One of the issues that come up for a lot of our corporate clients is false online reviews. So if you’re a company and you have online reviews either through Yelp or some other platform that are false or damaging to your company, how do you investigate that?
Well, first we’re going to determine if was it an actual customer. Is this somebody who did business with you or is it somebody who may be a competitor or somebody just trying to damage the company for other reasons? If it is a real customer they may be using a fake reason. Maybe it’s a billing issue and they’re giving you a flack online about your product quality. So you want to find out what the facts are and what’s actually correct in the online review because if there’s false information, that creates damages for you, and if it’s done incorrectly there may be a liability.
Recently, there was a lawsuit filed by a photography company where they had a customer that gave him fake reviews online that were negative over a $120 billing error. And the company won a judgment against the customers for over a million dollars in damages because of those fake reviews. So if you had damage to your company because of a fake review, you may have compensation due to you by the person who made the fake reviews. And you want to establish what was fake about that review. We can discover who that is, we can use addresses dates forensics on the records, and forensics on the platform where it was posted to find out who that customer was. Make sure you document this before you retaliate against the person because if it’s been removed you may not have the documentation or the way to track down the reviewer.
So you want to document those online reviews. Document the source of it before you go back against that potential customer because if they pull the review you’re not going to have the evidence to show that they created damage to your company.
Are you a business owner looking for help mitigating fake negative reviews? Schedule a consultation with one of our licensed investigators to discuss your case.
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