Complaint Review: TrustPilot - Internet

Our company had been looking for a firm to help initiate customer opinions and feedback and TrustPilot seemed to be the most widely known of these types of companies. I spoke with them at a conference where they had a booth and entertained a demo of their platform. During this demo, we were still on the fence with their service until they mentioned the fact that they could get our customer review rating to display in Google search results. This was the deciding factor for us and we decided to work with them. I had thought the price tag was exorbanent for sending out some emails, but we did not have time to do it.

After we had been with them for a week and were starting to get everything set up, I asked when our reviews would start showing on Google search results? At that point they then decided to disclose to me that we need to get many more reviews before that would happen. They just then decided to share that piece of information after we had extensively discussed that feature. So we were essentially still a long way from that happening. I immediately told them I was very unhappy and that I wanted to cancel the account. The main reason I signed up was because of that, and I'm guessing that is exactly why they said nothing until after we signed up. They then began calling and emailing repeatedly trying to get us to stay. They even upgraded our account to the next tier for free for the entire year as a result. They asked us "to give it a try for a few more months and see if it's for us", so we decided we would try the service a little longer to see if we could actually find some value in the ridiculous amount of money they charge.

A few weeks later we began working on the integration on our website where their widget would show our most current customer reviews real-time. Nevermind that I find it completely unethical they allow us to filter out the negative reviews so customers cannot see those, they actually wanted full admin privileges to our website in order to install their widget. Not just for the installation process, but continuously. We told them absolutely not. There was no way I was giving them access to our site that could compromise us if they were hacked. ZERO CHANCE. So for any TrustPilot customers out there, pay very close attention to how much access TrustPilot has to your website. That was pretty much the final straw for us. They never followed back up with an alternative option to have the reviews displayed on our site, so two weeks later I told them we were done with the expirament. I told them we did not see any value in their service and we did not like their unnecessary need to have full access to our wesite's backend. Personally I think they are just harvesting data from their customers. I mean they don't even let you keep your own reviews. They force you to keep paying a ridiculous amount of money to keep displaying YOUR COMPANY'S REVIEWS.

I was totally blown away when they responded to our request to close the account with,"we are not able to close your account at this time. You are under contract for one year and at that point you can close the account if you choose". Are you kidding me? You went from begging me to stay and asking me to "try it out just a little longer", to telling me that I was now obligated to them. They sent "PAST DUE" notices a few months later because we were not paying them any longer. I fired off at their accounting department telling them that our account was closed and that I did not want to receive another collection email from them again. They then responded with an apology saying that we "received that email by mistake". It was not supposed to come to us. Yet months later it happened again. This time it went to collections. They expected me to pay them $7200 for services they never rendered. Unbelievable.

I FIND IT COMPLETELY APPAULING THAT A COMPANY WHICH IS SUPPOSEDLY BASED ON TRUST AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, HAS SOME REALLY SERIOUS ETHICAL ISSUES. How can you sit there and act like your firm is literally built on integrity and transparency, yet your sales team and your company seem to lack both of those traits. I just hope this helps someone else avoid the headache we have had to deal with as a result of attempting to work with TrustPilot. We are now workign with a much better firm called Yotpo. They are completely transparent, deliver on their word, and don't need to unnecessarily expose our site to hackers. I highly recommend them.