Trustpilot reviews

Good Reliable Site

I have been using Trustpilot for a few months now and although it isn't perfect I do think it is a far better and bigger review site than most .

People rightly are sceptical about giving their personal details out via a Facebook login ; however this makes the authenticity of reviews far better for me . Yes , you could create a fake facebook account , but who would go through all that trouble when there are review sites out there that let's you leave anonymous reviews .

I am not a business owner yet , but I have found that there were some pretty unreasonable reviews on Trustpilot too , some which some companies perhaps haven't reported yet , but that I did . This helps to self regulate the site and keep the reviews more authentic .

Where I do think Trustpilot could improve is their categories section . I have many a time searched for a coach company under their travel categories , only to come up empty handed . What I was looking for was the highest rated coach company , not a specific name .

Companies who complain that Trustpilot is making money have double standards as I am sure that their aim is to make money too . The money they generate pays a few people's salaries and possibly keeps their employees from claiming on an already burdened benefit system amongst other things .

Keep up the good work

19 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Arthur,

Thanks for your positive review and your well-explained suggestions.

As Trustpilot grows the Categories section becomes more important. So in the near future, we will work on improving this part, so it becomes more useful. Nothing is decided so far, so we welcome all kind of feedback we get in this matter.

We are happy that you take your time to write detailed reviews and reporting unreasonable reviews. That's the best way to make Trustpilot more useful for other consumers.

Best regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Only reason this site hasn't got 5 stars is because company's that are s**t, can't accept that they are s**t

All these bad reviews of trustpilot are pathetic. Trustpilot allows the general public to have a voice on what they think about other companies and their trading. I have wrote reviews about mobiles.co.uk and Yodel, both not great companys if i may say.

The reason for the negative reviews is because companies that are s**t are getting s**t press on this site and they can't be bothered to book their ideas up. IF YOUR COMPANY GIVES NEGATIVE REVIEWS FROM CUSTOMERS, SORT IT OUT AND DEAL WITH IT, DON'T COMPLAIN BECAUSE TRUSTPILOT IS TELLING THE TRUTH.

What Trustpilot is doing is moral practise. They're stopping potential customers getting scammed/ripped off and helping companys improve their customer service

Søren Finnemann Viuff, Anthony Birkbeck, Heather June Soper, Joel Marsh, Andrew C. Whittaker and Reddy found this review useful

19 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your positive review.

You are right that Trustpilot is not in a position, where we can please everybody. And we probably never will get perfect ratings.
So we try to do what we tell other companies to do - tell our version of the story, so others can make their own judgment of what is right and wrong.

Best regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Great review site

Never new this site existed until I received tickets via Double8 and enclosed was a request to review them via the Trustpilot site. Scrolling down, saw that I could review Trustpilot itself. This is a really excellent way to add your own reviews and see what other people think. The site is very well laid out, it's easy to use and log in and is somewhere I will be returning to on a regular basis if I am going to use a new provider/supplier. Great site.

There is a massive flaw at the heart of this

Trustpilot purports to offer impartial reviews. We users post them with the intention of helping the customers who follow us who can learn from our experience. We like the site which seems to be well managed and trustworthy. It helps us decide who to trust.

The flaw is how they make their money. It comes from the sites which we review. Those sites are the customers, we users are the resource which Trustpilot sells to them.

This wouldn't matter (much) if Trustpilot really did stand by its word and allow free and honest appraisals by customers. But they don't. On the basis of spurious quasi-editorial guidelines, reviews can be removed at the behest of the sites which you have criticised.

In my case I put a comment about terrible security on a site. They replied to it, meaning customers could see both sides of the argument and decide for themselves. But the review was removed after a complaint (I think we can guess who from), and, to cut a long story short, stays removed at the moment because in the judgement of Trustpilot, security issues aren't of interest to their users.

It is obvious that users can only decide whether they're interested if they can see the review and the response. It's equally obvious that Trustpilot needs to retain its customers - the websites which are reviewed - far more than the far more numerous individual users, who they sell to those websites.

This being the case, the model is flawed. It self-evidently isn't trustworthy. Use it - and give your work for free into the bargain - at your peril.

UPDATE: (in response to comments from Trustpilot below)

In my particular case I was already validated as a buyer, which due to the close commercial relationship between you and the site was done before I could leave a review. I had, in other words, left a real review from a real customer. But it did contain criticism: that doesn't make it invalid. The company had exercised its right to reply via a comment on my review so everyone could see both sides of the issue. The review has then been taken down twice on clearly spurious grounds even though it is compliant with your guidelines. A whitewash, which is why your site can't be trusted.

UPDATE 2: Trustpilot were replying to my emails about my other review, but then stopped replying to me and just deleted the review. So there's one site on here which will significantly endanger your data security if you use it, but you're not allowed to know which one it is. Oh dear.

JamesLowes, Jane Barrett, John Barleycorn and John Vickery found this review useful

13 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Dominic,

Thanks for your review. Please allow me to explain how we deal with reported reviews.

Any user or company can report a review. Typically companies do so to get validated that the person who left a review is a customer with a real shopping experience to share. If that happens the reported review will be replaced with a message saying that Trustpilot is investigating the review. So it's not deleted at this point.
In the meantime our team of community supporters will look into the issue and in most cases they reach out to the reviewer and asks for documentation that a purchase has been done. If that's not possible, we'll remove the review.

We want everbody to contribute, but we also want real reviews from real customers on Trustpilot. So we believe that the process gives companies a fair chance to defend themselves, while other users can read reviews of higher quality.

I want to point out that any company can report a review regardless of whether they have a subscription with us or not.

You can read more about reporting of reviews on our blog:
http://blog.trustpilot.com/review-reporting-introducing-a-small-but-important-change/

Best regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

amazing

love it, funtastic,

No thankyou Trustpilot

When are people going to realise that this site is a fake. I was researching all the top reviewers for the last few days. Guess what, they were all reviewing the same sites more or less.

The entire system is being "Gamed" as Trustpilot put it.

They try to make it harder to log in by FaceBook only Logins. Come On. How easy is it to register a Facebook account and then attach it to an Hotmail account , Log in to Trustpilot and post a review??

Users on Trustpilot are not real people. The reviews are fake.

When real issues arise, Trustpilot do not know how to respond. They do not have any ethics.

When will Trustpilot take responsibility for what they are doing here? They have developed a platform where people can vent their anger out on companies before they even go to the companies involved and try to get a resolution.

There are too many instances of this company publishing fake reviews. It is just not on.

Somebody needs to do something about Trustpilot.

James Smith, B, Heather June Soper, David Taylor, John Barleycorn and John Vickery found this review useful

06 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your feedback.

We acknowledge that you don't feel Trustpilot can be trusted. Let me try to explain, what we do in order to improve the overall quality of the reviews.

Facebook Connect is just one of the things we have implemented to make it more complicated to register a fake user profile. Behind the lines we have a lot of monitoring going on to catch and investigate suspicious reviews and profiles. I don't want to publish exactly what we do, but one of the more obvious workarounds is that we find reviews made about the same company from the same IP-address using different user profiles. In that case it's typically employees writing about their own company. As there is no proof of purchase, we'll remove the reviews.

We have some well-working procedures for handling fraud. Any company or user can report a review if it does not comply with our guidelines. Our Community Support team looks into the reports in the order they receive them and take the needed action. If the review is reported for being fake, our procedure is to ask the reviewer to send documentation that a transaction has been made. If that's not possible we remove the review.

So we do take responsibility and are working actively on making life harder for the minority of people who or gaming our platform. You can read more about how reporting works on our blog:
http://blog.trustpilot.com/review-reporting-introducing-a-small-but-important-change/

Regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Good but could be better

Not sure of the Facebook only login though?

03 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Lee,

Thanks for your positive feedback.

The simple answer to why we require validation via Facebook is: We want to get real experiences from real people. Validating user profiles reduce fake reviews and increase overall quality on Trustpilot. However, customers can still create a profile if they get an invite from a company using Trustpilot.

In the near future, We will most likely include additional options to create user profiles. You can read more about Facebook Connect and how we use it to fight fake reviews in this article:
http://blog.trustpilot.com/fighting-fake-reviews/

Regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Love the site

Great website and great way to get your opinion where it matters.
Other users provide really helpful feedback too

03 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Gemma,

Thanks for your review and kind words. We're happy to hear that Trustpilot is helpful to you.

Regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Fake Reviews Everywhere

Lots of fake reviews on here.

Site is a joke.

If I go into specifics the post will be deleted.

Seems to be if you pay to get reviews, you will be OK.

02 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for your feedback.

I don't know exactly what you are refering to and where you have experienced fake reviews, but at Trustpilot it's of high importance to ensure high quality on the site. We have lots of automated processes in place to catch fraud, so our team of community supporters will get alerted and take the needed actions if we find suspicious looking reviews.

No company can pay to get a review removed. But any company - or user - can report a review if it looks suspicous and they are in doubt that it's written by a real customer. As a company you don't need to be have a contract with us in order to do so. We look into all reported reviews and contact the reviewer if needed.

Regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

DON'T TRUSTPILOT FAKE, FICTITIOUS NEGATIVE REVIEWS

QUITE LAUGHABLE THAT WHEN I WROTE TO THEM TO ASK THEM TO ONLY ACCEPT REVIEWS FROM GENUINE CUSTOMERS MAKING AN ORDER FROM SSHEALTHFOODS THEY TOTALLY IGNORED MY REQUEST. ALTHOUGH I NOTICE THAT SOME COMPANIES ARE PROTECTED BY THEM WHICH LEAD ME TO BELIEVE THEY MAY HAVE PAID FOR PROTECTION.
IN FACT WHEN READING SOME OF THE CRITICAL REVIEWS ABOUT TRUSTPILOT I SEE THAT THIS IS ACTUALLY THE CASE. I WONDER HOW MUCH I WOULD HAVE TO PAY YOU TRUSTPILOT TO HAVE THE FICTITIOUS NEGATIVE REVIEWS REMOVED??

OKAY TRUSTPILOT IF THEY ARE REAL PLEASE PROVIDE ME WITH THE ORDER NUMBERS FROM ALL ALLEGED CUSTOMERS WHO HAVE LEFT REVIEWS??? AFTER ALL YOU HAVE FAILED UNTIL NOW TO PROVIDE A SINGLE ORDER NUMBER!!

Conrad McKee, Heather June Soper, David Taylor and John Barleycorn found this review useful

29 June 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi John,

Thanks for your review.

I can't tell what happened when you first asked us to look into this company and why you did not get an answer. But I can assure you that we will have a closer look at it and check if the reviews are real.

No company can pay to get a review removed. But any company - or user - can report a review if it looks suspicous and they are in doubt that it's written by a real customer. We look into all reviews being investigated and contact the reviewer if needed.
I hope you will still use Trustpilot and the reporting function.

Thanks,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Lots of Fake Reviews

I have been doing a lot of research about fake reviews. See this article too - [link]

I have also reported the fake reviews to Trustpilot and within minutes the reported review appears back on the site.

Who is Policing this company. ????

The system is totally flawed and they will not even look at their own reviews as they are all clearly fake.

Set up a review site. Post Good Fake reviews. Anyone reports fake reviews about Trustpilot. Nothing will be done.

Conrad McKee, Heather June Soper and John Barleycorn found this review useful

29 June 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your review.

Fake reviews is an important matter to us and we spend a lot of resources making life harder for the few companies who wants to game our system. We have a team of community supporters doing nothing but handling reported reviews, in order to improve overall quality on Trustpilot.

We recently changed the registration process to make it more difficult to let a single user create multiple profiles. We also have a lot of automatic processes in place, so we get alerts if we see suspicious behaviour in order for us to investigate further and take actions.

I'm surprised to hear that reviews you have reported have gone back within minutes. We look into every review being reported and it's simply not possible to investigate that fast.

Regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

will use this again!

I sha;; use this website again after trapping my money with KGB DEALS , should have used this site to look at reviews before placing my order...

Don't go shopping without it!

If I want to buy anything of value from a store my first port of call is Trustpilot. I want to see what other people have thought of either the seller or the product itself. I am very grateful to those others who take the time to rate their experiences and it's why I like to leave my opinion as well. Go Trustpilot!

Trustpilot fails again !!!

I originally discovered the flaws in the Trustpilot model on Autonet, and am unhappy to see this happening still. Basically the flaws are that they are PAID under certain copnditions by the companies they purport to review 'independently'.

The major weakness in this is that they then allow those companies to challenge any review they dont like, retrospectively as soon as they become a customer of Trustpilot, thereby inproving their rating from under 2 stars to 3-4 stars overnight.

The worst companies then 'play the system' by making anyone who has posted a (negative) review confirm that they are still a customer with that very same (crappy) company.

Unfortunately they then go further to incentivise positive customer reviews, a fact you can deduce by looking at the dates and tone of the reviews (often all on the same day, and written in the same style/'voice'.

The business model is currently broken and you should not trust this site under any circumstances.

(this is the additional comment and re-response to the standard Truspilot comments below - it explains how bias creeps in and how the distinction between a testimonial and a review is completely misunderstood by Trustpilot....)

The response of Trustpilot below does not address the aspect of partiality or misrepresentation in firstly downplaying the fact that they take money from companies and are therefore more likely to bias in favour of them.

The next issue is that many reviews for the worst companies tend to be written on the same day in similar style. Again looking at Autonet you used to be able to see a random pattern of 4 negative reviews versus 1 favourable review coming in naturally at about one a month. If you look at them now their new favourable reviews are clusterd into just one day or consecutive days. This is statistically a million to one probability of being random reviews rather than promted testimonials but Trustpilot fails to discover this because their validation process is feeble and favours the company who can validate any customer they wish to.

The next issue is ethics. It is bad enough that the company still used the word Independent rather than sponsored, but it seems even worse to take on clients with ratings below 2 and then allow them to immediately and retrospectively improve their ratings within days. The ethical approach would be to prevent new clients of Trustpilot from removing any reviews over a week old (they have always been informed in the past), and also to make it clear that promting for testimonials is unethical and will lead to a termination of their relationship.

The validation process is particularly weak for two reasons. Firstly it allows the client to institute a compulsory check on any reviewer that it takes a dislike to, and when you consider people with a horrid experience will have left such a company in disgust it is very unlikely and quite intimidating to have your review challenged and to have to reapproch the company again.

The second reason is that even if the ratings are left (which they arent) then almost all ratings will tend over time to a top rating of 5 if there are challenged positive reviews. Since the terrible companies are also the most cynical ones gaming the system then its a fairly good bet those will be precisely the ones engineering a bunch of apparently positive reviews.

The Trustpilot response below also makes further implication that because the old bad reviews are invisibly there in the numbers, then everything is fair. In fact most people read the first 5 or 10 reviews and since all the bad reviews have been challenged and are invisible, the average reader assumes those ratings are old.

Taken as a whole, Trustpilot must now be aware that they are allowing gaming of their review system, and should also be aware that their indiscriminate acceptance of poorly rated companies.

I also have to say that the deletion of reviews on Trustpilot itself is alarming since every time I look on it a good proportion of negative reviews are being suspended as being against terms and conditions. If you are a review site these should stay. If you are a testimonial site then they would be removed. Applying the same procedures of bias to your own ratings would be scandalous and cynical in the extreme.

Suffice it to say anyone with a knowledge of statistics knows this site is a mess. Yeah its great that the site works and it can post a review, but if you look at the substantive comments (many of which are deleted) then Trustpilot is bottom of the heap.

Conrad McKee, Heather June Soper, Waldemar Mrozinski and Daniel Jeffereys found this review useful

28 July 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your review.

Fake reviews and companies gaming our platform is an important matter to us, so I'm glad you are bringing this up.

The way the challenge (or the report as we refer to) works, is that our team of community supporters look into the case and why it was reported. In case a review is suspected as being false, we ask the reviewer for documentation that a purchase has actually happened. If that's not possible, we'll remove the review. That goes for negative as well as positive reviews.

When a review is reported you can't read it, but the rating is still included in the TrustScore to avoid that companies misuse the system to manipulate the overall rating. You can read more about how reporting of reviews works here:
http://blog.trustpilot.com/review-reporting-introducing-a-small-but-important-change/

We would be happy to hear about companies you think are gaming our system. You can either report them here on Trustpilot or write an email to support@trustpilot.com

Thanks,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

-- Updated 27.06.2012 --

Thanks for your updated review, Chris.

I don't think we will get to any agreement here, but I want to be clear on three things:
1. We are fully aware that a few companies are trying to game our platform. Behind the lines we are catching many fake reviews automatically. That can be reviews created from the same IP-address by various users but also much more advanced ways of gaming the system. For obvious reasons I'm not interested in sharing the details here.
2. You are right that we earn money from companies who get access to collect and distribute customer reviews automatically. But we treat customers and non-customers the same way - any company can report a review, for example.
3. We welcome all kind of feedback, and the reason why you see some reported reviews on Trustpilot's own profile is typically because the review concerns another company. If we deleted everything negative said about us, you would only see straight 5-star reviews and these lines would be gone as well. That's not the way we work.

Regards,
Joakim

unsolicited flee and rater of rats it lives off

unsolicited e mails asking me to do their job for free you bastar_s how dare you.. how long before the very same companies we destroy pay your bills and educate little Hannah to be the next Trust pilot CEO

Conrad McKee and Heather June Soper found this review useful

Excellent service

As expected. Thank you.

Good and fast

good deal and very fast delivery

very informative site

lots to learn on this site any thing u need to know about shopping online reviews about customers experiences and products they recieved

The Best

No words to describe such lovely company. I have termendous repect for it.

Good website

Useful site to read about other people online shopping experiences.

Much better than reviewcentre

The title says it all!

ALL about the money

Yet you want to Appear altruistic.

Conrad McKee, Daniel Jeffereys and Jay West found this review useful

Peachy

Good service, no problems at all. 5 stars

YOUR BEST SOURCE FOR LEGIT REVIEWS :D

Trustpilot is your best source for legit reviews all with simple navigation

An excellent idea well executed

This is a prime example of a great idea well done. I use Trustpilot pretty much every time I make a purchase on the internet. Why? Because a consumer review is impartial and cannot be skewed by a company to put them in a more favorable light, you can gather a good idea of what a company is going to be like to deal with before the fact and it builds your faith in your purchases.

There's nothing worse than trying out a company for the first time with no-one to advise for or against. This is the ultimate way to ensure that your buying experience is going to be safe, secure and exactly what you as a consumer is going to want from your online shopping.

1 star is flattering for this untrustworthy site

We have an online company and we constantly get fake reviews claiming bad things. We know it is our competitors trying to tarnish our online name.

Some one recently claimed to have made a purchase over 2 years ago on Paypal and now feels the need to write a review.

The transaction was not real and neither was the person. Neither did the person put a claim in against us (Because they werent real) on Paypal. Everyone knows how strict Paypal are with sellers and the buyer always gets the decision in their favour.

This site is a great idea but is abused to easily.

Update - 5-6-2012

After repeatedly explaining that a review about us was not real, what do Trustpilot do, Nothing. I asked for proof of purchase and a fake order ID came through to us.

I have tried and tried to explain things to this company about the review process, but they do not listen. Then they delete all the good reviews my company gets. It is a joke.

Update 29th June 2012

My company profile has had all its reviews taken down by all my customers that politely posted reviews, some good , some fair and some bad ones too. Trustpilot decided to contact every one of my customers and ask for Order ID's to prove they ordered from me. Most customers didnt have receipts as we operate an online admin system.

Trustpilot proceeded to delete all my real reviews. Now they have left 2 reviews about my company live and neither of them are real.

This saga has been going on for months now and it is another indication that Trustpilot has not got a handle on things.

Update 30/7/2012

Trustpilot will no longer even allow our customers to review us but keep 2 fake reviews live. Either take our profile offline or allow us to review.

Heather June Soper and Daniel Jeffereys found this review useful

06 June 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Conrad,

Thanks for your feedback.

The purpose of Trustpilot is to share real shopping experiences from real people. We have a team of community supporters, who handle all reported reviews to check that the reviews are not fabricated and ensure overall quality of the review site.

I can't go into details about your specific case, other than our community support already spent a lot of time investigating all reported reviews on your company profile.

Regards,
Joakim
Trustpilot

Yay!

Allows me to spout my opinions about companies, and hopefully help influence others decisions on whether to buy of not.

Top site.

great service

great product - great service

Loving it, supper easy!

this is great able to rate all the sites i love the best and give them credit were due.

poor

my review of "Hungry House" has been removed !!

I did receive an email asking for the order details which I have provided but the review is still not visible, I find it a little odd that "hungry House" replied to the post and then complained to you that they could find no record of the order !

I find it even stranger that almost every negitive review of this "outfit" has been removed!

Have Hungry House bought Trustpilot ?

Conrad McKee and Heather June Soper found this review useful

21 May 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Steven,

Thanks for your review.

A company or customer can report any review if they think it conflicts with our review guidelines. In such cases the review is not visible until we have investigated the case - sometimes we need to request additional information from the customer to make sure that the review is written by a real customer.

In your particular case we got the documentation we needed, and it looks like your original review is back online now.

Thanks for contributing with your review and by helping us out by providing additional order details.

Best regards,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot

Rating from Martin Thomson

Looks very good, I hope it's a successful company.

Greaaat company, helpful friendly staff

really great company

Superb

Superb, I can recomment to everyone.

nice

I love trustpilot! Good thing!

Looks a great site

Got me tempted to sign up.. lots of good and interesting reviews!

Great service!

I was pointed in the direction of Trustpilot via a friend who suggested I do a bit of digging about a company I was about to use for something and decided to add my two pence about other companies and services I have used, great great site, just have to take everything with a pinch of salt as everyone has they're own experience!

Helpful site

Just what I was looking for !

Good idea but usability needs improving

Review sites in general are, I believe a good thing - and I always read reviews before making a purchase. Don't always believe them, but they are useful nonetheless.

Decided to contribute to Trustpilot and the first experience was good.

When I came to add another review . . . . well, that wasn't. Sorry trustpilot, but your usability sucks when coming to add more reviews!

Thank You

You guys are helping us to chose the best.Thank You for the great service

I can't log in to send review!

I did a hostel booking using hostelbookers.com.

I wished to send a review of my booking experience through Trustpilot. I spent over 45 minutes to log in with correct email address and password. It says that there is no such email.........and it is my primary email address! I have given up.

10 May 2012

Reply from Trustpilot

Hi Narenda,

Thanks for your review. I'm sorry to hear that you had problems reviewing the specific company.

The company you tried to review has chosen to use an order-id filter. They use that to ensure that they only get reviews from people who actually bought something from them. Look at your order confirmation from the company and enter the order-id when asked for on the review page.

The company must inform customers about how to find or retrieve their order-id, so if it does not work, please contact us at support@trustpilot.com and we'll help you out.

Thanks,
Joakim Ditlev
Trustpilot