In the last 5 years, I wrote 2* 1-star reviews. Both were well founded, based on personel experience with that company and simply correct. Honest warnings to other Google Maps users to stay clear of those businesses.
Both reviews were never posted.
One was for a hotel. The heating and cooling were not working properly, rooms were old and noisy, Wifi basically non-existant and the roof was leaking in various common areas. Just in general a bad experience. Was not published, only note is that it violates community guidelines.
The other was way worse. I ordered a sofa in 2021 from a store that is exclusively selling online. Expected delivey got delayed and delayed, in the end it would have been 29 weeks or more (they advertised with 8-12 weeks). So I cancelled and was refunded the money in full. So I wrote a 2 star review about that experience. Within 24 hours they contacted me through my ordering e-mail and offered 150€ for me to take down my 1 star review. As I use google reviews a lot, this is an absolute no-go. 150€ for removal of a single 1 star review. So I updated my review to 1 star and included the information, that they tried to bribe me. Was not posted for claimed violation of the community guidelines. As I know from amazon reviews that they don’t like it if you put actual prices in the review, I removed the “150€” and instead wrote it in words. This happened more than a year after the initial review. Was still not posted. I was later contacted by the community team with the business’s new claim. They now claimed, that my review is marked as “new” even though it is from outdated experience. Despite a) the delay being 100% their fault and b) my review clearly stating the dates, when this occurred and when my original review and its update were written. They minded the google maps marking of it being a “new” review which I can do nothing about. In the mail conversation, it became obvious, that the google team would do nothing but forward my reply to the business. I’m pretty sure that no-one from google ever actually read my review or my comment on the business’s claim.
So is there anything that I could do? Regarding the hotel I don’t care too much. But that sofa place trying to bribe me is absolutely bothering me. Who knows, how many people actually took that bribe. Therefore I want to warn potential buyers from skewed average review ratings. Otherwise google reviews have mostly become useless to me.
Plus they were obviously creating fake 5 star reviews on their own. Different platforms, various people with the same name that just made that single 5 star review, nothing else.