There’s no doubt that it
takes a lot of hard work and dedication to maintain your online reputation, and
it may be tempting to look for ways to ease the burden. One way is to hire a
company that specializes in reputation management. There are plenty of companies out there that offer
seemingly quick and easy ways to improve your online ratings. Unfortunately,
some of these review companies may be using “Black Hat” techniques and putting dealers
that use their services at risk. A classic example is the dealership that
suffered devastating reputation damage a few years ago because of the
review-posting practices of a company they hired. A customer discovered that suspicious “reviewers” were writing
5-star reviews about all kinds of businesses and dealerships across the nation
on the same day.
Another area of concern is the
activity of a company’s own employees. The Federal Trade Commission charged a
California marketing company with
deceptive advertising after it found that the company’s employees were posing
as ordinary consumers posting positive reviews online. Even worse, The Florida
Attorney General sued an auto dealership for violations of Florida’s Deceptive
and Unfair Trade Practices Act, for its employees allegedly posting fake
reviews.
FTC
guidelines require companies to ensure that their posts are completely accurate
and not misleading, and planting or allowing fake reviews is a clear violation.
Dealers may also face liability if employees review their employer’s services
or products without disclosing the employment relationship. The FTC
requires the disclosure of all “material connections” between a reviewer and
the company that is being reviewed. These connections can be any relationship
between a reviewer and the company that could affect the credibility a consumer
gives to that reviewer’s statements, such as an employment or business
relationship. So if employees, friends, family, or vendors post reviews
to prop up a dealership’s online reputation, they must clearly disclose any
relationship they have with the company. In addition, all reviews must be
an honest opinion based on a real experience. Reviewers must never endorse a
product or service that they have not used personally or create any other form
of false endorsement.
Failure
to follow these regulations can result in substantial penalties. In recent
actions, the New York Attorney General fined a company $300,000 for ordering
its employees to write fake reviews and the FTC ordered another company to pay
$250,000 for fake reviews posted by the company's affiliate marketers. In the
Florida dealership case, the lawsuit seeks restitution for harmed consumers,
civil penalties of up to $15,000 per violation, attorneys’ fees and costs, and
injunctive relief.
The FTC
has stated that companies are fully responsible and liable for all
inappropriate actions of their employees, their vendors, and any advocates they
recruit. While reviewers may also be held personally liable for statements made
in the course of their endorsements, the
FTC has indicated that its enforcement activities will generally focus on companies
receiving the reviews.
Paid-for
reviews are another area that regulators are cracking down on. The
practice of offering a free oil change or gas card to a customer in exchange
for a good survey has long been frowned upon by manufacturers. Because there
are no factory gatekeepers when it comes to online ratings, it may seem
tempting to offer customers an incentive to post a positive review. The good
news is that you can if you want to; the not-so-good news is that the FTC requires that any reviewer provided with any form of compensation for posting a
review must fully disclose the source and nature of any compensation received. So, if
you pay for reviews and the reviewers fail to disclose their compensation, you
may face liability. This is an area where it’s easy to get caught and besides
the legal danger, your reputation will likely take a big hit.
While paying
someone to write a review is not illegal as long as it is disclosed to the
reader, doing so would likely hamper the review's credibility. In addition, the
dealer would be responsible for holding the reviewer accountable for properly
disclosing the compensation. In other words, paid-for reviews are probably not
worth the trouble.
Besides the potential legal ramifications, fake, paid-for,
and “on behalf of” reviews violate the
Terms of Service for most review sites. Google, Yelp, and others
are cracking down on reviews written by someone hired or paid by a business, and violations could result in having reviews removed or
worse, being banned and causing a dip in your
search rankings. There’s also the very real possibility that after getting
caught gaming the system, no one will trust your reviews ever again.
This past summer Google deleted hundreds of reviews
from a number of dealerships for what they described as “suspicious behavior”
and “spammy” content. Unfortunately, it seems that they went over the top and
deleted many legitimate reviews, but the fact remains that they are looking
very closely at the review-posting process. Google wants to
ensure that reviews are posted from real people and not agents acting on a consumer’s
behalf. There are a number of companies that offer business owners a service
that will call their customers, collect a review, and post it on Google. This
violates Google’s policies and those reviews will eventually be removed for
spam.
Yelp has long been notorious for
filtering reviews on their site, but recently they have gone even further. Apparently,
they set up a sting operation to help uncover companies that purchase fake
positive reviews, then calling out the offenders and showing the world its
evidence. Consumer Alerts have shown up on Yelp reviews that say “We caught
someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business. We weren’t fooled,
but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts consumers, but
also honest businesses who play by the rules”.
If someone is
assisting you with your online reputation management, make sure you fully
understand exactly how they are gathering the reviews, posting them and
distributing them. This goes for your
staff as well.
It’s never been more
important to be 100% authentic in your
review-gathering and Online Reputation Management – the penalties can be
very large and are not worth the risk. Questionable
reputation management tactics can destroy a dealership’s credibility, lead to
legal headaches, and do far more harm than good.
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