect money for companies to have negative reviews deleted from this platform, and is manipulated based on that fee.
If anyone considers that almost 99% of the reviews in this test run came back deleted and flagged without them placing any of them back onto that network and account, it is not a true reflection of anything on this network. It is obviously skewed to what company can pay a fee which is reckless and it does nothing to help the consumers and businesses that are being scammed by TrustPilot’s clientele. Furthermore, it allows companies and people to continue to scam consumers and people in businesses which is reckless. Nor is it viable with any scope and ability to help people in business or a consumer in need of a complaint. The only thing this platform is set up to accomplish in its business plan is to collect revenues based on who needs their negative reviews taken down and deleted from its network.
That makes this platform worthless, corrupt and reckless considering how skewed it is to a company and whom can afford to pay a fee to delete negative posts. Or, to manipulate other posts.
At the very least and most depending on how one looks at this issue is that WSCA gave it many times for TrustPilot to rectify itself by showing it document after document only for us to be ignored about it. In a few cases, WSCA showed videos of the actual product never working and that was not good enough for them respond. Let alone to post that review back into the specific account.
WSCA showed payments and receipts to TrustPilot to authenticate it and the company that tried to scam it and TrustPilot not only deleted it, they also never responded when shown the proof of the issue and the actual scam itself. Even further they did not ‘right the ship’ so to speak because in every case, there was so much proof provided to TrustPilot that it was astounding for it did not post even one of those perfect reviews back onto its network. The point being that if a Review platform is not going to allow actual reviews and if TrustPilot is going to use a ‘pay to play’ in its business model as a part of the way to collect revenues, there is an incredible amount of a conflict of interest because why would there ever be a post of an actual or real review if company’s are willing to pay a fee to keep out any true and potentially negative review?
Overall, you cannot trust TrustPilot which is ironically in its name. Further, there are companies out there (Online Boost Up, The Review Seekers, SMM Services Buy and many more), that literally sell positive reviews.
Again, TrustPilot was repeatedly asked about these claims on behalf of this article and there was never any reply to any of the FIFTEEN (15) times that we asked about the ‘pay to play’ model. There was never any responses to that question which was asked in writing every time. There were never any comments about it outside of the stock letters sent to us each time.
There are independent investigations that suggest that review websites such as Trustpilot may have fake reviews.[4][26][27] There is controversy about the legitimacy of some of Trustpilot’s and other consumer review websites’ reviews and the way that it deals with complaints about them, although Trustpilot claims that it strives to only include genuine reviews.[4][27][28][29][30] Trustpilot allows businesses to pay them to access its marketing services and use Trustpilot technology to filter reviews—normally selecting only favourable posts—that customers place on their own Web site or other places. This may violate certain laws or regulations.[31][28] Trustpilot published fake reviews for Bizzyloans; it deleted them after they were brought to light by KwikChex, an online investigations company.[32] Fake reviewers often steal the identities of real people to falsely build up reviewed companies’ reputations. Trustpilot denies that it permits any known fraudulent reviews on its site.[33]
On 14 September 2017, Trustpilot issued an open letter clarifying its review policy following allegations concerning the ‘validity of reviews of [online estate agent] Purplebricks by customers’.[34][35]
On 22 March 2019, The Times reported that estate agents Purplebricks and Foxtons are “gaming” Trustpilot feedback by paying it to help gain better scores. In August 2016 five reviews of Foxtons were published on Trustpilot, with an average score of 2.2 stars out of five. The following month there were 467 reviews, 90% of them awarding five stars.[31][5]
On 6 February 2020 industry publication Property Industry Eye reported that Trustpilot was looking into reviews of estate agents ‘at large’ after claims from property review website allAgents that 70% of their reviews could be fake.[36][37]
In May 2020, an episode of Joe Lycett‘s Got Your Back ran an experiment in which a fake company was created on Trustpilot, demonstrating the various ways of manipulating reviews on the site.[38] Trustpilot published an online response, noting the value of the show’s experiment in highlighting fraud on the site, and promising to implement changes to tackle the problem better.[39]
