Trust Pilot Reviews

Not any more. They accused me of fake reviews, because I use a different email address for each organisaion I deal with.

I told them what I did, and they wanted me to jump through hoops to keep the reviews (they'd matched up my name etc.)

I said they could bin the reviews, and I would never do any more.

It's noticeable how some companies' reviews are full of things like 'Dave 4046 was very helpful for my problem...'

which has obviously been orchestrated by the company - almost nobody can remember the name of 'hello I'm Dave how can I help you' at the beginning of the call, especially not when every review has a name in it, and nobody would ever write a review including Dave's employee number unless they were told to.

So evidently those customers are being asked to write a review. But then if Dave didn't solve the problem, I wonder if the company is so keen to solicit feedback? Maybe they 'forget' to ask?

Theo

I feel very much the same and generally have a different email address for each online supplier to catch spam. What is most annoying is to get an email many months later saying they have removed my review due to lack of verification or some other nonsense.

The company I used to work for out-sourced their IT to a third party. If someone phoned them up about a forgotten password or something equally trivial that could be solved easily with the phone call a survey email was always sent. The questions on the survey were like: Was the phone answered within x minutes Was our representative polite and courteous etc. Did our representative sort your problem during the call

If the problem was a bit more serious it was a PITA to get beyond first line support reading from the script and suggesting rebooting the machine etc. Even when reaching someone with more knowledge often the problem would take days to rectify and with no status reports. A survey email was never sent for any non-trivial problem.

Come the time when the contract was up for renewal the third party company would turn up with all the statistics from the survey returns. Surprise, 99% of surveys resulted in a satisfactory outcome.

First Direct have disabled my card a couple of times. I think both times it was for paying the land registry £1 for a copy of property boundaries. Presumably, some scammer has used this website to make test payments.

Trust Pilot are there to serve the business, not the consumer. I am always suspicious of a business touting its trustpilot score, some of the worst businesses do that by fake reviews, by pressing to remove unfavourable comments and by the trustpilot system which means that it's almost impossible for a business to get less than GOOD overall*

• I forget how the scoring works but it's something like choose between one star = awful, 2 star =poor 3star = adequate 4 star =excellent so even with loads of poor and awful ratings they are still scoring stars.

TW

I usually give a review if asked, in the hope that it assists other customers.

I had a similar experience with Barclaycard. I received a call from 'Barclaycard security' asking for my Barclaycard number (for security). I of course refused and asked the caller for my Barclaycard number (for security). He said he was not allowed to tell me the number (for security). I said I was not satisfied this was a genuine call from Barclays and terminated the call. This happened a second time. I then found out I was overdrawn and the calls were genuine. I'm still not giving my Barclaycard number to anyone who calls.

I do so, but I am very selective about which companies get a review, my reviews only good, or bad. I never bother with anything in between.

One bad review I gave, was at a fancy fish and chip restaurant, whilst on holiday. A place we had been to before a few times, and the food had been superb. I noted, on the menu, they suggested they had changed the formulae for the batter.

This time, it was inedible, the fish made us feel ill, even the dog had been ill eating the left-overs, so I naturally gave them a really bad review. Within hours, they emailed me, to ask my payment card number, and made a full refund of the bill.

I went for a pizza. When I tried to book (earlier) they said they could not accept bookings for under two people. I 'appealed' and after speaking to a colleague, he took my booking. When I arrived the same waiter apologised for the situation earlier and blamed the booking system. I waited for a long time for my pizza then the waiter turned up and apologised again, this time for not placing my order with the kitchen. However, I then got free pizza and free drink. Is this 'excellent' or 'very bad'?

Everyone makes mistakes. You get a good idea of the standard of the business by seeing how well and how quickly they fix them, or how good their customer service is generally.

There are a couple of companies I wouldn't touch, not because their product is necessarily bad, but because of their utterly terrible reputation for customer service.

I would rather see a review of how well a business fixed a problem than a complete lack of bad reviews, which I may not believe. Most good businesses realise this and usually provide excellent service to a customer they've let down.