No comment: can consumer reviews be a form of abuse?

▶ A business being badmouthed can lose it hundreds of clients, but the solution to a subpar review is simple, says Rhodri Marsden

All of us are prospective customers for all kinds of things. Meals out, haircuts, gadgets, plumbing services. When we search the internet for options, a bad customer review will often steer us from one business and towards another. But is that fair? After all, we don’t know the reviewer or their tastes. We don’t know if they were in a bad mood when they wrote it, or if they have an axe to grind. And yet their opinion may lose a business dozens, hundreds, thousands of customers. Little wonder that businesses live in fear being badmouthed.

Some evidently deserve their bad reviews. But for those that don’t, a one-star drubbing can be a nightmare. Aside from loss of revenue, it can undermine their reputation, drive business into the hands of competitors and lower their search engine ranking – a spiral from which it’s hard to escape.

An Australian dentist, Dr Matthew Kabbabe, is currently embroiled in a court battle to stop that spiral engulfing his practice. After a string of fivestar reviews on Google, a bad one turned up. It described a dental appointment as a “complete waste of time” that had made the patient feel “extremely awkward and uncomfortable”. Kabbabe’s indignance led him to try forcing Google to reveal the complainant’s identity so he could proceed with a defamation suit. “Google has a duty of care to Australian small businesses – and businesses globally – for allowing these reviews to go on,” said Kabbabe’s lawyer.

Excessive expression of anger is, of course, an internetwide problem. One person’s favourite restaurant (or film, or smartphone, or dental appointment) can prompt another to forcefully vent their spleen. But we tend to take reviews at face value. One statistic describes 88 per cent of consumers putting as much trust in online reviews as they would a personal recommendation. And there’s an ever-growing number, because we’re constantly solicited for them. Google and Facebook regularly remind us to check in and offer opinions. Yelp holds a database of 192 million reviews and counting. And most of them are useful. They can cut through marketing spiel, give honest feedback and help the public make informed choices. But unnecessarily harsh comments can hit small businesses hard – and we’re more prone to be unpleasant than kind.

“There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to talking about reviews, and it’s the fact that people are more likely to share their bad reviews than their good ones,” states Reputation X, a reputation management firm. But the review system is also open to abuse. Most platforms allow anyone to leave one, often anonymously. Competitors, disgruntled ex-employees and bored trolls can unjustifiably attack a business with relative ease.

And, as Kabbabe has discovered, getting those reviews removed is far from easy. In the case of Google, if it doesn’t break its content policy, the review is likely to remain online. In addition, the burning injustice felt by businessowners can cause them to lose perspective and behave in a way that further damages their cause. Some choose to have public exchanges using colourful language, drawing attention to the review they wanted suppressed. Others have tried enforcing “non-disparagement” clauses. One New York hotel imposed a fine of $500 (Dh1,836) on any guest who dared to publish a bad review, then denied it had ever been a policy when criticised for it. Similar cases led to US Congress passing its Consumer Review Fairness Act in 2016, to protect the right to express dissatisfaction without fear of retaliation.

Some businesses have chosen to respond with legal action, but pursuing the search engine or website hosting the review has never gone well. Google’s position when confronted with these lawsuits is clear: they’re merely the messenger. “While we provide tools that allow business-owners to respond to reviews, and we take down posts that violate our policies, we believe online reviews are a critical tool for people to give and read direct feedback about businesses,” it responded in 2015 when a Japanese court filed an injunction. When Yelp found itself in a similar position, the US Supreme Court ruled that Yelp bore no responsibility; the beef was between the business and the complainant. In another case, Google took the side of the reviewer against a doctor who had described his service, according to the company, in “extravagant terms”. “In promoting himself in this manner, the plaintiff necessarily invites robust public criticism and review of his services and the quality of his work,” read a company statement.

But as Kabbabe has discovered, pursuing reviewers is equally as difficult – not least because of their anonymity. In 2018, an American man offering psychiatric services in Japan attempted to sue a number of anonymous people posting criticism on Reddit forums. A week later, he withdrew the suit after a mass of unfavourable media coverage. Frustration at the power of the consumer evidently leads businesses to go to extraordinary lengths. One issued fake lawsuits to get bad reviews removed. Another forged judges’ signatures on court orders. Another retaliated by remotely disabling the software a customer had complained about. A more sensible approach, according to Reputation X, would be to quietly improve the product or service, reach out to disgruntled customers and attempt to resolve the situation calmly.

“A bad review in a sea of otherwise positive reviews doesn’t hold much weight,” it notes. “Consumers trust collective opinions more than the opinion of a single individual who clearly had a bad, anomalous experience.” Bad reviews, in other words, may shed light on good ones; a 2013 study by Harvard Business School found the majority of consumers trust reviews more when they see a mix of opinions. Given that Kabbabe experienced only one bad review, however hurtful it might be, the lessons of the past are clear; overreacting can sometimes make things worse. In a volatile online sphere, and with the opinion of courts against them, the only real option is for businesses to solicit more positive reviews by doing what they claim to do best: keeping customers happy.

Excessive expression of anger is an internet-wide problem. One person’s love can prompt another to forcefully vent their spleen