Comment · Fri, March 28, 2025 · ND Owner
Reviews gone on website?
Original post in this thread
everythingismeaning- · 11 points
Is it me or have all the customer reviews vanished?
This sucks for me as I used to leave reviews under a pseudonym so I could reference for future use when ordering product. I'm sure I left a glowing review for matrine for example but now I can't find it. Google doesn't match my pseudonym either.
What they were answering
everythingismeaning- · 3 points
I didn't know trustpilot was this legit, I thought it was just one of those sites that charges companies for good reviews, my various ad blockers all block it by default also. I think I will start leaving more reviews for the different companies I use, I'm also glad it didn't publish my full name too.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · ND Owner
I think back in the day you would be right, but they made some big changes a few years back, and have worked directly with the FTC on policy. The big issue in the industry right now is compensating people for reviews. Literally every big brand does it. All top results on Amazon are compensating for reviews. Any brand with thousands of reviews did not get them organically. It just doesn't happen on there without incentives. That's against both Amazon policy (What they publicly say. What they actually allow is a different story) and FTC guidelines.
https://downloads.regulations.gov/FTC-2022-0070-0031/attachment_1.pdf
I initially had a negative reaction to Trustpilot as well, thinking it was just a scam to make money. However, after having a few calls with them, and hearing the stance they take and the steps they have taken to ensure transparency, I changed my mind. They are still absolutely a business. However, because of the way they have laid out their platform, and how their content integrity team has shown themselves to handle cases, they are not just a marketing tool for brands. This can be annoying in some cases, because we clearly have competitors go and make reviews about us to try and harm us, and it is a pain in the ass to get Trustpilot to do anything about it. Also, almost all our bad reviews are from international people that choose the slowest shipping option, then freak out when it takes a while to get to them. I literally just responded to one guy in Israel that placed an order 3 weeks ago. He selected the shipping option that literally says "Standard Worldwide Mail (6-8 Weeks)" when you select it. Then gives us a 1 star review because he hasn't gotten it yet... Trustpilot doesn't get in the middle of factual disputes, even if those facts are ridiculous. Even in cases where a customer clearly made two bad reviews for the same issue, they don't get involved to remove them. Take a look at these two.
That's literally the same person making two accounts to review us twice for the same thing. It's a customer of ours in Canada that has been ordering from us for 5 years. She ordered from us and we shipped the package out. However, Canada Post went on strike before it got to her, so her package was in limbo. We were not aware of it, nor did she contact us. Had she done so, we would have reshipped with a private carrier that would avoid Canada Post. She didn't, though. She just filed a PayPal dispute, which we are required to respond to with evidence we actually shipped product, which we responded with. Then she went and made that first bad review. We fully refunded her on PayPal, and then her package arrived, so she got a totally free shipment. Well I guess that was not good enough for her, as she wrote us on email saying that she thinks she deserves more compensation in consideration of the hassle... You know, the delay that her own country's mail system caused with a strike, that we refunded and she still got her package from. She wanted us to pay her MORE MONEY on top. When we told her no, and that we would no longer be doing business with her in the future, she then went on to make more bad reviews about us. Then we responded to that second review, and she reported our response to Trustpilot to get it removed, so it would look like we didn't respond. So we had to write a whole new response.
So even in this instance, where it is clearly a violation of policy by making multiple accounts to review and trying to blackmail us in the background, Trustpilot still keeps them up. So they actually go the opposite direction, and leave reviews up that probably shouldn't be. I think maybe years back they might have treated removal of reviews differently by brands, but now it's next to impossible. So while it can be annoying for us in certain instances, it definitely is the most transparent of the review services out there from a consumer perspective.