If you are a small business in the early stages of brand awareness and are thinking of creating a Trustpilot profile. Read on before making this strategic decision! Trustpilot can damage your business—before even establishing an online presence—by providing an unjust opportunity for anyone to share anything about a business without a proper truth check.
While Trustpilot's main objective is to protect consumers' rights—which is commendable—and provide honest insights into businesses, it can unfortunately be a double-edged sword for small businesses in their early stages.Here are the drawbacks I have identified:
Unverified Reviews:
Trustpilot doesn’t ask reviewers to provide any evidence of their experience and simply publishes the reviews after confirming their IP address.
Negative, unjust reviews are always there:
All you can do is flag them and request more information, such as the reviewer's name, email, phone number, and reference number, within three days. If the reviewer replies with this information, the case is closed regardless of the review's authenticity. If they don’t reply, you can only flag the review or respond to it, but the review will not be removed.
Inescapable business profiles:
You can remove your business profile from Trustpilot, but your company name and the reviews about it remain on the platform. Your only options may be to change your brand and business name or launch a new brand.
Lack of transparency:
When creating your business profile, Trustpilot doesn’t mention these issues. These critical points are not outlined in their terms and conditions.
As a result of these significant flaws, Trustpilot has inadvertently created a guide for online pirates to blackmail businesses:
- Create an email.
- Make a purchase and get a reference number.
- Cancel or return the product/service and leave a negative review.
- The business will then be pressured to beg for the removal of the negative review at any cost.
While Trustpilot does offer some professional marketing and analytic tools that can be very helpful—albeit at a premium price—how can such a massive review platform fail to provide resolutions for the above-mentioned issues? This lack of resolution raises questions about the platform's priorities and fairness towards small businesses.
In summary, Trustpilot can become a trap for small businesses; once you enter, there is no way to exit!
Written by: Sajjad (SJ) Kafraj
Sources: Trustpilot for Businesses | Metro | Reddit