Rentify took £1m plus off investors on Crowdcube in 2016. Now reviews on Trust Pilot are nothing short of a disaster.
You just have to spend a few seconds on TP on the Rentify page. Page one of the reviews - so the most recent - has twenty reviews. Of these, 7 are one star or would be negative if the the option was afforded. They come with copious notes on the complaints. One other review is two and one three stars, neither recommending the service. So that's pretty half of the most recent reviews telling people to stay away.
Rentify is a customer service business. Or that's what they sold the punters who invested. Accounts due out next month.
Come on Rob. I like your blog but really don't think this is interesting or newsworthy. Anyone know who runs an online business that unless you actively ask your customers to leave reviews for you, the majority of people who go out of their way to find a review site, register and write a comment are doing so to gain some kind of revenge.
ReplyDeleteIf they have more than 25% 5* reviews they are probably doing really well.
Thanks for the post. Id be interested to see any evidence of what you say. In our experience reviews do matter. For example Justpark had some seriously poor reviews which we wrote about but now they have changed their customer service offer and reviews have gone way up. On the the other side, Flavourly and Early Bird both had dreadful reviews, didnt turn that round and have now gone bust. Its not the only metric or even the most important and you have to be careful how you use it, but it is certainly a metric and cant, as you suggest, be ignored. Its not revenge if you get crap service and bother to post about it - its the company's fault for giving crap service. It seems people these days are far more willing to bother to review - both my kids (in their 20's) do it as a matter of course for good and bad. So sorry I really dont think you are right.
DeleteWP: I'm with Harrison - most people I know would only bother reviewing if poor - unless the experience was absolutely amazing. On the subject of JustPark, investors are now happier too as they've just been offered retrospective EIS.
DeleteWell thats fine but you should do some reading - reviews are important in consumers decision making and most people are happy to write one - research all over he internet has shown. IMO you get far more from a bad review than a good one. A product that is giving customers a good return should not be getting 1 star reviews on a consistent basis. His 25% figure is just plain wrong. Maybe you are both 40+?
DeleteIm with the original commenter, lots of bad reviews doesnt mean anything. We have 10,000s of happy customers a month, but unless we actively asked them to review us (and spent time and money making sure they do so), 90% of our trustpilot reviews would be 1*.
ReplyDeleteIt does say one thing, that rentify are either not buying into the whole e-commerce review shakedown. I.e. Pay Trustpilot / your own customer service reps to "manage" your reviews, or that they arent bothering to do so because they arent aware or havent chosen to.