True Local

Finding that we only had a 1.5 star review we asked our good customers to with genuine reviews based on true experience.
I approached 5 of our good clients and asked for a review to be left to boost our star rating they all obliged, less then 5 days later the positive reviews had been removed.
We sent a legal letter after much back and forth, the response was simply, our positive reviews are fake/ written by the business (This was not the case).
And that the negative reviews are fact, this is not the case. (Without sounding bias).

We have since been contacted to pay true local money in order to boost our position in there marketing/ our online position... This sounds, looks and feel's like a modern-day extortion.

We have been left with nothing, and no way to defend our small business. Thanks "True local" and Sensis... Nothing like kicking the little guy to the curb.

Submitted a bad review about a company and they won't post it. They cut and paste all the reason why they didn't post covering off all sorts of bogus excuses like it can't be a food poisoning claim when I was reviewing a courier company.

They are jsut as bad as the companies that are being reviewed. They'll hide behind their postive touch feely responses but in fact completely useless.

If they don't post honest reviews then they are dishonest themselves.

Let's face it if you've gone to the trouble of writing a review your pretty passionate about the bad experience you just received and you almost certainly paid for it as well. In my case the courier company has thousands of bad reviews on another site but amazingly True Local come up with a bogus excuse. Dodgy stay away

Still have not called back or followed up They Also are frowned upon by their parent company sensis which owns Yellow Pages. True local is not worth it. Spend more time calling them then getting calls from their advertising. They get my address wrong, my listing wrong, cant even speak to the person who signed me up. Sounded pretty stupid and didnt know about advertising yet is selling it. What happened to sales people knowing something about what they sell?

Our business has been targeted by anonymous defamatory reviews that aren't true. Small business are being forced to defend reviews with no name, no proof of purchase. They treat Australian businesses like they are criminals - Guilty before innocent. Time for class action and ACCC to get involved.

Hi, when ever true local directory customer service call you for to get paid membership they will show you we are on google first page and they will ask you monthly $211+ and months contract and contract cancellation 1 months period required.
They will appear on google first page 1 or 2 months after that they will disappear from google coz they are not paying to google and they will keep charging you money just for nothing just be careful they are big scammer.
I don't way they are showing us google top page when they want contract with people and when you complaint them they give you there are many reason coz their business not showing on google like reviews listing etc but actual reason is they are not paying to google and they are charging you coz they said they are on top page of google.
So be careful from True Local Directory

These guys only seem to publish positive reviews of businesses. They have a huge list of supposed 'guidelines', which basically amounts to "we don't publish it if it seems against the business". You might sneak a few it was great but xyx things through, but they won't let you actually say how terrible a business is. A complete hoax of a review site.

EDIT: response to their message below. I did in fact rewrite the review to be in line with the guidelines, completely and utterly in line with them in every respect. They then started arbitrarily claiming I had not actually been to the shop and was not posting about a genuine experience. Then they invoked a legal principal which applies to the banking sector thinking I wouldn't know what it was, claiming I was breaking that legal principal. When I pointed out that they were not using the legal principal correctly they said they "would get back to me" then did nothing. Total hoax of a site. Don't believe any review posted there.

True Local truly are a horrible service. One disgruntled person i dealt with had a miscommunication with me and he left a fake and degrading review about me and my Business. Both the reviewer and myself have made at least five requests for the review to be deleted. I had the comment flagged, i had sent images showing the reviewer with the same name admit to faking it and the reviewer himself has admitted to his decietful review and himself requested his review be deleted. True Local came back to me with a copy paste email saying "not everyone can be happy". What on earth is this? What a horrible service that allows trolls and gives people the power of anonyminity to try to destroy a business that has done NO WRONG.

I had one of your customer service representatives contact me at 6:42pm this evening.

He was calling me in regards to my business listing on your directory.

After telling him that I no longer needed the listing because the business hadnt been operating for 6 months, he responded with the phrase, Stop talking s**t to me.
After I repeated what he said, he immediately denied saying this. However he chose to continue the conversation with F**k you, f**k you, a thousand times F**k you.

I have never been more disgusted and insulted before in my life when dealing with any other company. For a company like yours that ultimately controls the reputation of other businesses, how you can employ such people is completely abhorrent.

After such an experience with your staff, any further correspondence that I receive from you in regards to any services, I will consider harassment and will take further action with the ACCC.

I have been a long term client of true local for over 7 years. The advertising campaigns did not succeed as expected regardless you how true local tried to assist in the early days before it was sold to Yellow Pages.

Since the merger my business account specialist never called to catch up and see how your advertisement is working along even after contacting them they where no help

I continued the pay the just under $300 per month for an advertisement that did not work and continually updated the add with new photos and done exactly what the previous business specialist recommended to achieve maximum results even gave me 1300 number to monitor how many calls actually came from the advertisement

I can say I didn't get any response from the true local advertising for years and I was on the TOP advertising package (top of the page priority banner)

I decided to cancel my service and completed the entire paper work process and received a confirmation email stating that the service will be canceled in 30 days

90 days later True Local Finance department is still deducting my account the full service fee
The last invoice 60 days ago was $50 but they had deducted the full amount and still are deducting from my account.

I have contacted true local about this matter numerous times as they advise me every time it will be sorted but once the following month comes they help themselves to the fee again without even advertising my add anymore

Save yourselves from this Thieving Company

Businesses that pay Truelocal can manage the reviews. I saw one sponsor had deleted ~10 good 4 star reviews, leaving only the ~50 excellent 5 star reviews. That's not only bad for consumers, but bad for all the businesses. People's bad reviews get deleted, the good reviews get deleted = worthless reviews. Similar to the ACCC case where Meriton 'misled and deceived' by blocking customers' bad reviews. Wouldn't want to be a business relying on Truelocal when it hits the fan.