What to do with bad reviews

I decided to have a bit of a teachable moment in light of a recent review that I found very surprising. We still continue with our outstanding record and while we do show up as the top rated Estate Sale company in local Google searches no company is immune to getting a bad review. As a business owner, I have mixed thoughts. I am certain that there is unlikely to be any business in the public eye who has not dealt with the same issues and so I thought it would just be an interesting discussion. This is not in any way a reflection on the reviewer or to be disrespectful to anyone who has legitimate issues with our service.

I have spoken to many friends, family and workers as to what an appropriate response is when someone posts negative things. It is especially upsetting to have someone write things that are just not accurate or things unrelated to the their dealings with your business. I always wonder what is the best way to respond. There has been a variety of responses from people I have asked. "Not responding makes you look guilty" or a polite response without addressing issues presented looks bad as well is what one co-worker said. Some people said "Don't respond at all because it's defensive or distasteful" A piece of great advice I was given was to look at a big corporation, I believe Macy's was the example. and see how they respond to negative feedback. That works well but sometimes I cannot disconnect from what is being said. I take it very personally because I know I would go to any length to turn the situation around and to make someone happy. I also want to put the review in context and to clear the air. I believe it is Dr. Phil who says "perception is reality". If you perceive I did not do my job properly as a business owner it may be untrue to me but very real to you. I of course want to set the record straight if I don't agree with your perception of events especially when it turns to public shaming more than reviewing your business. He also says, "No matter how flat you make a pancake there are still two sides" (Don't judge my guilty pleasure. I love Dr, Phil!) A business owner is told to take the high road or not respond but as a person you feel awful and want to address the situation. As a small business owner without hundreds or thousands of reviews every single one is so important. Don't let any small business startup tell you that each glowing review is not silently celebrated and read many times. You are feeling great and you know you are doing things right. Then it comes..not a 3 star that says your pizza could have been hotter but the dreaded one star attack that is personal and hurtful and many times riddled with false claims about what really happened. Most of us aren't the CEO of a billion dollar company who never sees the reviews or can just "shake it off". Most are simply an owner, and worker putting blood sweat and tears in every day. It's difficult to not react with emotion knowing you would bend over backwards to make each person happy if given the chance. Every business owner knows that feeling of getting that customer (you know the one we aren't supposed to talk about) that no matter what happened you are wrong and they will be angry no matter what you say or do to try and help them. There's always that person who you know probably just had a miserable day or has something else going on but you just became the undeserving target of their frustration.

The person writing negative reviews is almost always someone who never took the time to bring things to a business owner's attention in a polite or constructive way or allow them to fix what went wrong before they posted a review. I remember a time, before internet, when you were told to write a letter to a company and you almost always received a positive result. You had to properly write a business letter in school right? They used to make it a class project. You pick a company and write them a letter regarding a negative experience you had. Free gifts or refunds were what you could typically expect but your letter was always polite, proper, and constructive. Business owners could create good will without being held hostage by endless threats of bad reviews. Those days are long gone. Now people write nasty hateful comments and hide behind their computers all over the internet. People say things any decent person wouldn't dare say to someone they are speaking directly to. They berate the business owner or employees they saw that day and write every nasty thing, true or not, that comes to mind. There is so much bad behavior to go with today's bad spelling or bad grammar. People say anything to be the most angry or most hurtful and seem to forget their manners completely. I had an interesting exchange with someone a few weeks ago. This person came and knocked on the door at a house we were working at. They were angry because they claimed the homeowner, now deceased, had promised them things from the house. I was not able to give them what they wanted because we had no knowledge of this of course and had already run a sale an removed all the contents from inside. This person responded with angry insults and said, "Wait until you see your reviews for your business". I find the attitude of people using tactics like that to vent your frustration why the review systems in place today have become unreliable at best. This attitude started, I believe, way back in early Ebay days. If you didn't give someone all their unreasonable demands, did not take returns for no reason even if your rules state you don't, you were forced to comply or were slapped with a negative review. It's there permanently. What was supposed to inform others about legit bad actors or scams turned in to a form of extortion. "Meet my demands or I will just post a bad review." Now it's only slightly improved that a business is guilty until you take a tedious process to try and prove your innocence. You then might have a slim chance to get the incident corrected. I further find it frustrating that a business owner has no choice where or how people are allowed to comment or who can post things. A spiteful ex or a nasty neighbor can find your business and do so much damage. I was recently contacted by Yelp and asked to pay for advertising. My company was added to their site without my knowledge or consent. It was actually jarring to go to Yelp and see photos, information and reviews already and I had not ever seen this page before. Don't get me wrong, I love their reviews on restaurants and use their service often. I believe the service helps people find good places to do business but my lack of choosing how or where my business is listed makes me frustrated. My problem is that I was forced to "claim" my own business and activate an account that now opens me up to endless telemarketing calls to sell me advertising and other services. I don't have anything to hide but would rather remove the whole review set up from yet another place I need to monitor. I would prefer to direct my attention to one place. I frequently get reviews on Square where I process credit cards. They obviously solicit this from my buyers without my consent because the requests are not from me. I see several glowing reviews from customers who surely want to help us out. They don't realize they are submitting reviews to a place other consumers don't even see like they would if it were on Facebook or on Google. I have often had to ask people to rewrite the review on Google or Facebook so others could see it.

As business owners we get a barrage of texts, calls, e-mails and such to answer. We are often expected to give everyone immediate responses but that is often just not possible. Small businesses are put to a standard of big companies such as Amazon or Walmart. We are expected to have immediate responses or to correct things with payments, gifts and refunds or accept returns that are not always reasonable or possible. Now reviews are on sites all over, Google Yelp, Facebook etc. Often texting and messaging gets confusing and sometimes lost. A phone call is the best method to talk and avoids the common confusion that someone's text or messaging can create. Of course each business is different but more often than not it is very likely a business would go above and beyond to fix a situation. I also believe it's much harder to get a good result from a business after you attempt to trash their hard work on every page of the internet you can find a review platform, just because you didn't get an immediate response from your texts or calls or had what is probably a simple misunderstanding to work through. As the expression goes, entrepreneurs are the only people who will leave a 40 hour a week job to work 80. It's sometimes impossible to have to be the worker, accountant, customer service rep and everything in between without making mistakes.

I spent hours deciding how to respond to a recent review that was similar to the first, and only negative I had up to this point loaded with inaccurate or false data. It was based on the idea that even though I have rules and information on my site, messages and other places, and sent instructions to pickup items from our sales, the end user did not see or follow what I put out. Not following direction or reading the information was not my issue. We all do it right? You click past things in a hurry and we don't always take time to read and understand what we are agreeing to. What puzzles me are the people who get angry and want to blame me when they don't read the instructions or follow the rules that everyone else has followed. I can have 150 auction lots all purchased and picked up by as many as 50 -100 people and any large number of items to ship in a couple of hours but one person who clearly didn't read my description gets angry at me because their items were not picked up by them. There's always a few people each week who miss something. Most people simply understand that in the endless stream of online messaging things can get missed. They get that while I am coordinating pickups of 150 - 200 auction lots in a few hours I may not be available to talk you through it or answer calls and texts. The sad thing is with so many clients who hire us and hundreds of people each week buying from us who I know are happy, because I see them, there are rarely people who go the extra step to praise you. One mistake or misunderstanding and one out of hundreds cant run to their computer fast enough to trash you up and down without even telling you that something was wrong or telling you what they would like you to do to make them happy or fix an issue.

I decided to attempt to resolve the complaint on Google. First, I immediately called the reviewer to discuss with the person directly what the issue was. I was completely blindsided and had no idea and the review was really unclear. This was a formerly happy customer who purchased many times before. Someone who like many others I had given away free things to resolve any previous slip ups in a brand new venture we are expanding which is surely to have growing pains. I figured she would realize that I was incredibly confused and shocked by her review and would want to talk to me about her issues. I know most people who have met me would know I am typically chatty (maybe too much) and friendly (most days) and always eager to go the extra mile where I can. I was shocked to see a horrible review when I had no idea there was even an issue before seeing it. I was ignored from my first call and voicemail only to see a "rebuttal" to her review instead. Her additional complaint now is that I am only responding because of the review. Isn't that what any good business should do? see what was wrong or if I can fix her disappointment? What else should I do further ignore her knowing she is clearly very upset about something? I not only didn't get a phone call in return but then get numerous nasty texts and emails from her and further Google review updates. She seems to think I intentionally ignored her messages initially. I try and try to explain and even sent her a screenshot of my phone to show I have no texts or calls from her since almost a month prior for another transaction and also a new message highlighting my responses to her email messages. I really believed she would realize it was a huge misunderstanding and everything could be resolved. I can't understand the logic if she won six auction lots and I can only get paid if you show up to get them, Why would I intentionally not respond? When she didn't arrive to pick them up I simply put them aside for when she would be able to meet me another time. I had no concern because unlike some people who don't show up she had come to many pickups and I had great conversations with a happy customer and no reason to think she wouldn't get them later. My message before the auction ended was to all bidders to say that we will be back for another sale at the house if people decided to wait and pick their items up another time so I wasn't expecting everyone to show up that day anyway. She clearly felt I should have done something different but it was still, to me, unclear why this one time happy customer was so angry. Now I am taking time to re-read and try to understand the review as well as a back and forth through texting instead of her answering my call. I can't imagine any reason she would conclude I intentionally would ignore her when I was waiting on her to pickup items I am in need to sell. The best I could make out from what little she gave me is that her issue is in thinking I ignored her messages and sold her items to someone else. I have the items still on hold and will be running a second sale from that house. I would have thought we would see her next time and had the items there waiting for her. Without any further contact from her and having her refuse to talk and work things out to purchase her items we will be relisting on our next auction so she will clearly see they went unsold. She actually blasted me by saying "I really wanted those items". Every attempt I made to correct the misunderstanding and get these things to her is now met with the most hostile and nasty responses. Now I am getting messages using obscenities and calling me a liar and a list of names I won't re-post here. Now all I can think is how can I find a way to make her happy and fix her issues.

The intention here is to discuss the situation not to embarrass the reviewer but the moral is to not assume things and communicate. I would never have expected the nasty review I received but definitely couldn't imagine her response when I tried to fix things. I am not inclined to follow through any more to fix things or complete the sale or meet her to get her things at this point. The damage is done when you react that way and falsely accuse someone of something or attack them without speaking to them first. I am embarrassed to say it brought me to tears. I don't understand the reaction people have but I now realize why so many people told me "don't even respond" I never could have imagined that was the best response but I guess it was a lesson learned. I would think someone would appreciate the immediate action I had to reach out to see if we could resolve the misunderstanding.

For anyone reading and who has the time or inclination to contact this person, as she requested on her review I would welcome that. I would like to clarify things with the additional missing facts from my perspective. For example, I was accused by her of losing another homeowners keys. I know she knows better but its all she can do to continue to embarrass me and publicly shame me. That claim in itself without context is not accurate. I agree, I did contact the reviewer (and several others) and asked if they picked up keys after a recent auction. Here's what is not said... While I was boxing up her purchases and helping her load her vehicle I thought I may have dropped them. We actually discussed that in detail. I didn't lose them at all, In fact, I had them all along. I imagine anyone reading this would have a laugh and could easily relate to something like that. It's happened to all of us right? It is a long way off from losing a clients house keys. The reviewer clearly can not be angry about that issue anyway since that had nothing to do with her but I still can't understand what her actual issue is. Keep in mind we are still talking about someone who actually is upset from what I can understand that she thinks, although incorrectly, that I ignored her messages intentionally and have sold her winning auctions to someone else.

I decided instead of running through to correct the list of accusations on Google I would like to write about it in a continued blog post and make it a watershed moment. I think I made the point above of how I "lost" someones keys, that putting things in context makes all the difference. Good communication is better than any nasty review if you want to get a problem resolved. Another remark completely unrelated to this reviewer was that my worker "destroyed" someone's tile floor. Let me again give context to the situation. I happened to get a call from a parent of the person where this floor was scratched. I was in the middle of cashing out the person writing the review when that call came in so that is her only understanding of what had transpired. We actually had conversations about it because my conversation on the phone was overheard (Hence, the comment she made: "She openly talks about other customers") This matter otherwise did not involve her nor did she have any first hand knowledge of it. The fact is, I didn't pay for the scratch on the person's floor because I have not yet received an estimate from that homeowner but if and when I hear back I am hopeful there is a reasonable resolution. If that person didn't call me and simply trashed my business on the internet it sort of ruins my eagerness to resolve the issue further. I would still follow through but it certainly isn't a great outcome no matter what the result. What she also wouldn't know is I did immediately call my contractor that day I received the call and send a photo to see if he had a suggestion to repair the issue. If my workers had scratched the reviewers own floor she would be happy to know that unlike many other companies I am fully insured for just such a thing. I am sure that has nothing to do with what the reviewer is upset about either. Since the incidents described are not related to her I would think it wise to not comment on things you are not involved in or that you are unaware of the full facts or outcome. Especially because it distracts from any real issue you may have. This only further clouds the question of what exactly is she so angry about or what can I do to make this person happy. I am sure the people involved in both those unrelated incidents she is remarking on would be making their own review and comment if they were unhappy with what transpired or what resolution we came to. So the claims in any review when put in to context may not be all they appear to be. People often react and post but rarely go back and correct the wrong or damage they inflict.

I find there are many reviews that are simply I read as that are unrelated to what the matter is and in most cases the real issue is never discovered. I find it frustrating when I am using reviews to make my own decisions as a consumer. We often see angry posts and a stream of information posted that does not relate to the real question. "How would I benefit, or not, with using this business". I would like to see that people keep the reviews based on what would benefit other people when making a decision. Isn't that what reviews are for? When did it become the place for people to vent frustrations or get out their anger issues that are clearly not related to what a business did for that customer. Even better is to know that when there was an issue, which every business would face, how did that business resolve or attempt to resolve my concerns. When you see a business owner respond and say things like "I will refund you and give you the items for free" only to see a reviewer so hostile that they just ignore that attempt as kind-hearted and continue the attack or to defend their original stand. When did people get so angry that no matter how wrong they are it's impossible to take a step back and say "I'm sorry or I was wrong" People can't seem to say "Thanks for resolving my issue" or "ok I am happy now that the business addressed my concern" Often they disappear after the issue is resolved. You have to wonder is that the best way to use the review system? Is it fair to a business owner that they are told by some to not even respond but those comments, often misleading, hateful or sometimes just false are left on a permanent record that only. if you are lucky, gets buried deeper by people inclined to say what you did right. I wish one of the companies so eager to have a review system would have people to actually verify reviews and attempts by a business to resolve them. I have a friend that said they used to work for the better business bureau and was tasked with verifying the statements made or the review was removed. Every company who puts a business at risk with unverified claims should at least be responsible to verify the results of the incident.

I recently had a bad experience revolving around a purchase made on Amazon. I never would dream to immediately attack them in a public forum. I messaged directly to tell them my disappointment and I was very happy with the results. It actually works! Try having conversations with people. Try communicating and being pleasant before you go in to immediate attack mode against someone. Very often the mistake was just that...a mistake and most of us would be happy to resolve things and leave you as a happy customer.

I am always open to hear people, to fix an issue or improve and always just a phone call away. I wonder what other people think? To respond or not to respond... that is the question. If you are a reviewer think before you start posting. Just imagine for a minute that you start your day with a nasty public shaming for an issue you had no knowledge of or had no chance to resolve. How would your day be? It's important to remember that a business is not a building but it's people who work hard and most of them can also have a bad day or make mistakes. Things happen but deep down there's probably a good person, with feelings, that wishes you would have just dropped them a note, a request or a call to let them know what they can do better. I bet you will realize much better results from that approach. Like so many areas of our society it's just one more way for people to lash out, vent frustration or hurt others. What do you think?

Brenda Stewart

Business Owner

(716) 325-0401