Weaponising Reviews - PlayBlue Blog
Before you jump down my throat, we play the game too. We have over 1,000 reviews on Trustpilot and over 3,000 on JudgeMe both large international trusted review sites. We ask our customers for reviews and answer every single service review we get. I think we try to do it right. We pay no review sites and every review we've ever gathered is totally free and transparent - Let me tell you that is rare.
We find what happens now is that a certain type of customer uses the reviews to effectively try to blackmail you into giving them a refund often while they keep the product. We get loads of email threats about reviews and then also emails post reviews saying they’ll delete them if we refund. We never partake in this kind of activity and stick to what we believe is our super fair customer service policies and free returns.
There is just so much wrong with the present system. First thing I hate is you either get 5 stars or 1 stars. It makes no sense. Then if as businesses we pay the reviews sites we can effectively remove reviews we don’t like and if we don’t pay (like us) we are stuck with them. This is in effect another type of blackmail.
I had a recent experience with an online store where a heater that cost €425 broke after about 2 months. I contacted and explained and sent video and images etc of the issue and finally without a word from them they sent me an electrical component about the size of a wallet with no instructions or even what it was. Now I’m not an electrician but I’m happy to give it a go. I opened the heater and couldn’t see this component anywhere. I asked for instructions and tried Goggling what to do. No joy and no response. I tried for about 6 weeks and to be honest kind of just gave up. Which I assume is what the vendors plan all along.
I decided to place a review of my experience and suddenly I get called all sorts of names by the vendor. Twice the reviews site has asked for proof of purchase including screenshots of messages and invoices etc. The review site is being paid by the vendor so I have no doubt in the end it will be removed even though it is 100% honest. The vendor is suddenly super responsive while being a little abusive at the same time, but still no resolution. Their goal it seems is to remove the review not actually solve the problem.
On PlayBlue we first and foremost trust our customer service to resolve 99% of issues fairly and happily which we do. Then we answer every single Trustpilot review. Often it might be the first we hear of an issue with an order and we are delighted to have the chance to fix it. The majority of negative reviews are around An Post delivery being late. On our product reviews we host on our website we publish all of them positive or negative excluding reviews with personal information or reviews that are not about the actual product. We would love reviews to help our customers but to be honest I’m skeptical of the lot.
Reviews can and should be welcomed by a business as an opportunity to fix an issue so you can hopefully win back a customers trust. Or just as a welcome pay on the back.
Forget reviews - The actual best thing you can do is ask us or check out our best sellers or professional product reviews that Viktoria does. We would never try to recommend a sex toy we don’t truly love ourselves.