In a somewhat counter-intuitive move, TrustPilot has been removing genuine reviews from its platform, leading many users to confusion.
TrustPilot is a Denmark-based review platform, where users can leave reviews about companies and people they have bought services or products from.
The idea behind the platform is to bring authentic reviews from customers towards the businesses they shop with, in order to inform future customers about a particular business.
There has not been any information provided by TrustPilot as to why so many users are seeing reviews for their business removed.
Commonly, reviews are either taken down by the user themselves or the review will be flagged as spam or non-genuine and removed that way.
Normally when a review is flagged the business owner is alerted that its been taken down, especially if the review was slanderous and simply written by a user with an axe-to-grind trying to disrupt someone’s business.
In this case though, there’s been no communication from TrustPilot’s side, and reviews are simply being taken down with no reasons provided.
TrustPilot’s Removal Of Genuine Reviews Affects Businesses
“Our team spend so much time building relationships with our clients, to have our genuine reviews removed without any reasoning is absurd. What is the point of asking for review if the platform will remove them?” Tom Jauncey, Head Nerd at Nautilus Marketing – This user has had their business on TrustPilot for over 3 years and is one of the businessowners affected by TrustPilot’s removal of genuine reviews.
It’s hard to say when TrustPilot started genuine reviews. An influx of this was noticed during October 2022, however, with many users reporting online about it.
TrustPilot can remove any reviews from a platform at any time, with its employees able to manually remove anything that the automated system hasn’t flagged up.
If the automated system is struggling with bugs, it could be flagging up genuine reviews and removing them even if they’re not deserving of this. In which case, you’d expect TrustPilot to notice this and come forward with some clarification as to why it’s happening.
In time, perhaps TrustPIlot will clarify why so many genuine reviews are being removed. If you’ve been affected by the same problem, you’re best off tweeting TrustPilot or using its contact form to explain the issue and ask for guidance on what to do next.