As a company that relies on the credibility of the reviews we offer, we are strongly opposed to the inclusion of fake reviews among the feedback that companies who register with us receive. We want to make both customers and companies aware that there might be some untruthful reviews among the ones they are reading and we want to assure them that we are trying our best to discover those reviews and remove them. With the recent UK Government attack on fake reviews and promises of consequences for customers and companies who fabricate such testimonials to badmouth or falsely advertise products and services, such reviews are getting less and less, but we are still monitoring all the ones we get and we try our best to take care of the false ones.

What is a fabricated review?

We recognise that some customers might be too honest to even know what a fake review consists of and how it affects the services, so we will take time to explain in detail.

A fake or fabricated review is either one given by a customer to badmouth or slander a company’s product or service, or instructed to be given by a company that wants to improve the reputation of its products or services. Both are incredibly unfair to both companies and customers using community platforms such as this one and they need to be punished accordingly. A well-stated negative review can be the make or break moment in a customer’s decision to use a certain product and a company should not be losing customers based on lies. Alternatively, customers should not be strayed away from better services and tricked to try out subpar ones because a company decided to falsely advertise its product by buying ‘customer votes’ so to speak. This is parallel to political campaigns buying votes and it should be legally punished, as the UK Government wishes to do with the Department for Business Innovation and Skills’s recent call for evidence.

Be aware

Of course, falling for a fake review is as much as the customer’s fault for trusting anybody as it is the site’s fault for not recognising the lie. We also call for the customers’ awareness to such methods and, mind, we do not wish you to stop using community platforms, only be wary of what you read there and learn to recognise the truth and the lies. Of course, some dishonest people are more linguistically-versed than others and they might succeed tricking everybody, but in that case we do plead our readers not to take it out on the company in question or the community platform. The dialogue between customer and company should not be denied because of simple shenanigans.

Our role in the opposition

Community platforms such as ours have a dedicated team for recognising and dealing with fabricated feedback. We fight false reviews with our own methods, but we also rely on the users of this websites. That is why we have incorporated a report button with which you can signal us about any such attempts at tricking customers and companies. We trace IP addresses, we make sure that the violators have no more access to our website and we try to make amends with any damaged sides. We care to keep the website as clean and as truthful as possible – for the companies who register with us, and for the customers who are exposed to all the feedback.
In conclusion, we would like to thank all our truthful customers and everybody who uses our website for the purpose it is meant to be used – to provide accurate feedback, to build trust and customer-company relations, and to improve the quality of service and products on offer. Customer satisfaction is already won hard enough. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be.