How can I deal with a bad or negative review about my business?

Firstly, don’t panic – the HUGE majority of all reviews we see are positive. Also remember that a bad review is much less important than you think. The reason is this: whilst we may fear a bad review of our own business, most of us exercise a human judgment when we’re listening to others’ opinions about anything, and a few negative reviews won’t harm your business.

It could also be a case of mistaken identity where your business name is similar to another, so remain calm and eliminate that possibility first.

To provide total transparency Brownbook.net shows all users the identity of reviewers, so anyone reading can see who left the review and visit their profile to get a feel for how much credibility they want to put into that review. We do allow unregistered users to leave reviews, but we also show if they are anonymous so people can make up their own minds whether to take notice.

Here’s a suggested way to deal with bad reviews:
Number 1 – seek to resolve the issue that caused the negative review and ask the reviewer to update their review accordingly. An unhappy customer who gets looked after most often becomes your strongest and most outspoken supporter.

Number 2 – invite your happy customers to add positive reviews to balance (or better still outweigh) the opinions. You can do this through Brownbook.net by hitting ‘invite reviews’ on your business listing page. In fact we would encourage this as a proactive practice, not just in reaction to a bad review.

Lastly don’t forget, whether you know it or not, people are discussing your business in pubs, restaurants, online forums, websites, and by email already. Brownbook.net gives you the ability to hear it, respond, and allow new customers to see the good things people are saying about you.

Dealing with spam, obscene or illegal reviews
We provide a ‘report’ system that allows any user to report spam, obscene, or illegal reviews. To report a review of this nature click ‘report review’ on the appropriate review and our admin team will take a look and clean it up if necessary.

PLEASE NOTE: Don’t report a review just because you don’t agree with it, we believe in free speech and we won’t remove or edit reviews without very good cause. If you have a serious well-founded and supportable complaint against a reviewer you should read our Reviews Policy to understand how you can notify us and how we can help you deal with it.

Removal of reviews
As a matter of principle we don’t interfere with reviews, but where a review is proved to be illegal we provide the means for a business owner to notify us and for us to take action. See our Reviews Policy for details.