Long story short,

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I fired an employee. Her friends posted about 10 false google reviews to my business’s site. Some have no text, some have false narratives (slightly convincing). Of note, I have over 200 reviews and the lowest are 4-star except these 10 1-star reviews. All within a week of firing the employee. I went through the Google Reviews appeal process and they state that the reviews don’t violate their terms of service. I have no more recourse with them.

I contacted a major “bad review removal” company and they wanted $1k PER review. Is that normal? Any other way to deal with this?

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Thanks!!

  • lost_bunny877@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    just ignore it.

    as a layman customer, we are not stupid. if I see a business under fire like thst, I’ll just ignore it esp if I see that the bad reviews are so close together.

    this is not new and most of us know that such things happen. Will just be curious about what happened but won’t really care.

    • cfmistry85@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Thank you. I know customers are smart - I just worry that once your “rating number” gets too low people aren’t going to look at you.

  • CustomSawdust@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I remember when online reviews became popular. It was shocking when businesses began counter reviewing these. Thus began the days of the customer NOT alwayd being right.

  • dad-hates-fun@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Try google again and send any supporting material.

    This happened to me several times with job applicants and google removed them quickly

  • Foreign_Baker_6586@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    This happened to our business as well. One disgruntled customer paid a third party company to put malicious one star review on our google business. Requesting Google to take the fake reviews down was very difficult. Any reviews that contained no writing cannot be removed. We managed to get some fake reviews taken down by Google, when we contacted the Google legal team. Luckily for us, we managed to obtain supporting evidence that the reviews were fake. We found out that the disgruntled customer also owns a business, and after going through their 100s of “spectacular” five star reviews on their Google business, we noticed that the accounts that gave the five star review, were the same ones that had given our business the one star review on Google. So we screenshot it, and send it to Google with a very long email to the legal team. We also added in some legislation that they’re violating… etc (we just googled the laws)

  • Foreign_Baker_6586@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    This happened to our business as well. One disgruntled customer paid a third party company to put malicious one star review on our google business. Requesting Google to take the fake reviews down was very difficult. Any reviews that contained no writing cannot be removed. We managed to get some fake reviews taken down by Google, when we contacted the Google legal team. Luckily for us, we managed to obtain supporting evidence that the reviews were fake. We found out that the disgruntled customer also owns a business, and after going through their 100s of “spectacular” five star reviews on their Google business, we noticed that the accounts that gave the five star review, were the same ones that had given our business the one star review on Google. So we screenshot it, and send it to Google with a very long email to the legal team. We also added in some legislation that they’re violating… etc (we just googled the laws)

  • Quiet_Badger3509@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago
    1. Reply with respect to every bad review, lookup on some templates you’ll find on internet.
    2. Mask those negative reviews with more and more positive reviews.
    3. Hire a reputation management agency. I did. BEST ROI ever!

    Bad reviews are part of business, but when you handle them with kindness, new customers would find it as a good thing.

  • 88questioner@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I don’t know of I’m the average consumer, but when I look for a product and service I first read the bad reviews, as the good reviews all say the same thing. If it were just a 1-star and no comment I disregard. If it’s a comment with a company response I will read it all and take the response into account.

    I’m not trying to discount your anger but if I’m any judge I’m guessing it won’t have a huge impact.

    • cfmistry85@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Thank you, I really appreciate your honesty. My anger has died down, now I am just sad and trying to see what my options are.

      • Cyprien41@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Hello, have to say, I do the same as what the previous person said when it comes to reading comments, I know my brother and father do too, I think many people do, so I guess it wont affect your business much, but I know it hurts…