How to deal with fraudulent reviews

[Soniayekkalar]

Hi!
I start a small vegan kitchen months ago and my customers are happy with the taste and quality of the food. I check the reviews every day and respond to them. Recently, someone has started to post really nasty reviews on DoorDash saying he got sick …
The first time, I got so worried and tried to find his order to see what he had ordered so I contact other customers to make sure they were fine. But I found out there was no order information attached to his review. I went through the orders and there was no order including the items he had mentioned in his review.
So, I contacted DoorDash and after an hour, it was categorized as fraudulent and removed. It has happened three times so far and I was able to resolve it. However, this person keeps doing this and I’m afraid at some point, he will figure out I know about his fraudulent account and start ordering food for real and post his nasty review and I can’t file the fraudulent review file. It will destroy the business.
Does anyone have any similar experience? Is there any way I can find out the account holder information? I really want to know how someone can leave a review without ordering! Thanks again!

 

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[Disciple96]

This may not be the answer your looking for, but DoorDash seems like it should only be one part of your revenue stream. Otherwise you may be violating the commandment of Control..

There is no real solution to this problem. However I might try to assure you that as long as you continue to do well by others, this kind of thing isn't something that will ruin your reputation. And it's not something too common I would think you need to stress about it.

 

[Johnny boy]

order from yourself 50x and write 50 reviews

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@GuitarManDan might have some ideas, without giving away his secret sauce...

 

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[Soniayekkalar]

order from yourself 50x and write 50 reviews

Thanks! My problem is the public comment was about being sick by food. It doesn’t help me if I write so many reviews saying such a high quality food because I didn’t get sick
I guess I’m overthinking things. thanks for your response.

 

[Johnny boy]

Thanks! My problem is the public comment was about being sick by food. It doesn’t help me if I write so many reviews saying such a high quality food because I didn’t get sick
I guess I’m overthinking things. thanks for your response.

you just want a high rating and it makes the shitty review guy look stupid

 

[Soniayekkalar]

you just want a high rating and it makes the shitty review guy look stupid

Good point!

 

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[fastlane_dad]

order from yourself 50x and write 50 reviews

I'm pretty sure that's against DoorDash / YELP and any other large merchant TOS. You can't just be 'ordering from yourself and writing fake reviews'.

Naturally - bad reviews and criticism will come, no matter what you are selling - that is a fact of life. Whether this one is real or fake is one thing --- but namely people DO and WILL get sick sometimes from your food, or assuming its your food -- it's a natural order of food, even if you take the UTMOST precautions.

I'm glad to hear you were able to fight this one off , and they flag it as being fraudulent - you are not always that lucky with platforms. This is an issue that exists on almost any other large marketplace ( hint: amazon). The best solution is to provide great service and product, and encourage your current customers to post feedback to drown out the noise of the bad reviews. Good Luck and keep us posted.

 

[Soniayekkalar]

I'm pretty sure that's against YELP and any other large merchant TOS. You can't just be 'ordering from yourself and writing fake reviews'.

Naturally - bad reviews and criticism will come, no matter what you are selling - that is a fact of life. Whether this one is real or fake is one thing --- but namely people DO and WILL get sick sometimes from your food, or assuming its your food -- it's a natural order of food, even if you take the UTMOST precautions.

I'm glad to hear you were able to fight this one off , and they flag it as being fraudulent - you are not always that lucky with platforms. This is an issue that exists on almost any other large marketplace ( hint: amazon). The best solution is to provide great service and product, and encourage your current customers to post feedback to drown out the noise of the bad reviews. Good Luck and keep us posted.

It’s funny how naïve I was about reviewing. I couldn’t believe someone can leave a review on something that doesn’t exist (I mean a specific order for a specific person). So, I decided to try it at left a meaningless review by typing random letters (e.g. st tvhhxbhgjbvfvj guiogvo). It was posted!!! The whole review thing was ridiculous already because we got bad reviews saying something about driver/delivery not the food. This was a new level for me.
I even found out Amazon let people leave reviews without purchasing as well. I just need to have used my card to purchase a random item to be able leave false reviews all over the Amazon. I lost my trust in Amazon because I used to rely on reviews for my purchase and now I know why so many times I was confused by the poor quality of the actual item. I used to take time and leave my honest opinions on items but now I don’t see what’s the point if my review (good or bad) if it is going to be lost among fake ones.
To my surprise, I found out that etsy has a very advance system for reviewing that eliminates any potential abuse by either seller or their competitors. I never liked etsy for some reason I don’t know but it changed my perspective and I will give it a shot for sure.

 

[Soniayekkalar]

It’s funny how naïve I was about reviewing. I couldn’t believe someone can leave a review on something that doesn’t exist (I mean a specific order for a specific person). So, I decided to try it at left a meaningless review by typing random letters (e.g. st tvhhxbhgjbvfvj guiogvo). It was posted!!! The whole review thing was ridiculous already because we got bad reviews saying something about driver/delivery not the food. This was a new level for me.
I even found out Amazon let people leave reviews without purchasing as well. I just need to have used my card to purchase a random item to be able leave false reviews all over the Amazon. I lost my trust in Amazon because I used to rely on reviews for my purchase and now I know why so many times I was confused by the poor quality of the actual item. I used to take time and leave my honest opinions on items but now I don’t see what’s the point if my review (good or bad) if it is going to be lost among fake ones.
To my surprise, I found out that etsy has a very advance system for reviewing that eliminates any potential abuse by either seller or their competitors. I never liked etsy for some reason I don’t know but it changed my perspective and I will give it a shot for sure.

I forgot to say that my husband orders from the kitchen almost every week and leave pleasant reviews!

 

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[GuitarManDan]

@GuitarManDan might have some ideas, without giving away his secret sauce...

Hey @Soniayekkalar - I haven't had any clients that I've helped out with on the DoorDash front of things, but it sounds like from your experience luckily they have procedures in place to knock down fraudulent/fake reviews (that's much more than most of them do haha).

If you run into any issues with your Yelp or Google My Business (now rebranded as Google Maps) feel free to reach out at any point. I obviously wouldn't charge for these services since you're someone form the forum, but I could provide some insights in the best ways to handle some fraudulent/harassing reviews.

The review industry is so sketchy it wouldn't surprise me if it's a competitor. With that being said, I'd reach out to whatever point of contact that you have with DoorDash and see if they can track the IP address of who keeps posting the harassing reviews and maybe they have the ability to blacklist them from posting on your account, just an idea.

Let me know how it all goes!

 

[Soniayekkalar]

Hey @Soniayekkalar - I haven't had any clients that I've helped out with on the DoorDash front of things, but it sounds like from your experience luckily they have procedures in place to knock down fraudulent/fake reviews (that's much more than most of them do haha).

If you run into any issues with your Yelp or Google My Business (now rebranded as Google Maps) feel free to reach out at any point. I obviously wouldn't charge for these services since you're someone form the forum, but I could provide some insights in the best ways to handle some fraudulent/harassing reviews.

The review industry is so sketchy it wouldn't surprise me if it's a competitor. With that being said, I'd reach out to whatever point of contact that you have with DoorDash and see if they can track the IP address of who keeps posting the harassing reviews and maybe they have the ability to blacklist them from posting on your account, just an idea.

Let me know how it all goes!

Thank you so much! The reviewer is from doordash only. Today, someone called us from DoorDash escalation department and said they are working on it. They have similar cases like ours and trying to find the actual problem. I really appreciate your response!