Last week, we discussed the subject of online reviews and how they can be difficult for a real estate when you’re handling customers that have completely opposite agendas.

One of things we’ve learned is that once an online review has been published (irrespective of whether or not it had merit or was even legitimate), it can be very hard to remove.

I have no issue with the public viewing a review about us if their experience was genuine, but I do object to random stories appearing online that have been completely fabricated in order to make us look bad.

A few months ago, one of the sales staff in our office was having another agent (actually it is a ‘two-agent team’ comprising two brothers) that were becoming rather frustrated that they were missing out on listing properties because the agent in my office was winning them.

These agents starting verbally bad-mouthing my agent to his local community and even went as far as publicly naming and bagging him in a printed newsletter that was distributed amongst the area that are competing in.

The agent in my office started receiving rather strange phone calls (all from private numbers) and e-mails from random Hotmail accounts purporting themselves to be buyers and asking about properties that our agent had listed for sale…but were not even advertised as yet.

The only people that would have known that these properties were about to be for sale were the owners themselves, the agent that had listed them or agents that had been advised that were unsuccessful in securing the listing.

What was also strange was that the names of the buyers didn’t match any records when we searched for them in the areas that they supposedly lived.

All of a sudden, we started receiving scathing online reviews (in various areas) publicly defaming the agent involved and also our company.

What we’ve learned through this process is that it is very, very hard to remove any online review unless it is deemed to be offensive.

If it is attached to a current e-mail address (even if that address is as simple as a brand new Hotmail or Gmail account), it is virtually impossible to have it deleted.

Whilst you retain your rights for a public reply, it can be a very upsetting and stressful experience for anyone to endure.

After a little more evidence and some clandestine detective work, our investigations confirmed our suspicions about who might be posting these reviews.

After a few phone calls from me to the suspects involved (and a couple of choice words), these reviews did (funnily enough) cease immediately despite the accused denying all allegations in totality.

So, what do you do when you receive a bad online review (especially when it is fabricated)?

Certainly our experience is to contact the party involved (if it is real) and seek to rectify their grievance.

We recently received an ordinary online review from a buyer that had some issues upon the settlement of her property (that were largely unknown to us) but based on the information we were provided from the seller (and also based a few things about the home that were beyond our control), we’re trying to rectify the issues and hopefully we can turn around the perception of this clients’ experience…whether or not they update their online review.

But if the review is unfair (or even completely made up by a client that doesn’t exist), it does pay to ensure that your happy clients are invited to place their experiences online and those who will research you and your company will know that a bad experience is either very rare of perhaps a distortion of the truth.

We hope everyone has a very Happy Valentine’s Day today and make sure you spoil your partner with love…not necessarily large amounts of money spent but perhaps a small handwritten note or act of service (such as a cooked dinner or romantic massage) as this might be just as appreciated.

Note – Michael’s Romance tips are provided free of charge.

Until next week…Happy Listing & Happy Selling!