[HN Gopher] How Trustpilot Extorts Businesses
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How Trustpilot Extorts Businesses
Author : czue
Score : 259 points
Date : 2022-06-13 11:09 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| soco wrote:
| Rather off-topic: am I the only one being told by Medium "please
| wait we are checking your browser"? I don't have enough
| motivation to wait for nonsense so there, I missed a maybe
| interesting article...
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| Isn't it a Cloudflare thing, such as [0]?
|
| [0] https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/200170086-U...
| BayAreaEscapee wrote:
| I just tried it in four browsers (Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Brave)
| and it worked fine in all of them. Maybe it's just you? Or your
| IP address?
| byyll wrote:
| https://scribe.rip and in this case
| https://scribe.rip/https%3A/medium.com/%40ryanbadger/how-tru...
| SMAAART wrote:
| That's the same playbook used by Yelp.
| bengale wrote:
| An issue we had with trust pilot is that we got a bunch of our
| users to give us reviews, and then trust pilot cut 40% of them
| based on whatever they have going on in the backend, they
| couldn't tell us. That for a small company is quite a valuable
| thing to lose tbh, they claimed they reached out to those people
| but ones who we are close with said they received nothing. They
| gave us no pathway to prove they were legit review, just deleted.
|
| Left a pretty bad taste tbh, trust pilots only suggestion was to
| use their email setup where you CC them into customer comms and
| then later they email the customer themselves to ask for the
| review. Just seemed like a way to tie us in deeper with them.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > trust pilots only suggestion was to use their email setup
| where you CC them into customer comms
|
| That and their insistence to use a JS-based widget instead of
| just plainly copying review text smells like spyware. If it was
| my company I'd give them the middle finger and a C&D for using
| my brand's assets (logo, etc) on their site.
| kionce wrote:
| Huh, I didn't realise they can be so predatory. Did you switch
| to something else after this?
| aerosmile wrote:
| People are comparing Trustpilot to Yelp, but having worked with
| both I can tell you that Trustpilot is far more evil for one
| simple reason: Trustpilot optimizes their SEO to
| rank for search terms that include the "negative review" phrase.
|
| You can see that quite plainly both in their source code (search
| for "negative") or empirically by observing their rankings for
| "[company name] reviews" vs "[company name] negative reviews."
| I'll let your mind extrapolate from here all the fun powerplay
| scenarios that result from this company strategically positioning
| itself to be the magnet for all your most vocal haters.
|
| Once Trustpilot has your profile up on their site, they will
| quickly start ranking for the "negative" phrase. You will be
| tempted to squash down those negative reviews by redirecting your
| positive reviews there, which will then also give them higher
| ranking for all of your review-related phrases - including the
| negative one. At this point you're locked in - without your
| intervention, your average rating on Trustpilot will always be
| lower than on any other service, and in order to counterbalance
| that, you will be helping Trustpilot's SEO more than any other
| service. Game set match.
|
| What to do? I would suggest four main principles:
|
| 1. They will eventually get your profile, you cannot escape that.
| But what you can do is create a profile yourself that will be
| crippled in SEO (eg: wrong TLD, or slight mispelling, perhaps an
| extra word, etc). You might have to take several swings at this,
| but the goal would be to come up with a name for your company
| that i) ranks for your correctly spelled name in their internal
| search, but ii) is not competitive in the global SEO race with
| other companies that have your correct spelling.
|
| 2. Pick a different review service that's more honest and will
| work with you on a good faith basis. I found the BBB to be the
| most business-friendly of all of them (a bit surprising, I know).
| They just simply don't operate as a VC-run business that has to
| grow fast at all costs, and as a result, they won't turn on your
| like other services do (eg: it's in the services' interest to
| keep the content on the site, and the BBB will take things down
| more aggressively than any other service I know). Once you pick
| your canonical 3rd party review service, make them the #1 in SEO
| for your name by ensuring that they always have an order of
| magnitude more content than any other service.
|
| 3. You might be pressured to send content to Trustpilot to make
| up for the bad reviews. Do as little of that as possible, and
| each time you do that, send 10x more content to your chosen
| service.
|
| 4. Some people (usually those meaning to inflict the most harm)
| will always choose to leave their 1-star reviews on an external
| site so that they cannot be taken down. But you can definitely
| lower that volume by making it exceptionally easy for people to
| leave a review on your own site. That approach is far more
| favorable because you have a lot more options to turn the
| sentiment of the reviewer from negative to positive (assuming
| you're willing to do some custom coding). You'll still need a 3rd
| party review service (eg: Yotpo) so that your ratings can show up
| in Google Shopping etc, but you can collect those by sending all
| your purchasers that standard "review your purchase" email. If
| they leave a bad review using that service, you'll have the full
| context and will be able to react accordingly. Apart from that
| email, make sure that people can leave a review on your site
| without having to verify their purchase. In my experience, a
| substantial portion of customers doesn't realize why unverified
| reviews are discouraged and often not even available, which
| drives them to Trustpilot. So regardless if you're using Yotpo or
| some other service (most of which don't allow unverified
| reviews), make sure that a customer can click on a "review this
| product" button right on your site. I'll let you figure out 1)
| how to make this happen, and 2) what to do if in that case
| someone selects a 1-star review (hint: put your best foot forward
| right then and there).
| yalogin wrote:
| I have always thought companies like BBB and Trustpilot are
| scams. They don't about consumers as the companies are their
| customers. They are the one they target and get money from. So I
| believe with them all bad reviews can be wiped out for a fee
| flemhans wrote:
| There's a reason Apple has such a bad score. They won't pay the
| Danegeld.
|
| I remember back in the days when they'd call us up and say they
| could fix us a nice score if we subscribed
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This bit:
|
| > If Trustpilot does not own the reviews, how can grant (and more
| importantly deny) how you use those reviews?
|
| is readily answered by their terms:
|
| "You hereby grant us the worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual,
| irrevocable, royalty-free right and license to publish, display,
| reproduce, modify, create derivative works of and commercially
| exploit any material, information, notifications, reviews,
| articles or other types of communication (hereinafter referred to
| as the "User-Generated Content" or "UGC") which you create on the
| Website as a Registered User. We may freely use and transfer the
| UGC and disclose the UGC to third parties."
| lovasoa wrote:
| "non-exclusive". It's not because trustpilot has the right to
| use the review themselves that they can prevent the business
| being reviewed from using the review.
| [deleted]
| andrenotgiant wrote:
| I was surprised by the "TrustPilot doesn't own the reviews"
| section.
|
| It seems like the important word in the legalese you posted
| above is "non-exclusive."
|
| Say a user wrote a review on TrustPilot, and copy/pasted it to
| an email to the business. Then the business posted the review
| from the email on their website. Are they now violating
| TrustPilot's TOS?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Say a user wrote a review on TrustPilot, and copy/pasted it
| to an email to the business. Then the business posted the
| review from the email on their website. Are they now
| violating TrustPilot's TOS?
|
| You might want to get a release before putting it up, and
| being right doesn't mean Trustpilot knows you're right. Might
| make that blue box defamation, but that'd be a long, uphill
| battle against a well-funded opponent.
| devit wrote:
| Feels like there's a big problem with the assumption that
| reputation would curb that behavior.
|
| The usual common sense concept is that if there was even the
| suspicion that a business like Trustpilot would abuse their
| power, their reputation would be so tarnished that they would not
| only not do, but absolutely make sure it was almost impossible
| for the perception of abuse to happen.
|
| But instead, it looks like nothing happens when they flagrantly
| breach trust, so it looks like in practice you can't really trust
| any company at all.
| inetsee wrote:
| I am wondering whether a business being abused like this could
| trademark their business name, then sue TrustPilot for trademark
| infringement? Can anybody here who knows more about trademark
| infringement comment?
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is basically correct, and has been pointed out several
| times. It's like if you somehow had a person standing outside
| your restaurant telling everyone about their particular dislikes,
| but to get other people to talk you up, you have to pay someone.
| And that someone turns out to be the guy who placed all the
| haters there.
|
| A pernicious business model that lives in the cracks between free
| speech, advertising, and honesty.
| jadence wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of Jason Fried (of 37signals, now known as
| Basecamp)'s complaints about Get Satisfaction back in 2009.
|
| Get Satisfaction, Or Else...
|
| - article: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-
| or-else
|
| - discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540
|
| Follow-up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..."
|
| - article: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1661-follow-up-on-get-
| satisfa...
|
| - discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=543431
| synu wrote:
| Reminds me of how Yelp tortures small family owned businesses. Is
| this the endgame for any for profit review site like this?
| Applejinx wrote:
| Might be. I've had the impression that a pretty recognizable
| name in this field all made up of B-words also functions in
| this way (not sure they're as expensive or as abusive, but
| still, same basic deal)
|
| Not what I'd call 'better' and possibly not even 'business'
| (and to the extent that bureau denotes a government agency,
| definitely nope). So maybe there's nothing new under the sun
| here?
|
| I would even go so far as to call this an inherent problem of
| trust and scale. As soon as the world's too large to experience
| things like business personally or with your own circle of
| trusted people, it's desirable to make some way to scale that,
| and it's inherently a cursed problem that always becomes
| abusive. (or possibly a cursed problem that more often than not
| becomes abusive)
| mwexler wrote:
| Is there a business model for reviews?
|
| Consumers continually say they want and use them, trusting some
| type of collective wisdom of folks willing to take time to give a
| review, assuming some honesty and relevance (reviewer has same
| needs, experience, and use pattern as I do for the item).
|
| Yet, like price engines before them, consumer demand alone
| doesn't make success (some might also say that reviews are a
| feature, not a product, but table that for now).
|
| From Zagat to Angie's list, the BBB in the US, TripAdvisor, yelp,
| 4square, plus a zillion others (along with on-site reviews
| powered by Bazaarvoice and others)... So many have come and gone.
| Amazon reviews are gamed, unclear what drives "Google Reviews",
| blog reviews have faded...
|
| Did social kill them? Maybe, but the few people who respond to a
| "Hey, is X any good" on any forum or group seems less helpful
| than these past offerings.
|
| I've wondered about these "come and gone" tools for a while,
| since price engines and reviews to leverage collective knowledge
| were hallmarks of internet 1.0 lore, and it seems like we failed
| at really delivering on those hopes. Still difficult to find the
| lowest price on items, and still difficult to get a clear read on
| product quality or value... And restaurants and other service
| offerings are still harder.
|
| Any thoughts on what commerce model would work for reviews to be
| unbiased but collective, more than just the Consumer Reports
| model of few experts and some surveys?
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| Validating the identity of each reviewer. If they post
| something slanderous then the business owner should then be
| able to get a warrant/court order etc to force the site to
| reveal the reviewers identity. So long as anonymous posting is
| allowed there is no way to have a truly reliable platform for
| reviewing anything.
|
| IDing users wouldn't be too hard to implement. There are plenty
| of businesses that provide instant ID verification services,
| many of the new online banks and money transfer apps use these
| services. The two issues would be cost and the fact that the
| number of people using review sites that do this would be
| pretty low.
| bombcar wrote:
| Customers want a 1-5 star rating that says "yes buy" or "no
| don't buy" - they rarely actually want _reviews_.
|
| Even with all the gamed reviews on sites like this and Amazon,
| _if you spend the time_ you can usually figure out what 's up,
| but it takes time.
| kionce wrote:
| That's an interesting point and I agree to an extend, but
| sometimes I do look for mentions of a particular feature or
| use case, and in those cases a review that covers those
| points are more useful.
|
| So unless the review cater to me personally by covering those
| points, I usually prefer a more detailed review (or a large
| number of reviews/discussions by Googling in the hope that
| _someone_ covers those points).
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, what I find works pretty well with Amazon reviews is to
| look at the bad reviews and see what they're complaining
| about.
|
| Often it's garbage (this won't do X--hey, if you had paid
| attention you would know they never claimed it would do X!)
| or irrelevant (it's not the fault of the product if it was
| late, damaged in shipping etc) and sometimes it's just a
| tread-with-caution (I've seen a lot of that on Amazon--
| customers burned by combined-inventory or bogus stuff). If
| it's legitimate gripes you've found something to avoid.
| kionce wrote:
| In my experience Reddit works quite well, when it works (i.e.
| when there are people to engage with you)
|
| My current thinking is that you need the reviewers to have
| their reputation on the line somehow when they review
| something. There are quite a few options to do this
| algorithmically, happy to chat if it's something you are
| interested in too.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I mean scammers can be called companies, but they are still
| scammers, but I think courts are the ones to contact in order to
| fight back scammers, no? Like if they are using your company name
| without permission, isn't it a violation in the first place? I'm
| sure things can change if enough people sue them?
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| 100% agree with the sentiment here. Have seen Trustpilot's
| tactics first hand and would liken their business model to a
| modern day protection racket.
|
| I don't think this is an inherent flaw in the idea of providing
| trustworthy third party reviews. I think the flaw is in the
| specific way that Trustpilot as a business operates. (Ie. Badly)
|
| "Nice reputation you've got there. Would be a shame if something
| were to happen to it..."
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember, a number (probably a _large_ number -pre WWW) of
| years back, 60 Minutes, doing a section on the BBB (Better
| Business Bureau). They indicated that the BBB operated in an
| almost identical manner.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I don't think this is an inherent flaw in the idea of
| providing trustworthy third party reviews.
|
| I don't know, have we figured out a way to have trustworthy
| credit rating agencies, or trustworthy journalism of any other
| kind? The incentives for providing information lie in
| manipulating that information for profitable effects. That's
| why nominally informative media must be schizophrenically
| supported by being paired with the open manipulations we call
| advertising.
| nradov wrote:
| The credit rating agencies are trustworthy. The vast majority
| of credit file data is accurate, and their various scoring
| algorithms are good predictors of default risk. There are of
| course some false or erroneous records reported by creditors,
| but those area tiny fraction of the total.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I think it's inherent because they need to monetize it to stay
| in business.
|
| If you want a trustworthy review system you need something more
| like Consumer Reports--the user pays a subscription, the
| product company is not involved. I doubt anyone can get the
| inertia to make that work.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > I don't think this is an inherent flaw in the idea of
| providing trustworthy third party reviews.
|
| Just for the sake of argument, how would one go about creating
| a trustworthy third-party review business? Yelp has been
| accused of similar tactics for years with little pushback. I
| just don't think it's possible to create an ethical review
| platform on the internet. Way too much can go wrong.
|
| Either the reviewers are paying you, the businesses being
| reviewed are paying you, or you're advertising. Advertising is
| a crapshoot, content creators won't pay to make sure their
| review gets posted, so that leaves the businesses being
| reviewed. And if your goal, as the owner of FooBar Business
| Reviews, is to maximize your profits, these kinds of techniques
| are going to start looking interesting really quick.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > I just don't think it's possible to create an ethical
| review platform on the internet.
|
| I definitely agree that it's a _hard_ problem, but I would be
| wary about saying it 's impossible. This shouldn't be rocket
| surgery!
|
| > And if your goal, as the owner of FooBar Business Reviews,
| is to maximize your profits
|
| What is that wasn't your goal? Perhaps such a site could be a
| non-profit...
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > I definitely agree that it's a hard problem, but I would
| be wary about saying it's impossible. This shouldn't be
| rocket surgery!
|
| The internet has now existed for 3 decades, it's become
| massively commercialized over the last decade and a half,
| and this problem still hasn't been figured out without
| resorting to the mob tactics described in the article. If
| it's not rocket surgery, why haven't we figured it out yet?
|
| People still want to see the internet as this limitless
| utopia without boundaries or faults. If we're gonna be wary
| about throwing around the word "impossible", then we need
| to start seeing some concrete solutions to these very real,
| widespread problems. This is basically a modified version
| of the content moderation problem. You can either include
| all voices on an online platform and host propaganda and
| disinformation, or you can try to limit disinformation by
| removing some users from your platform. You can't do both.
|
| > Perhaps such a site could be a non-profit...
|
| Being non-profit doesn't automatically solve the problem.
| Wikipedia is a non-profit and its subjected to manipulation
| all the time. As long as there are people out willing to
| pay money to have a certain reputation online, there will
| be no such thing as a truly objective review forum.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| As a buyer, I just take into account this reality when
| evaluating reviews. There is still useful information to be
| found, but the sentiment and comments I never extrapolate to
| the whole user population. Pretty typical for companies to
| incentivize positive reviews on these sites too, which is
| fine with me but also something I take into account.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Just for the sake of argument, how would one go about
| creating a trustworthy third-party review business?
|
| clients would in some way have to be the people getting
| reviews of things. It would be more of an agent type tool
| that would go out and find things that fit the particular
| clients' wants. It does not admittedly seem like something
| that could work without a number of other things being added
| to it to make people want to pay for reviews.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I don't think you can create a for-profit business that is
| trustworthy here because the incentives are too messed up.
|
| You could do an open non-profit structure where all reviews
| can be analyzed, including "removed" reviews (have a second
| data feed that is raw, with the appropriate disclaimers").
| projektfu wrote:
| In theory you could be paid by customers for helpful reviews.
| Consumer Reports, for example.
|
| I think this is the Angie's List model but I don't know how
| that is working.
|
| I am concerned about the EBSCO model where business are
| ranked and then pay to be advertised as top offerings. It
| seems like it might not necessarily choose good businesses.
| Often their research is based on some kind of survey.
|
| User-generated content for free leads to the
| Yelp/RipOffReport (and TrustPilot?) model.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even Consumer Reports has the problem of not necessarily
| checking/testing for the right things - and very rarely
| have the ability or time to test over long periods of time.
| They do some with the cars, but most things you'd buy will
| last ten+ years, and may exhibit faults later in their
| lifecyle.
|
| An example:
| https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/can-we-
| believ...
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > Consumer Reports, for example.
|
| Not sure if it's comparable but in the UK we have "Which?"
| magazine which provides reader-funded "supposedly
| impartial" product/business reviews. (It started as a
| printed magazine but is now largely an online venture I
| think).
|
| I haven't done much due-diligence on them but they've been
| going for a long time (edit: wow, since 1957 it seems!) and
| traditionally have had a decent reputation in the UK.
|
| I've personally paid for their print magazine and more
| recently online subscription for brief periods when wanting
| some analysis on a couple of important purchases, and found
| the information to be useful.
|
| https://www.which.co.uk
| mbesto wrote:
| > In theory you could be paid by customers for helpful
| reviews.
|
| Nope, this will easily be gamed.
|
| I don't think there is a financial model on the planet that
| would make reviews 100% trustworthy.
| synu wrote:
| Maybe some kind of circle of trust? I would trust reviews
| written by my contacts more than internet randos. People they
| know a little less, and beyond that not really at all.
|
| I think the problem is that if you make it into a business it
| messes up all the incentives, but if you don't make it a
| business there isn't an incentive to put time and effort in
| to combat spam, lawsuits, and so on. Maybe a big open source
| undertaking, like Wikipedia but with reviews?
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > Maybe a big open source undertaking, like Wikipedia but
| with reviews?
|
| Wikipedia is certainly not immune from manipulation. A
| friend of mine worked for a firm that edited Wikipedia
| pages for a fee and typically catered towards the ultra-
| wealthy and politicians.
| kionce wrote:
| I think Reddit works quite well as an effective review site
| for products from certain brands, and in most of the brand
| subs maintained by independent mods, you do get a wide
| spectrum of views.
|
| Spam is automatically taken care for you too (if you ignore
| the non-review posts).
| marcinzm wrote:
| In a way you already get that by posting on social media or
| sending a group chat of "anyone know a good X around Y" and
| then seeing the results. Probably a better chance someone
| will respond to you directly than leave a random review
| somewhere.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I've always thought "web of trust" this is the best way
| forward for reviews. It's using trust that you already
| have, and it allows you to give feedback to people who are
| giving incorrect reviews, e.g. "Steve, you rated this thing
| 5-stars but it totally sucks. What gives?"
|
| I'm genuinely surprised that Facebook hasn't picked up the
| idea of allowing user-submitted reviews of products,
| services, places, organizations, etc. Then you could search
| your friends, or friends-of-friends, for reviews. For
| Facebook this would be a wealth of information because it
| indicates which products you actually own and whether you
| like them. How is that not a huge wealth of information for
| an advertiser?
|
| It'd be extra good if we could take Facebook out of the
| equation, but the social graph there is probably the
| largest currently in existence.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Maybe the reason Facebook doesn't want to get into this
| space is because an ecosystem of trusted reviews would
| actually be a major problem for their customers (aka
| advertisers).
|
| It wouldn't be good for an ad platform to show an ad for
| something and then show the prospective customer the
| debunking of said ad.
|
| Facebook makes their money on the market being less
| efficient. If the market was super efficient and everyone
| bought what they wanted and was satisfied with it there
| would be a lot less need for advertising.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Excellent point. That thought never crossed my mind.
|
| My desire for web-of-trust reviews to exist made it
| harder for me to think as a ruthlessly profit driven
| company thinks.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| For consumers to use and trust a reviews website like TrustPilot,
| that site has to demonstrate the they play tough with companies
| because I think the most important thing consumers are looking
| for is somewhere where negative feedback is published unaltered.
|
| As soon as word that negative reviews are removed you're dead as
| a review site.
|
| The flip side is that I suspect that people make the effort to
| leave a review when they are unhappy so reviews are likely
| heavily skewed negatively _unless_ the company joins the site and
| actively requests verified reviews from its customers.
| flemhans wrote:
| TrustPilot has been around for ages and you can remove negative
| reviews there.
|
| I don't think people realize or care.
| declnz wrote:
| Wow this left me a bit depressed. Are there _any_ good third-
| party review systems out there then?
| mdasen wrote:
| I'd say there isn't _and_ there can 't be simply because of the
| economics of it.
|
| When you're using
| Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/TikTok/etc., you're opening
| it many times a day and seeing dozens and maybe hundreds of
| ads. When you use Yelp, you're going to the site with a
| specific intent and trying to leave very quickly. You visit
| Yelp once a week or once a month and you try and use it as
| little as possible.
|
| No one is doom-scrolling a review site and seeing ad after ad
| after ad. They're going to the review site, finding something,
| and leaving fast. So they simply don't get the kind of traffic
| that you can monetize into a giant business. But they have
| something that is valuable to businesses: their reputation. So
| you try to monetize that, but that's difficult. You don't want
| to let businesses pay to remove negative reviews so what are
| you selling them? Also, what lies might your salespeople be
| telling businesses that you're selling them? Are commission-
| driven salespeople telling businesses that paying will get bad
| reviews removed?
|
| Angie's List worked off a different model where people paid to
| get access. That meant that they didn't have to look to
| businesses for payments and the reviews came from someone
| "real" enough to have a credit/debit card and have paid them
| money. However, it looks like they've pivoted their business
| model and it's no longer a paid service (and now called Angi).
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, the financial incentives don't line up correctly.
|
| You'd need something like a paid service that's backed by a
| guarantee (some credit cards basically offer this for the
| high-end cards; concierge service that will recommend a
| restaurant (that takes the card, of course) and if you
| complain to them afterwards they'll make it right or refund
| the cost).
|
| But for most things people don't even bother - everyone
| _knows_ gyms are scammy with cancellations and people still
| sign up, for example.
| pydry wrote:
| Which? magazine maybe.
|
| Consumers are generally not primed to pay for reviews and when
| they dont pay they become the product.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| You win them by ignoring Trustpilot and by injecting fake reviews
| for your domain so that they are unable to extort you.
| jafitc wrote:
| I agree with most of the article but displaying a static 5-star
| image on your website when your real rating is 4.6 stars (should
| be displayed as 4.5 star image) is rightly called out as
| disingenuous.
|
| If you really want it to be efficient display a static "cached"
| image of the rating and swap it for the iframe once the image is
| loaded and displayed. This ensures fast response time and
| accuracy of the fresh rating at the same time.
| xfz wrote:
| The article nearly lost me at the start:
|
| > whether we liked it or not, we were now listed, and anybody
| could leave a public review that we have no control over
|
| Why should a business have control over public reviews? Unless,
| that is they are libellous or otherwise in breach of some law, in
| which case the business has a fair case against the publisher.
|
| However...
|
| I feel from personal experience that TrustPilot is a huge scam,
| having had my genuine review suppressed by one of their paying
| customers. It's a huge loophole - dispute the review to get it
| off the front page, by the time it's reinstated, it's further
| down and they've had a chance to harass the customer to get it
| changed (incidentally, when companies do that I tend to drop
| another star if possible and edit the review saying so.)
|
| It's also a privacy nightmare for anyone shopping online (at
| least here in the UK) if you use different email addresses for
| each company, because you have to opt out every single time. And
| if you don't leave a review, the send a reminder (as though it's
| somehow my job to leave reviews).
|
| I ended up blocking their domain trustpilotmail.com in my email
| service, and if I see the Trustpilot logo on a company website, I
| will look for an alternative provider.
| Distozion wrote:
| It probably is the end game for any review website. Your client
| usually dictates the business model to a degree.
|
| At this point, TrustPilots business model is essentially
| reputation laundering.
|
| If you pay them enough, they will use their mostly neutral
| reputation on the consumer side to launder your potentially
| shitty reputation to a more positive one. It's not like the
| average consumer knows any better and I would not be that
| surprised that having a positive score on TrustPilot is not the
| decision maker for a customer, but having a very bad one - is a
| disqualifying factor. Hence the reputation laundering scheme...
| r00fus wrote:
| Pretty depressing that all review sites are potential scams. Do
| you feel there's any way that regulation or oversight could
| improve this?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| In Germany, we have the government-founded Foundation
| Warentest which has been known to provide high-quality and
| independent reviews for decades [1]; additionally our media
| such as the Heise publishing house (who have co-authored the
| industry agreement on how to run product reviews [2]) runs
| their own test series on products.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest
|
| [2] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Verbraucherschutz
| min...
| Distozion wrote:
| This is pretty much it. If the consumer is not paying for
| it in some ways (for example in the UK, consumers can pay
| Which?[1] to access their reviews) - the companies are.
|
| If the companies are the ones footing the bill, I see no
| way to have a fair system where a few richer players
| couldn't exploit the system or the review company itself
| charge companies as much as they can just for leaving them
| alone and not rigging the reviews against them.
|
| [1] https://join.which.co.uk/join/offers
| MafellUser wrote:
| Can you fight fire with fire? Can't you spam trustpilot with 5
| stars reviews for your own business? Can they delete all of the
| spams? If you don't pay them to get 'verified' then drown out any
| bad reviews with good ones. Looking at how garbage their spam
| filters are it's not impossible.
| klausjensen wrote:
| This is exactly what lots of businesses do. Trustpilot claim
| they can weed them out, but from what I have seen, they're
| noget very good at it.
| amluto wrote:
| I think a decent amount of this is a problem with contract law.
| Google should not be able to require agreement to their terms to
| update a map entry or use webmaster tools. Yelp, Trustpilot, etc
| should not be able to enforce their terms on businesses that are
| reviewed. Amazon and Youtube should not be able to impose their
| terms for usage of brand and IP protection tools.
| stormdennis wrote:
| Maybe someone should do a review of Trustpilot on Trustpilot?
|
| There's a company I used to be customer of, with a free tier but
| who act in an underhand manner to their paying customers and for
| quite a while they've been getting bad reviews from people
| warning about their dodgy practices. Free-tier users are
| occasional users in the main because if you use it a lot you're
| pretty quickly getting 'commercial use' detected issues. However
| in the last six months they'be been guilting those free-tier
| users into giving glowing reviews and their positive review count
| has soared while the negative reviews from paying customers has
| been drowned out. So in this case, Trustpilot is also useless for
| 'real' customers.
| mikkelam wrote:
| > Maybe someone should do a review of Trustpilot on Trustpilot?
|
| Did you read the article? The reviews of Trustpilot are
| mentioned.
| stormdennis wrote:
| I only read part of it. I'll read that part now thanks
| reiichiroh wrote:
| What company?
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