Where’d THIS review come from? or … Another Reason to be a Partner Business!

We had an incident that goes to show the value of being a BoaterRated Partner Business. We were heading out of the country (and thus out of our usual constant contact – more on this in another post!) and we saw a review come in for one of our Partner Businesses.  This particular business has a large number of positive, even glowing, reviews, and this one was pretty awful.  It recounted the rude behavior of a salesperson, the withholding of a licensing service, and the refusal to help with the location of a part.

As a Partner Business, one of the benefits offered is the 14 Day Reconciliation Period before a poor review gets posted to afford the business and the customer an opportunity to work out whatever differences caused the poor review.  Usually this ends up with a more satisfied customer and a better relationship.

We reached out to the reviewer to inform him of this policy and that the business would be reaching out to him during this time.  While the email we sent went to a valid email, we never heard back from the reviewer.

Meanwhile, the business interviewed the entire staff – a pretty easy task in their case as it’s a husband and wife team with one or two part time employees – and nobody could recall such an incident.  They too reached out to the reviewer to see what was what, and they too got no response.

Numerous suspicions developed that seemed like plot line for an episode of Law & Order. They did some further digging into the sender of the email, and this turned up some details about the reviewer that caused doubt.  They shared those all their suspicions with us, and the case for this being a valid review was quickly eroding.  So we reached out to the reviewer one last time, and still got no response.  We decided that this review was not a valid review, and thus have not published it.

The lessons to be learned here are that even though these reviews can get posted anywhere, being pro-active in your on-line reputation management can minimize or negate any damage that could be done by a negative review.  Had this business not been a Partner Business, they would have had little or no control over what went up on BoaterRated. That they are a Partner Business and use BoaterRated as their on-line referral network, the volume of positive reviews would have drowned out the noise of one not-so-good review.  Since they use BoaterRated.com for their referral and review site, reviews posted elsewhere don’t hold the same validity – reviewers know that their review posted on BoaterRated are monitored by the business and any feedback they can offer will be noted and acted upon.  And potential customers know that what’s said about a Partner Business is part of that business’s customer service efforts.

Action item – sign up to be a BoaterRated.com Partner Business today!