Trustpilot's inconvenient truth: my very bad personal experience.
In a digital world where reputation is everything, platforms like Trustpilot promise to offer transparency and a genuine exchange of opinions. However, my personal experience with Trustpilot raises serious concerns about their integrity, fairness, and the real value they offer to businesses and consumers.
Promising beginning, disappointing ending.
As the owner of "Valerio.co.uk," a European registered trademark, I initially perceived Trustpilot as a useful platform to collect feedback and improve our services. However, as time passed, it became apparent that their practices and policies may not be as transparent as claimed.
Unwarranted demands and unexpected pressure from Trustpilot.
My disillusionment began when, despite years of collaboration without incident while I was a paying customer and one of their ambassadors, I decided not to renew my paid plan. Suddenly, objections were raised to content that had been part of my site for years without issue. This change in attitude got me thinking: is it possible that Trustpilot is putting unfair pressure on those who choose not to join their paid plans?
One of the most controversial aspects of my interaction with Trustpilot was their approach to "freedom of expression." Although they often cite this principle, my experience suggests that it is applied selectively, often in favor of the platform itself rather than the companies or individuals who use it to express honest opinions.
In particular Trustpilot has shown strong aggression, going so far as to threaten legal action if I did not remove the paragraph on the "customers" page in which I say that I have collected thanks to Facebook, Google and Trustpilot X number of reviews, which is approximate and not traceable to the actual reviews on Trustpilot alone.
And they write to me:
"The number of reviews on your Trustpilot profile page is considered a Trustpilot brand asset and as such must be used in accordance with applicable copyright, trademark and other laws."
Content ownership is exclusive to Trustpilot-a not insignificant detail.
One critical aspect, often overlooked by new Trustpilot users-partly because of the language barrier, since the terms and conditions are available only in English-is that none of the content generated on the platform is owned by the client. None!
This includes reviews, overall rating, and the number of reviews collected itself. Trustpilot customers are not allowed to use this information at will, which is a significant restriction, especially considering that many rely on this data to promote their business.
Curiously, these restrictions become even more stringent and problematic when a company decides it is no longer a paying customer. At that point, the restrictions on the use of one's data collected through Trustpilot become obvious and particularly frustrating.
Not only can companies no longer actively manage reviews, but they also lose the ability to leverage the positive ratings accumulated during the subscription period for promotional or marketing purposes since the only way to represent them is through the official widgets, and in the free plan there is only 1 available that does NOT report either the ratings, the score, or the number of reviews collected. In short. Is completely useless.
This policy raises important questions about the actual usefulness and transparency of Trustpilot as a business partner. Companies need to be aware that once payment is stopped, access to the benefits of their own positive reviews can be drastically limited or eliminated, unless they choose to Continue to pay the often exorbitant subscription fee.
Selective use of Terms and Conditions.
My dispute with Trustpilot also highlighted how their terms and conditions can be interpreted broadly, often to the detriment of the platform's users. In the absence of specific copyright violations or other legal guidelines on my part, Trustpilot's request to edit or remove content was not only unwarranted but also seemed to be an attempt to restrict my ability to communicate freely.
This experience eroded my trust in Trustpilot as an unbiased custodian of consumer reviews and feedback, and I truly regret having been an official ambassador of theirs for several years, unfortunately ignoring these unfortunate aspects of their service.
I believe it is critical for anyone using the platform, both businesses and consumers, to think carefully about the genuineness and impartiality of the reviews they read and the transparency of the platform's practices.
I share this experience not to denigrate, but to inform.
It is vital that everyone understands the potential conflicts and limitations when relying on platforms that are supposed to protect transparency and honesty.
Questionable added value: the ephemeral effectiveness of Trustpilot.
Despite Trustpilot's promise to facilitate transparent and constructive communication between businesses and consumers, the reality often proves otherwise, especially when one considers the high cost of the service, which can reach thousands of euros per year.
Here are some critical points that question the actual usefulness of Trustpilot as a review platform:
- Passive collection of reviews: Trustpilot is primarily limited to collecting reviews, acting as a container rather than a true tool for active engagement between company and customer. This passive approach may not translate into real improvement for companies that seek to actively use feedback to improve their services.
- Limited control over reviews: Companies have little room to adequately manage or respond to reviews. Although it is possible to respond publicly, the lack of options to challenge potentially unfair or false reviews seriously limits a company's ability to protect its reputation.
- Properties of reviews: Companies do not hold ownership of reviews left on Trustpilot, which means they cannot freely reuse them for promotional or informational purposes without using the tools provided by the platform, such as official widgets. This prevents flexible integration of customer feedback into marketing strategies. Warning, even a simple "copy/paste" is prohibited.
- Mandatory use of official widgets: Trustpilot mandates the use of its widgets for displaying reviews, further restricting the freedom of companies to customize how and where they show their customer feedback on their digital channels. You cannot even do a "screen capture" of your badge or score, you cannot show "stars," you cannot show anything about your page on Trustpilot.
- Quality and truthfulness of reviews: A significant problem is the lack of strict control over the veracity of reviews. Many entrepreneurs, including myself, have experienced situations where clearly false reviews or reviews written by non-customers have been published and maintained on the platform despite complaints, undermining the reliability of the rating system.
It has happened to me that I have received very few negative reviews--I cannot disclose the number otherwise I will be sued--from NON-customers, and although they were blatantly deliberate attacks on my reputation and not objective evaluations of my products or services, there was no way to remove them.
The combination of these limitations, coupled with the high cost of membership, raises serious questions about Trustpilot's effective value-add for businesses. In an era when authenticity and transparency are more important than ever, it is critical that review platforms offer services that not only respect but promote these values without imposing unjustified restrictions or prohibitive costs.
Companies should carefully consider whether investing in Trustpilot really meets their online marketing and reputation needs or whether more flexible and less expensive alternatives might better serve their interests, such as Google Reviews.
Questionable practices in customer acquisition by Trustpilot.
A particularly problematic aspect of Trustpilot's policy is their approach to creating unclaimed business pages. This practice involves automatically generating company pages to collect reviews, without the companies themselves ever having given consent for their creation.
Such a method not only goes against every principle of brand and copyright respect, but also raises significant legal issues concerning the unauthorized use of trademarks and other corporate assets.
Many companies thus find themselves forced to interface with a page on Trustpilot that they never wanted, driven by the need to deal with reviews that may have been left by non-customers or, even worse, malicious competitors using the platform to defame or damage their reputation.
This situation puts companies in a difficult position: ignoring the page could allow unfounded negative reviews to damage their online reputation, while claiming the page involves agreeing to play by the rules imposed by Trustpilot, often at additional cost.
The fact that Trustpilot adopts tactics that virtually force companies to actively participate on their platform raises serious concerns about their integrity as a neutral intermediary in the review process. Instead of acting as a true facilitator of constructive dialogue between companies and consumers, Trustpilot appears to be taking advantage of its position as a review platform to generate revenue, often at the expense of the very companies that unwittingly become part of their system.
Trustpilot's creation of unclaimed company pages is a violation of the right of companies to control how their brands are presented and used online. This practice, which contravenes basic principles of brand respect and commercial fairness, deserves critical reflection and, where necessary, decisive action by the affected companies.
It is essential that review platforms operate with the utmost transparency and equity, ensuring that each company has the freedom to decide whether and how its online presence can be managed in relation to consumer feedback.
On their site I found no reference to the right to delete one's page with the reviews collected, a disturbing aspect that deserves further investigation on my part to ascertain whether indeed the company that finds itself reviewed without its knowledge (or after contracting with Trustpilot), can delete its brand and what it has collected from their site.
If this were not the case, it would constitute, in my humble and very personal opinion, a blatant violation of the unpermitted use of others' trademarks.
Criticism of Trustpilot's Terms and Conditions: a linguistically and legally questionable agreement.
One of the most pronounced criticisms of Trustpilot concerns its terms and conditions, which are not only available only in English, but also impose significant restrictions on the use of the platform's intellectual property.
This situation represents a not insignificant issue, especially considering that Trustpilot operates in a European context where the law requires that such documents be made available in the language of the user's country to ensure full understanding and legitimacy of consent.
The specific passage in the terms and conditions that mentions:
"You agree not to copy, distribute, modify or make derivative works of any of our content or use any of our intellectual property rights in any way not expressly permitted by us. This means you are not allowed to use our logos, graphics, and trademarks ("our brand marks") or any other content on our platform like TrustScores and reviews unless we specifically say you are authorized to use them."
Translated into Italian:
"You agree not to copy, distribute, modify or create derivative works from any of our content or use our intellectual property rights in ways not expressly permitted by us. This means that you are not allowed to use our logos, graphics, and trademarks ("our trademarks") or any other content on our platform such as TrustScores and reviews unless you have been specifically authorized to do so by us."
Reveals an overly strict restriction on how businesses can use the material they have access to through the platform. This imposes strict limitations on companies that want to leverage reviews and scores to promote their business, unless they exclusively use the tools provided by Trustpilot, such as widgets.
In addition, the clause:
"For all users, whether you are on our free plan or have a subscription: Whether we terminate your subscription or access to your business account, these terms will still apply to anything that happened before we terminated."
translated:
"For all users, whether you have a free plan or a subscription: regardless of whether we terminate your subscription or access to your corporate account, these terms will continue to apply to anything that occurred before termination."
suggests that restrictions and obligations imposed while using Trustpilot's services continue to persist even after an account is closed. This can create a situation of legal uncertainty for companies that decide to break away from the platform, still finding themselves bound by terms that could limit their ability to freely manage their brand and reputation online.
I believe that more than one judge would raise several objections to this clause, which, contrary to any legal regulation, requires the customer company to maintain the same obligations it assumed when it signed the service contract, even when the service contract is terminated. I am flabbergasted!
The combination of these factors makes Trustpilot's terms and conditions not only problematic from the standpoint of respecting the rights of user companies, but also potentially in conflict with European regulations on transparency and contractual accessibility.
Conclusion: a service far from expectations.
Reflecting on the totality of my experiences with Trustpilot (at the time I post this review my page is still active here), multiple concerns regarding transparency, fairness and the actual value of the service provided clearly emerge.
From the creation of unauthorized company pages to the restrictiveness of the terms and conditions, available only in English, that impose strict limitations on the use of reviews and collected data, Trustpilot demonstrates a range of practices that I perceived as coercive and opaque.
The prohibitive cost of the service, coupled with the lack of flexibility in managing reviews and the loss of control over content once the subscription ends, poses serious doubts about the sustainability and ethicality of this platform as an online marketing and reputation management tool.
My experience, though personal and therefore subjective, suggests that. Trustpilot may not be the ideal choice for those seeking a genuinely transparent and fair review platform. Businesses, in particular, should weigh carefully whether the service offered justifies the investment, considering possible long-term restrictions and complications.
Evaluation
In conclusion, based on my personal experiences and the evidence gathered, my evaluation of Trustpilot is decidedly negative.
I urge every company to carefully evaluate and consider more flexible and transparent alternatives that can respect and promote the values of authenticity and integrity so necessary in today's digital landscape.