Man to pay £25,000 ($34,000) damages over negative TrustPilot review

They also say "Curate your Trustpilot Company Profile Page through ... adding authentic content". The term "authentic content" is code for "positive reviews", because you'll be able to flag any negative reviews as inauthentic.

And of course you can also look at reviews of Trustpilot itself from third parties, i.e. websites where Trustpilot doesn't have a paid/boosted account, for instance: https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/trustpilot

Edit: I speak from personal experience as a small business owner, described in more detail below.

On Yelp you can buy placement in search results (or on other restaurants' listings in the "Nearby" or "Similar" sections) but they won't remove negative listings for pay. It's certainly possible that individual sales reps will offer that service if they are desperate to hit sales or bonus goals, but Yelp won't actually do it, since the review review team is separate from the sales team.

Source: Personally interviewed nearly a hundred local businesses on behalf of the local Chamber of Commerce.

The BBB pioneered this business model. Yelp perfected it. This is just another flavor for another market.

There 100% needs to be regulation around any kind of review site. If you can pay and change how the reviews look it is 100% corrupt and shouldn’t be allowed.

There are several big brand retailers in the UK who don't pay Trustpilot; you can tell by how many negative reviews they have manged to amass.

Another 'benefit ' of paying Trustpilot is that you can have gold stars underneath your search and ads listings. Google seem happy to to be part of the scam too.

The diff between 1.8 and 4.2 business is that the latter sends mass emails to the customers saying "write us a nice review on TrustPilot, and maybe you'll win a $50 gift card". (Although, in case of the app, we just asked nicely, and many people clicked the banner and went on to give 4* or 5* ratings in the store, for free).

Having said that, if company doesn't care about 1.8 rating and has no actions to change, it's probably a bad sign...

Nice business you got here, would be a shame if someone said something bad about it online. You know we can make that go away...for a price.

On the other hand, sites that let you remove bad reviews or showcase good ones are running a 21st-century protection racket.

I read the text of these reviews. Sometimes the reviewer had unrealistic demands. If this worst case is acceptable, I proceed. If it is a choice between competitors, it often comes to the least bad option.

If there are no reviews under 5 stars, I'm suspicious. If a company replies to reviews, I mentally flag it as doing reputation management - not something you tend to need do when providing a service your customers love.

It is amazing how many nightmare companies have 4-5 star trustpilot reviews.

This appears to be their website: https://www.summerfieldbrowne.com/

Looks like they might've done better to spend the effort making a website that looks like it was made in the last decade before attacking people for negative online reviews.

Musk successfully used the hyperbole defense against the much more serious potential libel "pedo", though admittedly that was in US court.

> In the review, Mr Waymouth alleged: "I paid upfront for a legal assessment of my case.

> "But what I got was just the information I sent them, reworded and sent back to me."

Which sounds pretty scammy to me.

More importantly, he called it a scam, and it isn't clear that that is a lie. He alleges that he paid for work, but they just rephrased the documents he gave them. Why wouldn't that be a scam?

Maybe an analogy to sales would make this more understandable: If I was selling computers and the laptop I sold you had some serious issues, you cannot immediately turn around and call me a scammer. Because it might not be true, actually there is a more likely explanation that I didn't know about the issues with the laptop.

Now if you would talk to me instead and I would insist that there couldn't possibly be an issue with the laptop and charge you for the faulty product, you _might_ call me a scammer. (Maybe one single instance of this wouldn't even be enough. Maybe you would even need to prove that I did in fact know about the problem with the laptop)

On the other hand you can definitely leave a review saying that you received a bad product. You would not be required to talk to the company to be able to do that.

Edit: To further elaborate a bit because I think people in this thread are having some weird reactions to this ruling: It's pretty normal that you cannot go around and tell lies that hurt somebody's business. If you think about it this is very normal. I cannot stand in front of a bakery with a sign that says "The bread in this bakery contains dangerous amounts of lead" if that is not in fact true. And if nobody buys bread anymore because of my sign, I will be liable for the damages incurred.

This is less clear if my sign says: "In my opinion the bread in this bakery tastes funny." Because this is an opinion rather than a fact.

But in the case at hand we are talking about somebody calling a company a "scam solicitor". That's mostly a factual statement, you could prove that the company is either doing regular business or that they are scamming people. If the defendant is not able to prove that they are in fact a scam business, it's very reasonable to assume that he is liable. The concrete damages incurred are however debatable in my opinion.

But most of the time a bad interaction can be resolved via the help line or a dispute process.

But even if that fails doesn't make the shop a scam. It makes them a bad shop. You can say so in your review since "bad shop" is a subjective opinion and not a statement of fact. "scam" is not only an objective fact but also something illegal so it's going to require some evidence to back that up.

And yes, that can be used against you in court. If the defendant had gone through the dispute process, it is more likely the court would have atleast partially sided with them, if they showed up in court (which they also didn't) and claimed to have been emotionally distraught or similar when writing that review over the cost or process of whatever happened.

This is the difference between freedom of speech as it is in the US and freedom of opinion more commonly deployed in Europe. Statements of fact require you to have some kind of proof. The level of proof will differ depending on what it's about, but insinuating that someone is a scammer will require you to show that to be fact.

Much like amazon reviews they absolutely cannot be trusted to be a representation of the truth

That said, I hope that "scam" is common enough vernacular that any actual defence would have managed to convince them that it's a customer airing a grievance and not actually accusing them of a crime.

Thing is, in this case the can be doing exactly the right and wrong thing for the same reasons. There doesn’t seem to be a win here except to not be a publisher of reviews that will (intentionally) upset unpaying and please your paying customers.

I liked the old internet.

Cunning plan, that.

Wouldn't there be fee shifting in the UK? By that I mean that the losing party pays the winning party's legal costs. That's supposed to be the default in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee...

> Seeing there was no justice here I decided not to give the court legitimacy by attending.

In most jurisdictions there is a higher court you can appeal to if you don't get the result you wanted at the trial court. Denying the trial court's legitimacy and refusing to participate in the judicial process will not help that appeal.

I would probably agree if it was just that. Nowadays review sites are like a massive neon sign hanging above your shop saying '2 star review!!!'. That's often all people see before even having a chance to interact with the business. Reviews also get aggregated, so for instance on Just Eat, if I give 5 stars for delivery and 2 for food quality, the overall score would still be OK( which,in this case, makes it easier for the business but less informative for the customer). Also (and I realize this is tangential to your post), the idea of having to explain why you are unhappy is ridiculous in my view.

>Also (and I realize this is tangential to your post), the idea of having to explain why you are unhappy is ridiculous in my view.

Whenever I visit a pub or restaurant,I pay attention to the state of the toilets because it's often a good sign how serious they take the whole thing. I've been to places where the food is amazing but the place itself is filthy. So I can go and leave a review saying the place is shit.. The owner of the place would have no idea how to improve/change/fix. Now if I go and say the food is good but they need to clean the place, that's something the business can work with,should they decide to, and refusal to improve a known issue,as you said, would result in more people complaining about the same.

>First, the defence of honest opinion. The Claimant submits that the defence of honest opinion cannot succeed in circumstances were the words used convey an allegation of fraud. Mr Bradshaw referred me to the case of Wasserman v Freilich [2016] EWHC 312 (QB), an unreported decision of Sir David Eady sitting as a High Court judge. At paragraph 16 of his judgment Sir David said:

> > "The common sting in the various natural and ordinary meanings, pleaded in paragraph 27 of the particulars of claim, is that the Claimant was dishonest. That has generally been regarded as a factual allegation. It has long been recognised that "the state of a man's mind is as much a fact as the state of his digestion": Edgington v Fitzmaurice (1885) 29 Ch D 459. Juries are deciding on every day of the week, as a matter of fact, whether a particular Defendant was, or was not, dishonest. Accordingly, it is an allegation which in the context of libel is readily understood as being susceptible to a plea of truth under s.2 of the 2013 Act (as was the case with justification). It is not thought to be a matter of opinion: nor can one convert an allegation of dishonesty (or, for that matter, of murder or rape) into a matter of opinion by merely inserting in front of it a formula such as "I believe ..." or "she thinks ...": see e.g. Hamilton v Clifford [2004] EWHC 1542"

>And at paragraph 22 of his judgment he said:

> > "An allegation of dishonesty, fraud or attempted fraud will usually fall fairly and squarely on the side of fact rather than opinion. The same is true also, as I have already mentioned, where the allegation is of "reasonable grounds to suspect". Accordingly, I cannot allow a pleading to go forward in the form of paragraph 19A. It must be struck out."

>Here Mr Bradshaw submits that the allegation of dishonesty made that the Defendant is that it is "a scam solicitor", has the plain meaning that the Claimant is dishonest and fraudulent. The Defendant seeks to present this as an opinion. Mr Bradshaw argues this is impermissible, the Defendant is putting forward the Claimant's dishonesty as a matter of fact and cannot simply say by way of defence "this is my opinion". In the circumstances I accept the law is as stated in Wasserman v Freilich and am satisfied Mr Bradshaw's submission is correct, with the result the defence of honest opinion should be struck out.

[0] https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2021/85.html at paragraphs 15 and 16

[1] https://www.carter-ruck.com/media-law-defamation-libel-and-p...

That does kind of sound like a scam to me.

If I _feel_ like I have been scammed surely I can say so?

If it happens to you, just file for bankruptcy and get it sorted rapidly. You need a few hundred pounds for bankruptcy proceedings, so don't spend them on lawyers!

I'd argue angry man gives legal process he doesn't understand the proverbial middle finger is a more plausible explanation for why it ended up as a summary judgement than judge invents novel way to reduce his case backlog by demanding upfront fees for the defendant to attend.

"I have already made it perfectly clear that this case should never be heard in court and I will not be giving it any credence or legitimacy by attending."