Is It Worth Posting a Bad Review?

It could happen to anyone. You hire a business to perform a service for you, and it goes all wrong. Instead of quality customer service, you end up on the wrong end of a scam. The next thing you know, your money is gone and so is your service provider. In your anger and despair, you go online and leave a scathing review for the business. 

But is posting a negative review really worth it? Will it help anything? That all depends on the business you are working with. If the business you’re having trouble with is an honest one, leaving a negative review may get a response. But bad companies won’t care. They’ve got your money, and you may never hear from them again.

The Value of Online Reviews

Before you hire a company or an individual, we always recommend doing a little research. One of the easiest ways to learn about a company’s track record is to look for online reviews. It may be as easy as using your favorite search engine to look up the company’s name. Very often, you will get results with reviews.

Sometimes there are lots of reviews, many more than you could read. So how do you know who to believe? Luckily, most review sites post an aggregated rating based on all the reviews. You may see that a company has hundreds of reviews with an average rating of four and a half stars. That seems promising. Or a company may be rated at 85% positive. That’s useful information.

When you’re overwhelmed by too many reviews to read, we suggest sorting the reviews to look for the bad ones. If a company has been in business long enough, there are likely a few customers who didn’t like their services. But you can learn a lot from the bad reviews.

The first thing to look for is how the business has responded. A business that values customer service and satisfied customers will respond to their negative comments. Look for responses that indicate the business has worked to make it right. When you see a company paying attention to their bad reviews, you can feel confident that they care about their customers.

On the other hand, if you see lots of complaints about a business taking money and disappearing, or other serious allegations, beware. Even if there are some positive reviews, you don’t want to end up like the people who got scammed.

Should You Post a Bad Review?

If you’ve already been scammed, you may wonder whether it’s worth posting a bad review. You feel defeated and hopeless, and you want the world to know what happened to you. Unfortunately, a company that is willing to scam you probably doesn’t care about negative reviews. They prey on consumers who didn’t research them, and who make easy targets. It can be frustrating to realize you’ve been duped.

However, there is one good reason to leave a negative review. It may not provide any relief for your situation, but it can help the net consumer. If a potential customer does their research and searches for reviews, hearing about your experience can be an important warning. So while you may not benefit directly from a negative review, you still may help the next potential victim.

What to Do When You’ve Been Scammed

At TrustDALE, we believe that every business should be held to the standard of making it right for their customers. And we’re willing to work to make sure that you’re made whole again. So if you feel that you’ve been scammed and a company is not working with you to make it right, contact TrustDALE. We’ll look into your complaint and do what we can to help. You’d be surprised how often a company that won’t respond to an individual will change their tune once TrustDALE threatens to expose their bad behavior.

If you have a complaint against a dishonest business, fill out our form to see how TrustDALE can help you.