Reporting a Reviewer for Deliberately Downrating Competitors

[Rob_H]

How do I report a reviewer who has deliberately posted bad reviews for their local competitors?

At the time the reviews were posted, the reviewer was the manager of a local charity shop and she is now area manager for the same charity.  She has posted appalling reviews for every other charity shop in town, leaving each of them one star, but of course she has given her own shop a five star review - the only five star review it has received.  This individual has done the same thing on a number of review sites, and her reviews on those sites have all been removed, yet they remain on Google.

[mhjn]

You can report this to Google moderators on this platform mate @Rob_H

[EjazShah]

Hi @Rob_H, I looping @ErmesT & @JeslynL if this can be reported as Spam Reviews.

[LucioV]

If you have found a review or photo that you think violates Google policies, you can use the 'flag/report as inappropriate' icon next to the contribution.
For further information, please, refer to this article: https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/forums/v3_1/forumtopicpage/board-id/becomelocalguide/message-i...

[JeslynL]

Hi @Rob_H, thank you for not sharing the details of this user publicly. As @LucioV noted, feel free to "flag as inappropriate" icon next to the contribution or “Report a Problem” if you are using Google Maps on desktop so that a team of specialists can look into it. Do note that the team is careful to only remove content that violates Google Maps policies.

[Rob_H]

Hi @JeslynL,

The problem is that these reviews have been flagged as inappropriate, by me yesterday and almost a year ago, by my wife three times in the last year and by staff and volunteers at the other charity shops in town, each time identifying the reason as a conflict of interest.  The trouble is, there appears to be no way of communicating to Google how it is a conflict of interest - you select a reason and have no means to explain and thereby provide the team of specialists with the information they would need to make a decision.  The Google Map Policies clearly state that if a person works at or for a place, they are not supposed to write a review of it, but there appears to be no way of telling Google that this person works for the charity, instead requiring the team to somehow divine that information.  If the team decides to leave the reviews in place, I won't argue, but I feel they should have all the facts necessary to reach a fair decision and at present there seems to be no way of communicating those facts - unless I'm missing something?