Friday 15 February 2013

Company Review Sites: What's the Issue?

By Nancy Pearl Kennedy


Company review sites are far from scarce these days. Most anyone who has had a bad experience with a product can hop on someone's blog and complain about their service or product. So, since anyone and everyone can review anything they want, how can you make sense out of it all?

Before you spend a large amount of money on a product or service, a company reviews site may be beneficial to you. What is important to know is that you should already know what you are or aren't looking for in your purchase before checking these review sites. A poor review could have a negative impact on you buying decisions if you haven't figured out what is or isn't important to you in that future purchase.

For example, when buying a car it might be a good idea to know what features are important to you and which ones are not. By doing this before checking the reviews, you can weed out the reviews that are unimportant from the ones that are. Negative reviews and complaints can be a good thing as well. If many people are complaining about the same thing, there may be some legitimacy there. Review sites can help you speed up your search when making important buying decisions.

When visiting company review sites, it's important to note the credibility of the author of these reviews. If you are looking at a company for potential employment opportunities and you see a bad review or complaint on someone's blog. Treat it with a grain of salt if you feel that the poster might be a disgruntled employee. Look for grammatical errors as well. If someone is using foul language, you could bet money that they are a little disgruntled.

If you or your company has a negative review written about you, you may actually have some legal rights to sue for monetary damages. Some of the requirements of pursuing a libel case include: false statements deemed as facts, malicious intent, and a loss of income to your business or you that is caused by a defamation of character. If all of these (plus more) are present in your case, you may want to pursue legal action.

If there is ever a doubt when perusing company review sites, call the company in question or communicate directly with them by other means. A negative review doesn't necessarily mean that the company or product isn't legitimate. When speaking with a representative of the company ask them questions and state your concerns. There are three sides to every story: what person #1 says happened, what person #2 says happened, and what actually happened. Take all sides into consideration before weighing your decision.

Some company review sites most visited are Glassdoor, Ripoff Report, entry level job scams blog, pissed consumer, complaints board, Angie's list, Yelp, Yahoo local, Google places, Trip advisor, Citysearch, and Urban spoon. It may be a good idea to review these sites to see if you are listed already! The internet is like a bathroom stall. Anyone with a permanent marker can spread their opinion. So which reviews can you trust? The truth lies somewhere in the middle of the great reviews and the poor ones. Use your discretion and logic to make your future decisionsnot just others' opinions.




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