First I would caution anyone to continue to post reviews on trust pilot. I would also suggest you read the reviews here on how bad Trustpilot is. You can see that trust pilot allows companies to either bully them or pay them to remove valid helpful reviews. It also now has a policy of harvesting reviews by inviting people to review things. This by itself makes this site untrustworthy.

I'm probably going to get banned on that site but I had been a reviewer for quite a while and have many detailed reviews of companies. Please know that sometimes you'll have a positive or negative interaction with a company but not have a purchase. Trustpilot requires documentation of a purchase with your personal information to be sent to them. I don't think they can be trusted with personal information. This is an easy way for trustpilot to have reviews deleted. So if you're reviewing a company or looking at the reviews of companies, you can't trust that you are getting the true story for any company on trustpilot. They took down a review on a company called snap! Raise which I exposed in my personal opinion as a company that actually steals money from children under the guise of helping schools raise money. I provided information as well as suggestions of articles and places to go to confirm what I was saying in my review. My review was honest but certainly wasn't great for the company and they complained. Not only did they complain but they went after me both by the email that was provided to them by trust pilot and they also went after me in their response to my review claiming that I was not a real customer. I provided proof of my use of the company to trustpilot twice but they still removed my reviews. I'm afraid they will ban me so I'm posting my review of Trustpilot here. I also have a few reviews here.

MY review of Trustpilot on trustpilot site:
"This site is no better than the scam companies I have been reviewing.

Trustpilot cannot be trusted. I have reviews where I sent proof I used the business and the business paid to have my review removed. How can this be?

I agree with all the other reviewers who have had this happen to them. Trustpilot sends a cryptic message asking for a "reference number." Reference numbers don't exist. There's no way to know what is requested in order not to have your review removed. I eventually was able to contact trustpilot which is almost impossible. Customer service is the worst and on par with other really bad companies. Couldn't get an answer from them. I provided them proof that I used this company. It didn't matter. They still removed my reviews. This is unconscionable.

If you get one of these threatening messages be assured there's nothing you can do and trustpilot will certainly remove your review. I suggest you copy your review and post it elsewhere and stop using this site and stop contributing to the site. My review was on Snap! Raise which is a company which steals money from children under the guise of helping schools raise money. There was no reason to take down my reviews.

How can you have a company pay to have reviews removed. If they're not paying to have reviews removed then explain why on earth would you remove helpful reviews? I'm not the only one who has had this happen to. Read the dozens of other complaints on this site where people complain about Trustpilot removing their reviews.

Only allowing fake and fake positive and solicited invited reviews isn't helping anyone. People come to your site and are fooled or tricked into believing that a company is safe to do business with and this just does not true.

At this point it appears that you're inviting a lot of people to review your site which is bumping up your positive numbers. You've tapped into a way to scam the system and this isn't helping anyone. You are using deceptive tactics and removing reviews. This is not a sign of a trusted site. I'm just one person but I'll be taking my interviews elsewhere.

In the meantime, I'm posting my reviews back. It sucks that your reviewers have to keep going back and checking to make sure that their reviews aren't taken down.

And again, responding to people's reviews with cut and paste canned responses which are infuriating and certainly not helpful is no way to run a business no matter what you think. It shows not only do you not care for your customers or your reviewer base but that you have contempt for them. Right now I'm so upset with myself for placing my work on your site for free and allowing you to make money off of my really good reviews.

I would have certainly provided trust pilot proof of my purchase with this company, again, had they provided assurance that this information would not be sent to the company. Right now, I don't think that anyone should trust trustpilot in any way and I would be concerned about sending anything or any documentation to trustpilot with my personal information. I would not trust that trustpilot would not share this information and my name with that company.

I have provided over 20 detailed helpful reviews for the site and there's no way that you can look at my reviews and believe that I would lie about any company or that any company would have a valid reason for removing any of my reviews."

Trustpilot removed my one review, saying that their software picked up patterns and it was fraudulent.
I only write three sentences. This did not go against their published advice. They refuse to say why they had done so and because I complained, they blocked my account. Trustpilot is blocking negative reviews to make themselves look good.
Waste of time and untrustable.

Trustpilots responses.
Martina Z (Trustpilot Content Integrity)
Aug 15,2023, 08:09 GMT+1
Hello,

We understand this is not the outcome you were hoping for.

We have invested many years in the development of this area and our dedicated software. When sufficient patterns in the review(s) and/or the reviewer's behavior indicate fabrication, we take the appropriate action.

We have given you sufficient information regarding the matter and believe the case to be closed.

Respectfully

Sarah Booth
Aug 14,2023, 16:34 GMT+1
I wish to take this further.
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Sarah Booth
Aug 14,2023, 16:34 GMT+1
I have already checked this link, nothing in it relates to my review. Reading other websites, you do this frequently, your software is at fault.
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Alaa S (Trustpilot Content Integrity)
Aug 14,2023, 08:21 GMT+1
Hi Sarah,

Thank you for your reply.

We understand that you are disputing our decision, for more information you can check this article here in our Help center How can I dispute a decision made by the Content Integrity Team?

Have a good day.

Best regards,

Sarah Booth
Aug 12,2023, 11:54 GMT+1
This is a genuine review. I dispute your claims.
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Alaa S (Trustpilot Content Integrity)
Aug 9,2023, 08:29 GMT+1
Hi Sarah,

Thank you for your reply.

We fully understand the complexity of your situation and why it might be upsetting for you.

As we informed you before that the review will not be reinstated.

We understand that you disagree with the decision we've made, however, I can assure you it was taken after careful consideration and in accordance with our guidelines.

Best regards,

Sarah Booth
Aug 8,2023, 18:28 GMT+1
This is not true. My review is genuine.
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Alaa S (Trustpilot Content Integrity)
Aug 3,2023, 08:27 GMT+1
Hi Sarah,

Thank you for your reply,

Your review has been removed due to fraud detection software, and the review will not be reinstated.

I'd like to clarify how our system works and how we handle such cases, when the system detects any suspicious behavior or patterns in a review as a whole the system takes action to filter the review.

Our role here as the Contact Integrity team is to check the system's decision by investigating the whole case more than once, and during the investigation if we have detected or found any suspicious things that are not allowed in our platform, then we will have to keep the review filtered.

For privacy reasons, we are unable to share any specific information about our investigation so that's why we cannot give you more information other than what we have told you already.

Best regards,

Sarah Booth
Jul 30,2023, 18:21 GMT+1
Please read my email below.
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Yara E (Trustpilot Content Integrity)
Jul 30,2023, 12:03 GMT+1
Dear Sarah,

Thanks for your email. We apologize for the late response, we are striving to provide you the best service. We understand you'd like to know why your review and your account has been removed from Trustpilot.

To protect the integrity of our platform, unfortunately, we cannot give you specific details about why [your review has been removed/ your reviews have been removed and why your account has been blocked]. Please rest assured that we would only take this action when multiple parameters show that a review is fake.

If you'd like to learn more about our fraud detection software, please take a look at our Help Center article "Trustpilot's fraud detection software".

We understand this might not have been the outcome you were hoping for, but we appreciate your cooperation. Let us know if you have any questions by replying to this email. Your Trustpilot account has been blocked because we detected suspicious patterns. We hope you understand that in order to protect our site from abuse, we can't go into further detail.

Best regards,

Sarah Booth
Jun 7,2023, 22:12 GMT+1
This is a follow-up to your previous request #******* "{{dc.report_email_subject_-..."
Repeat request.
Can you provide the email address for you CEO Peter Muhlmann please? I wish to complain
Sarah Booth.
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I have an account here along with Trustpilot because I do believe reviews in multiple places will help people avoid a bad situation if possible or to check the legitimacy of companies nowadays.

However, Trustpilot has a low level of authenticity and I believe that they don't care about how ethical the business owners really are. I've been scammed by some fake guru who said he would help me with my small business. He charged thousands of dollars which I can no longer get back and I found out that hundreds (or even thousands) of people unfortunately trusted this guy and also got scammed.

The guy's Trustpilot page has over 2000 reviews, almost 99% of them are positive, very fake and mostly poorly written reviews that don't even explain what he does. Instead, most of it is gibberish spam or talks about what a "nice guy" the scammer is. Meanwhile, all the legitimate negative reviews of people who got scammed were taken down except for very few of them, hence this scammer is able to keep his Trustpilot at nearly 5 stars.

I've tried reporting this numerous times to Trustpilot and even tried to contact them via email to their headquarters in my city. I was ignored. Many people also reported this scammer's other business page on Trustpilot. Trustpilot temporarily labeled the business page being "suspicious", but shortly after, it was fixed. Yet the primary business page of this scammer is still posting up fake positive reviews and scamming people while Trustpilot does nothing about it. It's getting to the point where I think this scammer pays Trustpilot too.

FYI: The worst part of all is that if you try to leave a review for this scammer, they make you show a receipt of your transaction and when you do, you might get hit with a cease&desist for violating a "NDA" and Trustpilot eventually will remove your review anyway.

Beware. While fake reviews are everywhere, I should've been more careful. Instead, I naively believed Trustpilot's ethics and stupidly believed all the positive reviews on this fake guru's page. After that, I even gave the fake guru (not knowing he was a fake at the time) a chance to explain the suspicious behavior of his Trustpilot page, only for him to BS me which I also naively believed. Then, I got ripped off and I can't even leave him a bad review there because he might try to sue for defamation.

[Edit] Trustpilot flagged a review because the company, Cloudflare reported it being as fake. Keep in mind, I've written over 90 reviews on Trustpilot in the past with absolutely no issues.

Again, I understand that having genuine review is important but get real. It's the internet. There's people everywhere who write fake positive and negative reviews. It sucks and as business owner myself, I've dealt with this many times too. However, Trustpilot flags any review a company "feels like" flagging because they don't want negative reviews. Then Trustpilot asks you to submit screenshots and details and to verify yourself. Why does someone have to share their real name and all their personal info to write a review? Maybe not everyone wants to be known and they shouldn't have to. Trustpilot is asking to lose reviewers at this point because 90% of people on the platform aren't verified and probably don't care enough to be. Trustpilot has sold itself out basically.