I gave a business (a former employer who was unethical, abusive and never paid me) a bad review and was told that legal action would be taken against me because I had “persistently refused to withdraw this post”. My review was completely honest and truthful. (I removed the review when I found out that it’s a conflict of interest to review a former employer.) I see no record of any rebuttal, complaint and received no email about the business replying to my review or filing a complaint.
Could I have missed the business’ request to remove the review, or a complaint, or missed an email from Google? I believe very strongly that we all need to support ethical and honest business leaders. Being forced to remove an honest review through bullying does not do Google any justice and defeats the purpose of this feature.
As I said, I removed the review when I found out it was a conflict of interest but am very annoyed that a really bad business is getting away with very unethical behaviour and silencing an important element (review and freedom of speech) in our online culture…
Sorry to read about your bad experience with the previous employer.
You rightly noted, the local guide program guidelines prevent us from reviewing current or previous employers.
Since you deleted the review, there wouldn’t be any response on that.
Nevertheless, since the review is not there anymore, that removes the grounds of taking any further action.
Further, your previous employer would be still having your contact details and would have pursued the action through those channels.
Nevertheless, no one would be reading Maps reviews while looking for employment opportunities and hence such feedback is of no use.
Incidentally, I came across a webpage which lists eleven different sites where you can find employee reviews. You can direct your animosity there to alert future job aspirants.
Regardless, let there not be any employer-related reviews on Maps.
Google posts the responses from business owners, subject to the same rules you must follow when posting a review. That is to say, if the review breaks Google’s guideline such as inappropriate language it might be removed, and responses too much follow the guidelines.
Emails from a business to Google would not be posted.
If a response was posted it would have come down when you took your review down. And as you have said, posting a review of an employer, current or former, is against the guidelines I mentioned above.
Thanks for reaching out. You can follow the tips fellow Local Guides kindly shared with you.
In addition to that, I am marking @Flash 's reply as a solution, so other Local Guides can refer to it. The purpose of this feature is to help Local Guides find answers when searching on Connect. Please take a look at How do I mark comments as solutions? article.
Take a moment to recap the following article Maps User Contributed Content Policy where the requirements for contributing on Google Maps are listed and which Local Guides need to follow.