Ratings and reviews published on the Internet now hold an essential place in commerce and business reputation. However, some reference sites like Trustpilot do not play fair…
On the Internet, reviews often help you make a choice when making a purchase or signing a contract with a company. Is the quality of the products sold satisfactory? Is this online sales site reliable? Does this company have a good reputation? So many questions to which the opinions of former customers or employees provide answers. And for that, certain sites like Google, Pages Jaunes or Trustpilot are particularly practical! The problem is that these reviews are far from reliable.
Indeed, professionals have understood their importance and are developing different strategies to display the best possible “reputation” or to discredit their competitors. This gives rise to numerous abuses, such as the publication of false reviews, intimidation, threats of litigation, even blackmail (see our article). But, sometimes, review and rating sites take advantage of the system themselves! The association 60 million consumers alert on the practices of Trustpilot, which would benefit companies agreeing to subscribe to its review collection service, thus completely distorting the situation.
Trustpilot: a system with double standards
The ratings given by Trustpilot hold a special place on Google, since they are often at the top of search results when you associate the name of a company with the keyword “reviews”. Suffice to say that they will strongly influence the Internet user! However, some professionals doubt their reliability. In fact, the submission of spontaneous evaluations on the platform is not limited, although they are often negative comments – we are generally more inclined to make this effort when we have dissatisfaction to express. However, sending invitations to submit a review, generally followed by positive feedback, are capped for companies using the platform free of charge. Result: some companies, faced with the threat posed by a poor average displayed on Google, end up resolving to pay for the unlimited customer review collection service to improve it.
If the result is spectacular – one user explains having seen her average go from 3 to 4.2 out of 5 in a few weeks – it is far from cheap! The price can exceed €20,000 per year, depending on the size of the company, which creates a strong inequality of treatment between companies that pay and those that cannot afford it. An accusation that the platform completely rejects, which ensures that “Anyone can leave a review on Trustpilot, if it is based on a genuine experience. Reported reviews go through our detection software, which decides whether to maintain or remove them based on several factors”.
However, the association claims to have been able to post several false reviews on the site, which would have been published just a few hours after they were written and would have remained online for two weeks, before 60 million consumers deleted them. In addition, Trustpilot does not condition the submission of a review on providing proof of purchase, which leaves the door wide open to the publication of fake reviews. Moreover, many sites have made a real business of it by offering the publication of tailor-made evaluations for a fee. Positives and negatives…