After making a negative review on a business, they wrote a reply that included my home address. I called the business up to ask them to remove the address (keeping everything else) but they have ignored that request.
It appears they’re doxxing me and I’m assuming this is an attempt to intimidate me into deleting my review.
The frustrating thing is that there is no “report” button on the business owner’s reply so I can’t even get Google to look into it.
Anyone here had a similar experience and can share what they’ve done to resolve it?
I’ll definitely reachout to the GMB team and hopefully @MashaPS will be able to help as well. Whilst I rarely make a negative review, it’s pretty disconcerting when there appears to be no obvious course of action when local guides are exposed like this.
Please reach out to the Google My Business community as @MortenCopenhagen advised, where the community managers and experts would be able to advise you accordingly. At the GMB community, I suggest clicking on Spam & Policy, then creating a post there. Please note not to include any of your or the business’ personal information, but rather allow a community expert or Googler to contact you to obtain it.
Thanks for your reply, I have just reached out to the GMB community and in doing so, I’ve seen some similar posts that describe similar situations but there wasn’t any answer that directly solved the problem.
There appears to be a way that some of the senior members (Gold Product Experts) could escallate the issue to a Google employee but again, it’s not clear when they do that and what requirements need to be met before that happens. Hopefully there’s someone in the community that can help with this.
Is there any escallation you can do on your side? What would be really helpful is if Google could add the “flag as inappropriate” to the business owners’ replies.
I think there is huge value in Local Guides continuing to provide honest and reliable reviews. However, without some sort of protection, I’m feeling hesitant to continue making honest negative reviews, especially where the business has access to my personal details.
After getting trying to get advice from the GMB Community and emailling the GMB Team, the answer is that Google are unable edit/remove replies from the seller. The only way to do it is for Local Guides to remove their reviews.
For anyone interested, here’s my post in the GMB Forum and within it I’ve also included the email trail I had with the GMB Team.
That makes for sad reading and makes the tactic employed by this particular business all the more powerful in getting truthful, yet negative, reviews removed.
I’m sorry that you’re having to jump through hoops to try and resolve what would seem to be a no-brainer when it comes to the inappropriate behaviour of the other party.
I’m very surprised to hear Google saying they “can’t” remove the reply, I’d be amazed if that was actually the case, it seems more likely that they “won’t” because it doesn’t specifically breach any particular policy (although there are several “Privacy Policies” that suggest posting personal information is frowned upon.
I’m not sure where you’re located but if it’s in the US the “Consumer Review Fairness Act” might offer some help although I’m not sure a home address would be considered “confidential” or “private” information. Other similar acts may exist in other countries too.
Hi @Roshen please PM me a link of the review which has this personal information in it. I checked all of your reviews and I cannot see any that are as you describe.
Given they replied, this means that they are a user of Google My Business so I would report the issue at https://support.google.com/business as this may be a violation of the terms of service.
I contacted the business again today to try and get them to take down my name and address but they refused, saying that it will be deleted when I delete my comment.
Since then I’ve deleted the review and reposted it with an additional warning about the doxxing but I don’t think it’s published yet. I’m not sure if Google is holding back on publishing my second review as deleting then immediately reposting might trigger some sort of automatic hold on it.
I’ve still got the email from when Google sent me the notification about the owner’s reply so I can send that to you via PM.
I’m actually in Australia and when I first looked into seeing what could be done, apparently if I was in Europe, there is a form for people to contact Google and point out these breaches of privacy. I was getting excited when I saw the form but I realised there was an issue when the list of countries only included those in the EU.
There should be legal avenues but it’s not something I would like to pursue for this reason. I was just hoping that Google would have more options for Local Guides in situations like this.
Hi @Roshen sometimes reviews are made private so only you can see it. This can due to many reasons including the wording of the text used.
I would definitely report the business at https://support.google.com/business include a link to the business entry and let them know you’ve removed the review but that you have the email.
Below is my exact review (company name removed), I’m actually very interested if there was any words I used that breached policy and therefore made it private. I’m generally pretty careful with what I write but I may have triggered something so any advice is always appreciated.
PRIVACY ALERT – This company uses doxxing to intimidate customers to remove negative reviews.
I had to delete my initial review and repost it because in the company’s reply, they had listed my full name and address.
When I contacted them to ask them to remove those details, they said that they won’t and it will only be removed when we remove the original comment on Google.
Is this a company you want to shop with?
Original Review:
Alarm bells rang as soon as I placed the order because I didn’t get an email confirmation and yes, I did check the junk mail.
After about three days and logging back in to see that the order was still “processing”, I tried to ring their office number on the website but didn’t get through after many attempts over different hours of the day for several days.
I then tried to ring their stores and after many attempts at both stores I finally got through to their Broadway store, which I was then informed that because of COVID they were having massive delays and I should wait another seven days for the order to be despatched. This was highly unusual as every other online store I’ve used during this period has actually been just as efficient, if not more, than pre-COVID but I still went along with it.
After the time was up, the order was still not sent, I still recieved no communication about the status of my order so I had no choice but to escallate with PayPal.
Pro Tip: ALWAYS use PayPal!
No one from Removed sent any messages to PayPal throughout the escallation process and had just decided that the best course of action was the hold onto the money until PayPal forced them to refund it.
You might get lucky if you buy directly from the shop but AVOID their online store at all cost.
Hi @Roshen I can’t really give that kind of advice. I know that isn’t very helpful. A few tips I can suggest, avoiding mentioning other companies and describe your exact experience, try and write it in an non emotive way.
It is terrible to have a bad experience from a business and you have my empathy. We’ve all been there.
Given you’re an Aussie I would recommend contacting https://www.accc.gov.au/ because if they are doing these things with you they may be doing it with others.