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Your Budget for Buying Off Bad Reviews
While some bad reviews are honestly bad reviews, many today are nothing more than shake-downs. If you have never contacted a 1-star reviewer and asked “How much?” after trying first to make them happy, try it sometime. Many will have their “estimate” ready or will be happy to get you one.
Today, a shop can be in the right, yet suffer financial loss by “standing on principle” – not just the owner, but the staff, too.
So, should a shop have a budget for buying off bad reviews?
If so, how much?
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4 Replies
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I suppose in some cases where the customer has a legitimate complaint where we actually screwed up somehow, financial compensation could be a solution, with the agreement the review is removed. I just had one. Body damage while the car was in for service. But when someone is just complaining because you gave them an estimate they thought was too high? No compensation is going to be given from me.
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If the customer has a legitimate beef, we face up to it, make it right, and that usually results in the customer removing their bad review without us asking them to do so. How unfortunate that in this day and age most folks just blast away online without even picking up the phone to communicate. We have become a society of all 5 star or all 1 star reviews. Consumers either sing your praises from the rooftops or demand you be disembowled with a rusty butter knife. Whenever I read, “It was the worst day of my life”, all I can think of is that they must have led a pretty charmed life to that point. As for paying a scam artist? Never. I shine the light of day on them so the world can see who and what they are.
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[postquote quote=121931]
IF the shop has dropped the ball – we have a responsibility to make things right. One way or another.BUT feeding into the practice of buying off bad reviews is only giving more power to the practice of review abuse.
Review abuse? Yep – folks are absolutely using the power of the review for bad. And if the shoe was on the consumers foot….they wouldn’t like it one bit.
Recently I hired counter staff that took a more in depth role than they had taken previously.
They handle things differently and clients have been a bit more “aggressive” and we got a few negative reviews.
But reading through them – you’ll see it was simply we charged more than the hole in the wall.
You’ll also see that we had one with no message, only a negative review – simply because we wouldn’t bend to “partially” repair a brake system.
The more folks feed into the practice of paying for removal of bad reviews – the more consumers will expect.
Now – all of that being said we’re in the arena with strictly corporate and/or transactional operations who use this practice frequently… its possible that continues to set client expectations…
And while the review is extremely powerful – I pass shops all the time who have horrible reviews and they’re lined up out the door ?
Either way,, reviews aren’t going anywhere….
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We’ve never had a 1-star review. Even from the guy that took us to small claims court because his warranty had expired. I never dreamed of offering to pay a review to change their review. I’ve never known that some reviews can be a shakedown. I guess I’ve lived a charmed life. 🙂
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