If the review is completely bogus, chances are you may never be able to get them to change it because, for whatever reason, they want to hurt you or your company, BUT it's absolutely worth trying!

Before you choose which route(s) you want to utilize; how stupid is the review?  If it's utterly obnoxious, you might not even want to bother.  For example, if the moron claims you shipped them a dead cow leg instead of a blouse... WTF?  Nobody would ever believe this, so you shouldn't really worry too much. On the other hand, if you are a chiropractor and someone falsely claims you touched them inappropriately OR if your an online seller and someone who never purchased insists the authentic item is "fake", you may want to get it removed ASAP.  

The bogus review could be from a terminated employee, an ex, a competitor or even just mean people doing what they do best… being mean for no reason. BUT, before you cry yourself to sleep, consider these options:

ROUTE #1: (COST: $500+)  You can contact a Lawyer. He / She can send the site the fake review was posted on a legal demand to have it removed. Expect this to cost you $500 - $3,000. BUT the outcome is usually crappy; almost all review-sites claim “We are not a publisher, so we do not remove or edit reviews” - meaning, you are S.O.L.

Also, the website will NOT give your lawyer any information regarding the fake reviewer. In order to obtain this info you will need to file a lawsuit first, then you can subpoena the info from the site the bogus review was left on. If you are filing a lawsuit, you should expect costs to rise to $5,000 - $20,000+. We will go over all of the costs a different day.

But please note, even IF you were able to access the fake reviewers information, it is likely all made up. So you’ll end up with a bunch of expensive nothing. What on earth are you going to do with an email address of HarryPotter12345@hotmail.com and the name “Harry Pottaaahz”?  Is that crap worth $6,000?  Heck no.

ROUTE #2: (COST $0) Attempt to contact the fake reviewer through the platform. You can “threaten” legal action if they do not remove / revise the Defamation / Libel. You can send them a direct message that is something like this:

“It has come to our attention that on April 20th, 2020 you posted a review stating our company refused to let you pick up your purchase and also proceeded to throw tomatoes and cucumbers at your vehicle. Perhaps you have our company confused with a different company, because on April 20th, 2020 we were closed for renovations, therefore we had no pickups scheduled. Additionally, a thorough review of our security camera footage proves that no employees were present at our establishment that day.

We realize you could have posted this review in error and we would like to give you the opportunity to correct these inaccuracies so we are not forced to proceed with legal action against you. A lawsuit is costly for our small business as well as you, so we would like for the Defamatory statements to be corrected by May 1, 2020 so we can officially drop this issue.

We thank you for your cooperation!”

Tip: You will get quicker cooperation by giving the liar a way out. If you casually suggest, “perhaps this was an error and you *thought* this company was someone else you ordered through”, the fake-reviewer might see this as a golden opportunity to end the game and simply delete the review.

BUT, chances are the reviewer just made the bogus account just to leave some bad reviews, so they likely are not checking the email associated with it, therefore they most likely will never get your reply.

ROUTE #3: (COST: $0) Respond. You can respond in “legal speak”, which may scare the reviewer into deleting it:

"Perhaps you have our company confused with a different company, because on April 20th, 2020 we were closed for renovations, therefore we had no pickups scheduled. Additionally, a thorough review of our security camera footage proves that no employees were present at our establishment that day.

We realize you could have posted this review in error and we would like to give you the opportunity to correct these inaccuracies so we are not forced to proceed with legal action against you. A lawsuit is costly for our small business as well as you, so we would like for the Defamatory statements to be corrected by May 1, 2020 so we can officially drop this issue.

We thank you for your cooperation!”

OR you can just respond in normal talk:

“Hello, we have no order under this name, so this review is completely fake. Our business loves local pickups and we would never disrespect a customer in this nature.”

ROUTE #4: Report the review. Almost all sites have an option to “flag” a review. If this evil person is posting only bogus bad reviews and you “flag it”, the site may see that this person isn’t legit and they might delete the persons profile which will also remove the reviews. We have had to do this with fake YouTube comments. 

ROUTE #5 - IF you are 100% sure that you know WHO is writing the reviews (for example, you have a text message from your ex that SAYS he/she is going to destroy your company with fake reviews), then you can go back to Route #1 but instead of sending legal paperwork to the site with the review, have the Cease & Desist and Legal Demand to remove the Defamatory statements served directly on your ex.  BUT... and this is a super big BUT... if you are wrong and it is NOT your ex posting the reviews, you *could* be countersued for harassment.  So please don't take this route if you are not totally-totally-a-million-percent positive.  

ALSO ROUTE #5 - IF you know your ex is behind this defamation but you don't think it's him/her; you instead believe he / she got other people to leave the bogus reviews for them, you absolutely CAN still serve your ex with the paperwork.  You just want to make sure your legal demand includes stuff like "Harassment by Proxy", which means the ex is having his new lover hurt you for him.  Basically, what you are saying is, "Even though Jamie didn't personally leave the bogus review, he got Sam to, at his direction".

IN CLOSING - A bad fake review truly isn't the end of the world.  In fact, we have previously discussed how having a perfect 5-star rating could make people believe you are buying positive reviews!  If you don't know how the 5-Star Review Scam works, read our article: My Trip to the Dark Side of Amazon: Exposing the 5 Star Review Scam, so in most instances, having 4-4.9 stars may even be better than having a perfect score!  

If you have not been able to get the bogus review removed, the best thing you can do is reply, using the directions explained above in Route #3.  Real buyers do read reviews and more importantly, they read the companies reply.  If your reply makes it clear that there is no order under this name, you will not lose business over it.  In 2020 most people have become intelligent enough to understand that it is not possible to make every customer happy.