I get really great reviews from customers and I take it oddly personally when I don't get 10/10 or 5/5. I want customers to to feel great about their decision to use me and tell friends and family, and yes, strangers on facebook. So... out of the blue I get 3 random reviews. 1 star. No comments. Nothing. I panic and scroll through my inspection logs and contact information for these 3 unhappy campers to see what was up. Huh? They are from Seattle, and California. They don't know me from Adam, because I sure don't know them. Checked facebook for a remedy to dispute fake reviews and well... they have nothing (Not surprised, I'm still waiting for the DISLIKE button) . Then I tried contacting the posters thinking they may have my awesome inspection company, Sage Inspections, confused with a local plant store or something, but I can't message them because we are not "facebook friends". I looked a bit harder and concluded these folks don't actually exist. So a day or two later I start getting multiple email offers to "repair" my internet reputation. Hmmmm.... for a small fee bad reviews can be removed and replaced with good ones. I deleted them as spam before the lightbulb in my head went off at how convenient and coincidental the timing was. I don't have a great solution, but learned you CAN disable all ratings on facebook. It's kind of a drag since I had some nice words and great ratings from good people, but I cut and pasted those to my website and I have great ratings elsewhere for those that are doing some due diligence. So, if you find yourself needing to kiss facebook's ratings goodbye until there's a mechanism to dispute opportunistic extortionists here ya go. [utube] " type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="344"> They hid the setting in the address section. The downside is it also disables you showing up on a facebook map, but who wants people coming to MY house? I'm going to theirs.
