Consumer review truths DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT YOU REVIEW.

Consumer review truths
DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT YOU REVIEW.
In this electronic fast moving world made up of the youtube, Facebook and twitters amongst us, its sometimes very distracting and confusing as to what is real and what is made up. Once we would rely on the 9.00 news, or daily newspaper to tell us whats right and wrong, good or bad, now its just a button away within arms reach… your smartphone.
As a successful business owner of One Water Systems it is important to keep up with the trends and create the good and bad “newsfeed” not just within our company but with the public. Over the years people have relied on independent consumer companies like the Better Business Bureau to advise and help the public choose an ethical and established organization. Nowadays there are many like review based companies advising the general public of the good and bad that each reviewer has experienced, Angies List, Yelp and Yahoo, to name a few.
But do they do a good job in helping get the advice that we all need to make that decision to eat at the right place or buy the high priced item that you want and have saved for?
Our company prides itself on customer service and satisfaction, with a product that speaks for itself and employees who enjoy the results from happy customers. In turn many of our customers write reviews to help others discover us. We have continued to have great success collecting nothing but praise from our valued customers for which myself and staff are thankful.
As in human nature success can sometimes lead to others envious or jealous of reviews that seem to put us ahead of others, especially the competition that we have to compete with.
So a non customer review can be posted to many a “review website” putting doubt into the readers mind as to who is telling the truth, luckily this is very minimal and we have pursued each found to see that the false statements that they tried to post.
The BBB has changed over the years protecting both company and consumer, in our experience for being a paid member for over 8 years to which we have earned and eventually maintained a perfect A+ status.
At one time you had to be in business two years without a complaint or issue to receive an accredited status and be awarded an A rating, after continuing for five years without complaints you can earn the prestigious A+ showing that you are the best in your industry. In years past we would be given literature either mailed or emailed to inform us of scams or advise on building our brand under the BBB’s direction.
Due to the economic downturn and reduction of revenue (I assume) The BBB no longer does that. They also have informed me after asking for my annual fees that they have changed the criteria of accreditation and level of status for companies to a “lower” standard. No longer do you have to wait two years to be accredited or have a perfect record for five years, it now shows as little as 6 months on some companies history. They also will not lower a company’s A+ rating with many complaints! Why should I care you maybe asking? well I am a consumer myself and expect the original “review” company to protect my interests, not just hope to get revenue from a bigger business base by lowering their requirements. Just look at the BBB review site of another company; Yelp they had over 1600 complaints and until recently the BBB had them listed as an A+ company. However on checking Yelp is no longer listed as an accredited company by the BBB which is partly why I am writing this “expose” on the truth.
Although we have had no legitimate bad comments posted on Yelp, we have experienced “bribery” from them. They ask highly rated companies to advertise on their website, for example while a reviewer is reading the reviews posted by a competing company our banner ad would show alongside the other companies information, although on the face of things it sounds like a good idea, the promise of reviews being “enhanced” by them sounded unethical, so intimately we refused the “bribery”.
The downside of us refusing is a continued loss of good reviews that our valued customers have spent time posting, I urge anyone to post a remark on any non advertised company with Yelp to see if it is still readable the next day.
We currently have had over 50 five star reviews and only 4 posted as of 11/10/15, the rest seem to vanish into what yelp calls the “not recommended reviews” Anybody would think, then call or email Yelp and ask why, the answer to that is they don’t answer the phone unless you are an advertiser with an account number, and if you e-mail the contact link you get no response, reporting it to the BBB would also get no response. As mentioned until recently not lower the rating they had.
Many other review sites do not operated this way or we haven’t experienced so, but the two most reviewed BBB, and Yelp may have some answering to do.
In Summary the fast world that we and especially the newer generation is trapped into can be a wonderful thing for the information we all strive to get, but any reader of this should start to think is the information accurate or is it manipulated by monetary gain from the hosting websites. Lets hope this small slice of information may get some renewed protection, which after all helps all concerned.
All the Best
Kevin Worsfold
Owner