No one can argue that review sites do not serve a much-needed purpose. By providing consumers with the opportunity to share their real experiences with merchants online, they can benefit purchasers and merchants alike. The former can make better decisions about what to buy and where to buy it. The latter become privy to feedback that they might otherwise not receive and resolve outstanding issues, improve their products and services and better serve the public. 

Of course, that’s assuming the review site chooses to act in a non-partial manner. Regrettably, not all of them do.

The most widely known review site is undoubtedly Trustpilot.

“Trustpilot was founded in 2007 with a vision to create an independent currency of trust,” it declares on its website. “We're a digital platform that brings businesses and consumers together to foster trust and inspire collaboration. We're free to use, open to everybody, and built on transparency.”[1]

  And indeed, its statistics – accurate as of December 31, 2021 – are impressive. It hosts more than 167 million reviews concerning about 714,000 merchants. Founded and headquartered in Copenhagen, Trustpilot’s 850 employees also work out of London, New York, Denver, Vilnius, Berlin, Melbourne, Edinburgh, Milan, and Amsterdam. 

But can Trustpilot be trusted? To answer that question, it is first necessary to understand its business model. 

Review sites generate income by contracting out to merchants varying degrees of input over the page on which consumers may post their reviews. “Any business can use our services for free to collect and respond to reviews,” Trustpilot states,[2] and 87% of all merchants with Trustpilot pages do.[3]  “The only difference between free and paid businesses using Trustpilot is that paid businesses can use extra features such as our marketing assets or more detailed review insights.” [4]

Trustpilot offers businesses four different plans at graduating prices. Each allows the merchant to upload its own profile, issue increasing amounts of invites to clients to post reviews and a variety of other benefits ranging from widgets to personalization options. The most expensive plan, designed for major enterprises, also provides a dedicated account manager.Trustpilot offers businesses four different plans at graduating prices. Each allows the merchant to upload its own profile, issue increasing amounts of invites to clients to post reviews and a variety of other benefits ranging from widgets to personalization options. The most expensive plan, designed for major enterprises, also provides a dedicated account manager.

• Loophole Number 1: Trustpilot does not require the reviewer to have ever actually bought goods or services from the merchant. It allows anyone who merely claims to have had a “service experience” to post a review. Trustpilot, moreover, considers a simple phone call or even an impersonal email inquiry as a service experience. That, of course, encourages scammers and unethical competitors to call or email the merchant only to qualify and then submit their phony reviews, even though their contact was made entirely under false pretenses.

• Loophole Number 2: Those who claim to have had a service experience with the merchant do not have to identify themselves before they post their reviews. An alias and anonymous e-mail address are sufficient. That is seen by scammers and unethical competitors as yet another green light to post fake reviews. After all, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

• Loophole Number 3: Trustpilot places the onus on the merchant to prove that the reviewer did not have a service experience after the review goes live. That handicaps the merchant because the information it holds in its customer relationship management (CRM) system is crucial in determining the level of interaction a reviewer may or may not have had with the company. But due to privacy concerns, that information cannot be shared with an outside source without the prior permission of the reviewer, whose identity, in any event, is completely bogus if the review is spam. Moreover, the process the merchant has to follow takes a minimum of three days and may continue for weeks on end. In the meanwhile, the fake review remains online. A review that is purposely designed by a scammer or unethical competitor to damage a merchant’s reputation will indeed accomplish that goal while Trustpilot dithers what to do.

• Loophole Number 4: There are only five reasons why Trustpilot will agree to remove a review. It must contain harmful or illegal content, personal information, advertising or promotional information, or if it is not based on a genuine experience or was mistakenly posted on the wrong merchant’s page. Anyone can flag a review for further investigation by Trustpilot’s “Content Integrity Team,” but only the merchant can cite the last reason.[6] Libel per se is not one of those five reasons. Therefore, scammers and unethical competitors have carte blanche to lie as much as they want.

• Loophole Number 5: The Content Integrity Team is insulated from merchants. Its members do not use their last names. They cannot be contacted directly. So when they get it wrong there is virtually nothing the merchant can do to appeal the decision. In the meanwhile, crafty scammers and competitors pay attention to which fake reviews are removed and which are not until they find the proper balance that enables their fake posts to squeeze through the parameters and avoid removal.

• Loophole Number 6: Merchants whose Trustpilot pages have been inundated by fake reviews can actually be penalized for tagging them. Trustpilot’s Orwellian guidelines state that a merchant can be sanctioned for “misuse of reporting tools” by rapidly tagging them, since that “would indicate that the reviews are not being properly considered or assessed.” Should merchants really have to hesitate before tagging an obviously fake review that, for example, contains a case number that doesn’t exist in their CRMs or claims that the merchant provided a service that it doesn’t offer?