The one-star review wasn’t even about us

The review

Our company is called after a bay on the north-east coast. So, it turns out, is a travel booking site registered in another country. We make oak tables and benches by hand; they sell package holidays. You would think no one could confuse the two.

The review was one star. It said we had taken a payment for a flight, cancelled it, and refused the refund. It named an airport. It was long, detailed and angry, and every word of it was obviously true for somebody. Just not about us.

I did not see it for seven months. We do not get many reviews, a dozen a year perhaps, and I had stopped checking. A customer collecting a table mentioned it, half joking: “I nearly didn't order after that flight thing.” I went pale.

What a review like that actually does

On a profile of 23 reviews, one one-star took us from 4.6 to 4.4. That alone is survivable. The problem was where it sat. It was the most recent review for months, so it was the first thing on the page. And it was the only review with any heat in it, so it was the one people read.

Later I found a second one, two years older, from someone whose “hotel was not as described”. Fewer stars, less anger, same wrong company. With both gone we would have been at 4.8. The difference between 4.4 and 4.8 for a maker whose tables cost a month's wages is not small. People are deciding whether to trust you with a lot of money and a long wait.

We cannot count the orders we did not get. But we know that in the seven months the review sat there, enquiries from our website converted at roughly two-thirds of the rate they did before and after, with nothing else changed.

My first instinct, and why it was not enough

I did what most people do: I replied under the review, explaining politely that we are a furniture workshop and that the reviewer was looking for a different company. I felt better. The review did not move. Now the first thing on our page was an angry paragraph about a flight and a polite paragraph about tables, and a stranger still had to read both.

A reply explains. It does not remove. Those are two different tools, and I had only used one.

The right route

Reviews that are about a different business are one of the clearest grounds for removal there is, because the mismatch is a matter of fact rather than opinion. What the platform needs is to be shown the mismatch plainly: what the review describes, what the business actually does, and if possible who the review was really about.

So the case was: here is our company registration and what we do; here is the review describing a flight booking; here is the other company with the same name, which does sell flights; and here is our order book with no customer by that name. Filed on a Tuesday, both reviews were removed by the Thursday, with written confirmation for each.

I had someone who does this regularly prepare the file, mostly because I wanted it done right the first time and had no idea what “right” looked like. In hindsight it was simple. In foresight it was not.

What we do now

I have an alert set for our company name, so that a new review anywhere lands in my inbox the same day. I check the profile on the first Monday of every month regardless. And when a customer collects a piece, we ask them to write a few words, because a profile with regular genuine reviews pushes any stray review off the top of the page within weeks rather than months.

The travel company, as far as I know, still exists. I wish them well, and I hope their customers find them.