Business owner threatened me after review

[SimoneM]

Hello everybody,

Today I've been contacted by a business owner who repeatedly called to make me remove a negative business review on his google business page.

The first call went along the lines of a "soft" threat asking me to reconsider my thoughts and to better specify what went wrong, I was happy to do so and while putting myself in his shoes I reconsidered my review, which went from 2 stars to 3 stars because I felt maybe my judgement had been too harsh.

I called again to let him know that I had reconsidered and he took time to think about this.

About a week later, exactly today, he called me again, he told me he tried to get the review removed by contacting google, who couldn't do much since the review was totally legit, and they told him my review would be the first one shown in his listing since it was the longest (probably the most accurate as well? who knows?).

So he called me again and made some real threats this time, implying violence (physical? ...come and meet me...) and he called me many bad things (won't repeat the exact words but they weren't nice), in the end I told him that I'd be removing my review to avoid losing any more time on this, something I'm not 100% sure I should do.

I'm not afraid to say what I think about a business, especially when it's my real experience, but my number is out there on the interweb and I post under my real name so I feel that makes me kinda "vulnerable".

Having recently reached level 3 I feel I'm not just starting out but rather becoming invested in the Google Local Guides community so I don't know what to do.

I don't wanna risk my health and that of my family members for a business review but I don't think this should be happening.

I guess I could get in touch with google to get this sorted out but I'm afraid of retaliation and since this business has few reviews I think he would instantly know I am behind this, something I don't like to risk.

So I'm asking you fellow local guides, how do you deal with this kind of situations?

Do you have similar experiences that you'd like to share? Any clues on how to make progress on this?

I'm a talkative, pretty reasonable guy and I think I gave proof of my good intentions to the business owner but I don't see how I could rewrite such a bad experience into a good one.

Thanks for your attention, all the best!

S.

[Pea]

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SimoneM wrote: 

So I'm asking you fellow local guides, how do you deal with this kind of situations?

Personally I never leave reviews to avoid this very situation and won't do unless Google changes its policy on allowing custom names

[SimoneM]

Hello PhilipF,

first of all thank you for your answer, I understand why you don't leave reviews but without reviews this service wouldn't be very useful I think.

To better understand this: did you stop leaving reviews after some kind of incident?

Thank You.

S.

[Anonymous]

Hi @SimoneM

This is not a Google issue but a law enforcement or police issue. I would call the police and provide them with the conversation. No one should be threatening anyone online for any reason. If the business owner engaged in this type of behavior, I question his business ethics and customer service. I wouldn't have removed anything since his behavior confirmed your original negative review.

[Pea]

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@SimoneM wrote:

did you stop leaving reviews after some kind of incident?

No. But the potential for problems seemed obvious from the outset so I decided not to. 

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@SimoneM wrote:

without reviews this service wouldn't be very useful I think.

You think correctly, and millions of people are happy to leave reviews usually without incident, but the risk is always there. However my choice was not to do so - we all have personal risk/reward profiles, whether we think about them much or not, and I err on the side of caution with this one. I also come from many years working with MapMaker and my interest is geared towards mapping rather than reviews and gamification

[Pea]

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@DallasP wrote:

This is not a Google issue but a law enforcement or police issue. I would call the police and provide them with the conversation.

Your faith in the constabulary is heartwarming but my guess is that in most jurisdictions round the world they'd quietly file any report in the trash (or laugh you out of the station)

[SimoneM]

Hello DallasP,

You are right, this goes farther than simple etiquette, but I'm a little afraid of bringing this to law enforcement, the business owner knows my number and can find out easily where I live.

I'm not sure I wanna risk personal damage over a review...

Apart from that, is there a way to report this behaviour to google?

Thanks!

S.

[LucioV]

This for a *** rating?!?!?!? This guy doesn't deserves the right to be on the business platform.

I hope that this thread will reach the GMB team and the business entry got removed (incidentally, this will leave all the reviews online, attached to the point in map, without any chance to reply).

That's what i did in the past in a similar case.

 @TraciC please, have a look into this.

[IgbinosaU]

make a formal report to the police,  and have it documented. Google needs to change its policy when review is posted.  Google shoyld provide the anonymity check box for reviewtes to tick

[HelloSamsonR]

@SimoneM First all, how did he get your phone number, did you leave your phone number on the review or what. No business owner has the fundamental right to threaten a local guide because of review's he or she makes. Business owner's are not paying Google for their businesses listed on the map. so why should he be threatening you. For peace to reign, take the review down. Do not report to the police or anything. Just take the review down and call the man you have done so. Let him be Happy. As long as a business has a bad service it would tell on his business in the future. Maybe this time its going to be more than a 100reviews. So can he start calling everyone to take it down, definitely it's No.