unethical business experience *LONG READ*

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Hypothetically here, what if your competitor does go above and beyond and knows the first name of all their repeat customers, gives them a glass of wine while they wait, and offers wonderful advice to everyone coming in. And your business does everything correct, and orders are good, product is as advertised, but the staff has a lot of churn and doesn't know the regular customers etc.

Should both businesses get 5 stars? Shouldn't there be a mechanism to reward the business giving the better service?

Most of the restaurants I frequent are in the same price range, $80-150 for a couple depending on how much we drink or what eat that night. In our city, most of the good ones are chef owned, small independent restaurants. Some are clearly among the best restaurants around, and some are ok, but nothing special. The good ones usually get a tonne of 5 star reviews, and the just ok get a lot of 3 and 4, and that seems to me like the system is working in those cases.

Yes, professional reviewers with journalistic integrity/training and a degree of objectivity. An educational background in the industry their reviewing is also an asset.

[undercoverbrother]

Sliver bro, I love your dedication to your craft, but you are reaching BoLevi levels in this thread.

Deep Breath.

[woob]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I've even been blackmailed (is that the right word?) by a customer. He completely abused his product from us in an egregious, ridiculous way, then one-starred us for giving him a "hunk of junk." I reached out to him to try to sort out what happened, and he just wanted a new one for free to take down the review. Cost me about $1000, but that was peanuts to get that review down versus the damage it would cause being up there for decades. Again, a total abuse.

Woah woah woah. This is just one side of the story here. I need to hear the other side, as there's two parties to this. This sounds a bit unbelievable to me.

[Scroopy Noopers]

My sincerest apologies to Knightslayer….

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

Can I change my rating of this thread after submitting a 1 star a few days ago?

[wwkayaker]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yes, professional reviewers with journalistic integrity/training and a degree of objectivity. An educational background in the industry their reviewing is also an asset.

For some levity given your degree.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Sliver bro, I love your dedication to your craft, but you are reaching BoLevi levels in this thread.

Deep Breath.

As my jambox bro, answer this question with 100% honesty...do you think I'm being sincere in my opinions here, or do you think I'm trolling?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Sliver

As my jambox bro, answer this question with 100% honesty...do you think I'm being sincere in my opinions here, or do you think I'm trolling?

100% I think you are sincere.

As I said I love you dedication to your craft, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't push away from the keyboard for a minute or two.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

100% I think you are sincere.

As I said I love you dedication to your craft, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't push away from the keyboard for a minute or two.

Okay, good.

[Strange Brew]

Not every review is fair, of course not. But giving consumers a voice to express their experience with a business isn’t a bad thing IMO.

It is an electronic version of word of mouth. Not perfect but it’s one tool to help you figure out the reputation of a business before going with them.

And I do believe that, in most general terms, businesses with better reviews over time do a better job of taking care of their customers.

[Swift]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Business owners are not your dancing monkey. They don't owe you some magical above and beyond experience. They're just people with their own stresses and lives as well, and shouldn't be penalized for merely offering you good service, good products and a good experience.

Customers aren't dancing monkeys either, and don't owe companies 5 star ratings or to keep their mouth shut.

That's fine that you think companies shouldn't be penalized for offering good service, but you also seem to think that they shouldn't be penalized for offering poor service, poor products or a poor experience.

And again, if a company has 20 reviews, 15 of them are 5 star, and 5 are 3 star, that's still an average of 4.5 which is absolutely not a poor rating. I don't think poor ratings have as much power as you think they do unless a company is getting consistently low ratings and if they are then there must be a legitimate reason for that (I obviously agree review bombing is a heinous practice)

I'm actually curious now as to how you decide on what restaurant to go to or what company you decide to buy from. Do you not find online product reviews useful when you're buying clothes or tools or whatever? Don't you like to know if the handle is prone to snapping off a rake after 6 months or if the material of a shirt fades after a few washes?

[bizaro86]

I think Sliver is generally right about this topic (not speaking about FG here, who I think did have a bad experience). But just has the intensity turned up to 11. Good business owners absolutely get frustrated with undeserved bad reviews that hurt their ability to provide for their family - and a 3* review qualifies as a bad review the way these systems are designed.

Thinking about it "right but dialed up to 11" is actually how I feel about most of Sliver's opinions. Dogs are gross, lakes are nice, and I like labour saving devices. This is sort of the same I think.

[Jason14h]

The thing about “provide for their family” - in almost all instance the product or service is still being purchased from someone . It’s not like a bad review takes the money out of the economy

It’s not like someone it trying to pick where to eat dinner and sees a bad review and decided to just eat at home

People are using these to compare and choose (usually) so some business is still getting the purchase

How else should people pick ? The old alphabetically out of the yellow pages ? ( or was is white pages)

AAArdvark was the greatest company name to
Be first on the page

[wwkayaker]

I can empathize with the small business owner. The businesses I feel the most empathy for are new businesses. If they get poor reviews out of the gate, do the owners get the runway to adapt and become better or do they go out of business?

Like Sliver has mentioned, google reviews don’t expire. In most jobs, the employee may have a few superiors who remark on their performance. Small businesses have hundreds of customers who think they are the boss during their dealings with the business owner. Personally, I wouldn’t think it was fair if my boss kept an average rating of my performance over the years. Hey, you were a 2 star ten years ago but you’ve been 5 star the last couple of years. However, because of the poor reviews from a decade ago, you average out to a rank of 3.5 so no raise for you. That would suck.

Also in support of Sliver’s position, being able to review any business or product is not in the wheelhouse of many people. Reviewing a restaurant is easy. However, I often see reviews which demonstrate the person’s lack of knowledge or unrealistic expectations of a business or product.

[GordonBlue]

I never enter reviews of a company, and take those I read with a grain of salt.
I do however ALWAYS take the time to contact a manager or owner if an employee gives 5 star service.

That's where I find people drop the ball. Being quick to complain about a bad employee and never calling in about the excellent ones.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Yes, professional reviewers with journalistic integrity/training and a degree of objectivity. An educational background in the industry their reviewing is also an asset.

Your disdain and lack of respect for any unhappy customer is a bit appalling.

Customers know if they had a good experience or not. It's their expectation that matters, not what you think it should be. Yeah, some customers are #######s and will never be happy, but all businesses have to deal with them, including all your competitors. You have a solid point amount small sample sizes getting skewed by one bad review, but a good business that has been around a while should be able to make 95+% of their customers happy and reviews will generally reflect that from what I've seen out there.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Your disdain and lack of respect for any unhappy customer is a bit appalling.

Customers know if they had a good experience or not. It's their expectation that matters, not what you think it should be. Yeah, some customers are #######s and will never be happy, but all businesses have to deal with them, including all your competitors. You have a solid point amount small sample sizes getting skewed by one bad review, but a good business that has been around a while should be able to make 95+% of their customers happy and reviews will generally reflect that from what I've seen out there.

I have no disdain for an unhappy customer. I have disdain for vindictive people who assault and bully businesses online with no regard for the consequences by exploiting an unfair power dynamic set up by tech giants to make more money at the expense of business owners and their employees. I'm concerned you don't understand my perspective in spite of being very clear.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I have no disdain for an unhappy customer. I have disdain for vindictive people who assault and bully businesses online with no regard for the consequences by exploiting an unfair power dynamic set up by tech giants to make more money at the expense of business owners and their employees. I'm concerned you don't understand my perspective in spite of being very clear.

Any business owner who would view a less than perfect review as an assault or bullying is not a business I would choose to do business with. If I knew the business owner was lashing out or retaliating against bad reviews, then I would 100% avoid them.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

Any business owner who would view a less than perfect review as an assault or bullying is not a business I would choose to do business with. If I knew the business owner was lashing out or retaliating against bad reviews, then I would 100% avoid them.

And honestly, a business owner would thank you for that. Anybody with a hair trigger on writing a bad review or somebody who considers a 3/5 to be a good review is not a customer I would want. You are just too huge a risk to my business, so I think this works well.

[Sliver]

Another funny thing about review writers - I would love to hear your thoughts on the prospect of your performance reviews, or any mistakes you make, or an admonishment over your performance being posted publicly for anybody to read when they Google you. Yeah, I'm sure you'd love it - especially if another company was profiting off the posting. This is the same thing.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Sliver

I have no disdain for an unhappy customer. I have disdain for vindictive people who assault and bully businesses online with no regard for the consequences by exploiting an unfair power dynamic set up by tech giants to make more money at the expense of business owners and their employees. I'm concerned you don't understand my perspective in spite of being very clear.

But yet you still seem to give bad business owners a pass or the benefit of the doubt. I get it, you're looking at it from a business owner point of view, so of course you'd have bias. But there's always two sides to the story, and I feel like you're way leaning in favour of one side.