I beg to differ.
It’s not cool to excerpt so much from someone’s article and not give credit and a link.
Point taken. Ive deleted the extract.
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A few positive reviews popping up now. Yet they seem ‘slick’ somwhow. I wonder does Trustpilot randomly verify positive reviews or only if they’re flagged?
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@MaggieUU Quite a few of those 5* reviews of late have a “verified” tick beside them which means they were invited to review so TP does not verify those. These members have obviously responded to the email THS sends encouraging members to leave a review on TP. Whether there was “more” encouragement to do this, we can only guess!
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I see the check mark that you referred to - it is to the right of the star rating. So the ones that have a much smaller check mark on the upper right perimeter of their icon (usually their initials) are the ones that Trustpilot followed up with to verify?
Good question! In relation to a certain Forum member who gave a 5* TP review, that small tick, if clicked, says “This user has verified their identity with a photo ID”.
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That particular member’s review was screened prior to posting as per a Trustpilot email. When it was cleared and posted, and subsequently flagged by a distressed member, there was a note above the review stating it was flagged, but the certain 5 star reviewer never got an email about it, nor was the review removed from the platform, even while it was reviewed a second time, nor when it was updated by a certain forum member to add the word “malicious” to describe various negative reviews, many of which were outright lies.
THS responses to negative reviews on Trust Pilot are the same few cut and paste paragraphs regurgitated over and over.
In case they were thinking the majority of members are desperate for a place to stay/destitute/ignorant (or any combination of the above) you only have to read the eloquent and well thought out reviews to realise that is not the case.
In contrast the glut of recent five star reviews from first timers are one liners.
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They will start to care, I just summarised the current actions from THS on trust pilot with a prize winning one star review, I guess rather a lot of people are very upset
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No THS is exactly what they deserve , another platform will rise and lessons will be learned🤷🏻♂️
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All of the experienced sitters have build up a very nice list of personal contacts, those owners and sitters do not need a THS, they just contact directly and spread the word, THS only has themselves to blame.
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I thought I would share some rather interesting follow up (and development) with you.
A couple of days ago, THS flagged my review for ‘defamation.’ Consequently, my review was deleted. However, a short while ago, I received the following message from Trustpilot:
Hi again, We’re just following up about your review of www.trustedhousesitters.com, which was flagged for containing defamatory content.
The decision: Good news — we’ve assessed the content flagged by the business and determined that it’s not defamatory. Therefore, we’ve put your review back online.’
Wow and thank you
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Thank you very much for that update @august
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that is what I said, someone was taking money out instead of reinvesting. They cashed out.
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Another invalid challenge by THS to a genuine review!
The Trust Pilot stats say that THS have flagged 30 reviews and 60% of those cases turned out to be invalid. They only challenge a review when it is one or two stars.
If so many reviews were ‘malicious’ as claimed by a certain member, you can be sure their success rate would be a lot higher.
There is a suspicious increase in verified reviews this month - where THS are inviting reviews. Clearly an attempt by the company to mitigate the damage to their brand.
Just for some context on how bad it looks for them… THS have chosen to sit within the following categories on Trustpilot and these are their current position within those peer groups:
Ranked 173 out of 175 on Hobby shop.
Ranked 196 out of 207 on Travel agent.
Ranked 276 out of 281 on Pet shop.
Those stats are dire.
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40% of reviews are removed. That’s a lot of reviews. It supports my claim not refutes it.
I’m wondering if Trust Pilots reviews are being successfully removed because people are saying stuff that isn’t accurate even if it felt like it was when they left the reviews.
For instance, I’ve seen people making claims that it will now cost them X amount of dollars to use THS with the new booking fee. They don’t write that the new booking fees won’t start till aftertheir renewal date, and they can turn off autorenew if they don’t want to accept the new pricing, so the implication is that THS is adding on a charge now which they’ll have to pay in addition to what they signed up for. That’s not accurate. They aren’t just accusing THS of raising prices, but of bait and switch.
Some people may have made claims about the amount of money it will cost them to use the site with the new booking fees. If they are claiming for exampe that it cost them $360 dollars more a year based on 30 bookings a year, that’s not a valid claim, since they could go from basic to premium for $130. So that might get removed.
A more accurate critical review would be simply that they raised the price for basic membership to the point where it’s no longer useful as a tier, and their membership fees are much higher than competing sites. A more useful review, would hint at alternatives for people reading the review.
I don’t think it’s unethical for THS to try to remove reviews on TrustPilot that are misleading. It kind of places the responsibility on people writing the critical reviews to make sure they are writing accurately and differentiating how they feel about what happened and what actually happened. That’s also more helpful for people reading the reviews.
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If a review is challenged Trustpilot sends a message to say provide your full contact details and reference number within 3 days or the review will be removed.
Not everyone is happy providing that information and may not know where to find their membership number so I guess genuine reviews are being taken down. They requested my information which I provided it so my review stayed.
MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS CAN BE FOUND ON THE DASHBOARD UNDER SETTINGS
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That’s great to learn that Trust Pilot does review too @august.
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