TrustPilot are losing it!

How can a 'collective' view of a review subject be so misleading? Simple:

Because TrustPilot (TP) remove excoriating reviews too often - very often at the behest of the review subject themselves - and using very inconsistent interpretations of their so-called T&C's.

Take MusicMagpie, for example, if you scan their overall 'reputation' it comes across as 'glowing' - but if you consult other review sites it's the opposite.

How can this be? Simple. MusicMagpie fight tooth and nail to get poor reviews removed - with some success in my experience - and if you read other sites it's even mentioned "...MM are very good at getting poor reviews removed" says (at least) one.

And yes that's my experience too - and it gives the wrong impression of the very poor trading experience that 'victims' receive. And they just remove them arbitrarily - even if you've changed them at their request - without consulting you. Recently two of my reviews were just removed - surreptitiously - you have to be on your guard!

In addition if you post a poor review it seems that MusicMagpie have a 'reserve' army of complicit 'Perfect-Review' planters - that within hours your poor review is swamped by green green green reviews!

Sites like SiteJabber, for example, clearly don't engage in this activity and are one of several up-and-coming review sites that are giving TP a run for their money.

And because TrustPilot are not domiciled in the UK they can just be a law unto themselves - and are! If you review TP on their own website its 'profile' gets no - or single figure view numbers - on its own website.

So there you have it - TP are losing it. Other review portals are catching them up fast to 'balance' the undemocratic, autocratic actions of TP.

They don't seem to realise that removed reviews disappearing from their site give an unbalanced perspective of their whole raison d'etre - when it will stay 'live' on other websites for all to see.

(Google are especially difficult for the 'reviewed' to get their reviews removed because they are domiciled in the US - and even trying to get legally required information from them is very difficult (I know!) - so well done to them!)

TrustPilot are domiciled in Denmark - and such 'democracy-busting' activity is more easily engaged in without the scrutiny that this allows.

So if you've read this far - consider this effective strategy to counter it:

Enlist in other review sites (like this one) and remember to cut and paste your reviews on multiple websites. (It's a good idea anyway to 'preserve' your entry when the dreaded software/internet bugs occur!)

Yes even Google (via 'Maps')! They have proved to be much more resilient to such poor unfair autocratic actions. But more importantly - it allows readers to get a much more balanced view of the 'reviewee'. And it's a sort of audit trail for Trust Pilot. The difference between them is due to TPs 'unbalancing' perspectives caused by their unreasonable practices - as in MusicMagpie above. And it gives impetus to up-and-coming review sites to challenge TrustPilot's abused monopoly position.

The consumer body 'Which' have a expressed concerns about them in the past - because of this 'jurisdiction' problem.

In common with with many other consumers I have had an appalling experience with Hermes the UK parcel delivery business and I view with disbelief Trustpilot's 4.4/5 star rating for Hermes in its Hermes UK profile. Why is this so at odds with other reviews and assessments of Hermes?:

Sitejabber: 1.1/5 stars
Trustpilot profile for Hermesparcelnet for which Trustpilot receives no income from Hermes and has no invited reviews: 1.3/5 stars
Trustpilot profile for Hermes (no 'UK') for which Trustpilot receives no income from Hermes and has no invited reviews: 1.4/5 stars
Trustpilot profile for Hermès (the luxury goods business) that is effectively a profile for Hermes because the overwhelming majority of reviews are posted by people who mistakenly believe they are reviewing the pacel delivery business: 1.4/5 stars
Amazon customers: 2.1/5 stars
Review Centre: 1.3/5 stars
Reviews.io: 1.2/5 stars
MoneySavingExpert opinion poll that rated Hermes 14th worst of 17 parcel delivery businesses
BBC 'Watchdog' programme that reported Hermes was the parcel delivery business it had received most complaints about

One reason is that most if not all positive reviews on the Hermes UK profile are reviews that Truspilot has allowed Hermes to invite. Danny Richman in his report 'Can you trust Trustpilot? – 9 million reviews studied', https://www.seotraininglondon.org/can-you-trust-trustpilot/ uses Hermes UK's Truspilot profile as an example of how invited reviews paint a false picture. He found that 81% of all reviews (predominantly invited) were "excellent" and 7% "bad" but just 9% of uninvited (termed 'organic') reviews were "excelllent" and 88% "bad". Another reason could be that Trustpilot's "advanced software" deems a worryingly unknown but apparently significant proportion of negative reviews to be "suspicious" and removes them. I have had all seven of my justifiably critical, honest and objective reviews of Hermes UK removed in this way and they haven't been reinstated when I've provided tracking information and correspondence with sellers.

Trustpilot receives payments from Hermes. This raises concerns about Trustpilot's independence and integrity and whether its reviews should be trusted.

Recently told Trustpilot to delete/remove all my posts and basically close the account.

Why? Well, a company (onestream.co.uk) which is an ISP in the UK, did not pick up the phone, or respond to an email I sent, so I posted what happened to myself on Trustpilot. The company then complained to Trustpilot about the post claiming I was not a customer and then that I had no contact with them either. Trustpilot removed my post with the proviso that if I could supply proof, then the post would be reinstated - I refused and made a counter argument, that if they check my post in this way then they need to check every post on their site to make sure that there was contact, otherwise if they do not check every post then they should not check mine either, just for fairness.

I received an email from someone called manuel, who did a cut'n'paste job of trustpilot rules - my reply 'that is not the question'.

He then, made a more compressed and more personal explanation of the rules - but again this did not answer the question/point, and was basically going over the same point he tried to make in his first email; I suppose he thought it would be rude to just repeat the cut'n'paste job, or would the rudeness be too obvious LOL!

He then did the same thing for a third time.

It was obvious that he was trying to avoid addressing the point I had made and therefore validating my point/contention - a typical neo-liberal move, he also got shirty when I pulled him up over his claim that there was no pre-screening of posts by my replying that there is just post-deletion.

So I told them where to go and close the account and delete all posts.

UPDATE *******
Same thing is happening again, and again I am having to tell them to sort it out or close the account.

Trouble is the rule that allows a company, should the company not like the truthfulness of a review to demand that the reviewer provide personal details (or else) - but does this not go against trustpilots declaration of privacy?

[12/01/24]

Update to above.

Believe it or not, I rejoined trustpilot, but have just closed account with them, for a variation of above.

I made a post about sainsburys supermarket, it was removed, then made a second more detailed post about the same company, which was also removed, in both cases it was stated that their software had done this, that mistakes can be made, but they were sure it was the "right call".

I replied to both, got a email to both replies stateing that if i could proof that I had a purchase with sainsburys by way of invoice, delivery proof etc that they would consider reinstating the postl my reply was that this was inapplicable, to which I am.was still waiting for a reply.

I think that these posts were deliberatly removed because i used the word 'discrimination' and trustpilot can not have that, for some reason.