Consumers often consider TrustPilot to be the most trusted review platform on the Internet, but for brands working with them is not always a pleasant experience. Here are some thoughts on getting the most out of what a lot of people see as a controversial partner.
Like a few of my recent blog posts, this article started life as some informal notes written for a client, repurposed here in case they are of use to anyone else. It is quite long so I have included a table of contents:
In a nutshell
Most people in e-commerce are aware of the difference in how customers and brands perceive TrustPilot and their motivations. They have worked hard to build trust amongst consumers, but site owners – the clients who receive reviews and pay for their services, disagree. Retailer often feel they are not being as valued or treated with the same level of respect. From my experience and research I largely concur.
This article is based on my real-world experience helping a national retailer restore a tarnished reputation and maintain it when the system didn’t feel entirely fair.
They are very much my own opinion but nothing is particularly controversial. Everything I touch on is pretty common practice, although rarely spoken about. The merchant is no longer trading so we are not stepping on anyone’s toes.
Life got easier when we acknowledged that TrustPilot is (at best) a neutral supplier. They were not trying to help our business, and were not motivated to assist when bad things happened.
If you treat TrustPilot like a tool and not a partner, it can deliver the results you need, or at least become less of a risk. As an Affiliate Marketing expert I perhaps had a head start in coming to this realisation, as a lot of affiliate publishers and even some networks meet the same criteria.
How TrustScore works
The score TrustPilot gives your is called the TrustScore. They keep the exact TrustScore formula secret, but here’s what we know:
- The score the public sees is a star rating out of 5
- Behind the scenes the scores reviewers give are out of 10. That helps TP to give fractional scores, like 4.3/5
- It is based on percentages
- Fewer total reviews means each one matters more
- As your account grows, it gets harder to improve, but also harder for a single incident to tank your score
- It is based on the last 12 months of data
Every TrustPilot account starts with three ‘7/10’ reviews. It’s a simple trick that stabilizes new accounts and prevents a single review from sending the TrustScore plummeting to 1/5 or rocketing all the way up to 5/5.
The more reviews you collect, the less influence each one has. A single 5-star review might bump a score on a new profile from 4.3 to 4.6, while later on it could take dozens to achieve the same thing. That’s how the algorithm works – it’s all about percentages.
You shouldn’t obsess over the total number of reviews you have. As long as you have enough reviews to look credible, the score itself is more important.
Your main competitor might have double the reviews, but once you have a credible amount it is the TrustScore that is more compelling. It will also be easier to maintain and increase your score.
It is up to you to decide what ‘credible’ is for your market. For a local cottage-industry that could be a few dozen, while a large online retailer it could be in the hundreds or thousands.
Don’t expect only 5-Star reviews
For most businesses, it isn’t feasible to expect every review your receive to be 5-star. Don’t worry, that is perfectly fine. In fact, for most consumers, a perfect record just looks suspicious. 4 (or even 3 star) reviews can still be valuable, especially if they were posted in the spirit of a genuine customer review. There are still ways to manage your score effectively without it feeling artificial.
The internet is for bad reviews
When left to their own devices consumers are much more likely to leave negative reviews than positive. They have to be actively engaged to make a positive recommendation.
This plays into TrustPilot’s hands as they charge to access the tools to help mitigate negative feedback. You don’t have to pay to achieve this, but paying does make life easier.
Trustpilot’s business model is built on the assumption that if left unattended, consumers will leave more negative sentiments than positive. It is very much in their interest to allow and even encourage negative reviews and then profit from helping manage them.
Service reviews are a challenge
TrustPilot allows ‘service’ reviews – so visitors can review their experience even if they did not buy anything. The ratings are given the same importance as genuine reviews from verified customers.
For example, a service review could simply say “I visited this site several times this morning but it was not available. Disappointed, 1 star“. That is perfectly within the rules and cannot usually be appealed.
Can you review yourself?
Technically you should never review yourself. In the real world self-serving reviews are commonplace, and often very obvious.
There is only one instance where I think this is acceptable, and that is when your profile is under attack. I would also only recommend this for smaller companies where the impact of malicious reviews can be disproportionate. If you represent a large brand with a good flow of reviews it is really not worth it.
How to do it safely:
- Use a fresh email or a genuine existing account
- Ask the reviewer to visit your site and arrive at TrustPilot through a TrustBox link or a genuine review invitation
- Use a clean device or IP address (they do monitor this)
- Vary the language and tone (or get someone else to do it)
- Don’t make every review a 5-star
All of the above points boil down to “ask your mother / father / brother / sister / cousin to do it”. You can probably find half a dozen such reviewers to leave clean, untraceable reviews that can be called upon when genuinely needed.
Again, I do not recommend this, but if done carefully you will probably get away with it. Do not do this casually or regularly. Save it for emergencies – such as when a malicious 1-star review is obviously causing harm.
If you can wait…
A much safer alternative is to simply send a fresh wave of invites to recent happy customers. This will push newer, more balanced content above the negative reviews and help push your TrustScore back up.
Remember, some reviewers will show solidarity with bad reviews even if they were not personally affected.
The 12-month rule
Only reviews from the past 12 months are used to calculate your TrustScore. Older reviews remain visible online but do not influence the live score.
This rolling window is a blessing after a rough patch. We were once targeted by an organised effort by HotUKDeals forum members to sabotage our TrustPilot score and online reputation after we closed an accidental loophole. The score bounced back once the 12 month rule removed those reviews from the calculation.
Scores only update when a new review is posted
Most TrustScores only update when a new review is posted. If you regularly receive reviews it’s not a problem, but it does mean inactive businesses (with less than 10k reviews) can stay near the top of the TP scoreboard almost indefinitely until their score is refreshed. That could include competitors in your category.
It is a bit different for profiles with more than 10,000 reviews. These large profiles are updated once a day to safeguard the TP database. I actually don’t know if the score is updated if they have 10,000 reviews but
Fortunately (and ironically), TrustPilots’s stance on service reviews provides a workaround that complies with their own guidelines. A reviewer could legitimately force a recalculation by posting a ‘service review’ like “I visited this site based on their great TrustPilot score, but the site was not available. Perhaps they are no longer trading. Sad face, 1 Star.”.
If you are uncomfortable leaving a low rating your intervention does not have to be a low score. Even one new 3 or 4* review on a long dormant profile should force a fairer recalculation.
Collecting and soliciting reviews
I am often asked “Do I really have to invite every customer to leave a review?”. As you would expect, TrustPilot will say yes, of course you should.
In reality most high-performing accounts do control and manipulate who they invite in some way. This is probably the main tactic used to control TrustPilot, and to be honest I did the same.
Common tactics include:
- Only sending invites when delivery was within your service promise
- Excluding special cases such as pre-orders
- Suppressing invites for customers who experienced delays or issues
- Delaying the invite until you are sure they won’t cancel or return the item
- Invitation emails that ‘pre-screen’ for negative sentiment
- Splitting review requests between two platforms such as TrustPilot and Feefo (which is permitted, as long as the split is random)
I opted to only send automated invites to customers whose orders were in stock and fulfilled with next-day delivery.
This small adjustment still reached >80% of customers, felt organic, and prompted a natural range of scores. As older, more toxic reviews ‘aged out’ and were replaced at a slower rate the TrustScore steadily increased.
As our scores steadily improved it became clear that we were late to the party – all our competitors were already doing the same. Service levels in that industry are not that good, yet these changes only bought us on par with everyone else.
Years later I confirmed that by speaking to other businesses in the same industry, including their biggest competitor. They were also very aware exactly when I started managing the account, and charted our increased reputation in a lot of detail.
Verified reviews
When a review is ‘verified’ it means the reviewer definitely purchased something. Reviews can only be flagged as verified if the invitation went through an official TrustPilot system.
Verified reviews are perceived as more credible than unsolicited reviews, but they are also much harder to remove.
The main reason reason for removing a review is that the review doesn’t reflect a genuine experience, and when a review is verified TrustPilot already knows that the customer did indeed make a purchase.
Use verified invites wisely. They boost credibility but limit your options. If you are under ‘attack’, for example when HUKD members were attacking us, providing them with the means to place verified reviews would have made the matter even worse.
It is better not to send automatic invites to potentially toxic reviewers, or when the risk is high switch to a generic TrustPilot link that does not automatically flag reviews as ‘verified’.
Check your tech
We did uncover one unexpected but welcome advantage as we worked on our TP processes. It turned out that for years we had only been including 50% of customers in the invite lists we generated.
The developers said it was a historic decision to make space for another review service, but to be honest they were not a cutting edge team – it was probably just a mistake. Regardless, closing that hole meant our new, targeted review invites actually reached more customers than before. That certainly helped us see results faster.
It really is worth checking your technical integration. Don’t take it for granted that everything is perfect.
Should you use TrustPilot’s review invite system?
TrustPilot can automatically send emails inviting your customers to leave a review, or you can do it yourself.
You have a few options:
Option 1: Use TrustPilot’s automatic invite system
Since the email comes from TrustPilot it looks credible, and you don’t have to worry about email deliverability.
Pros:
- Integrates with your site via a plugin or an API
- Fully automated (set and forget)
- Reviews receive the ‘Verified’ tag
- Helps you qualify for TrustPilot category listings
- 100% compliant with their rules
- Plugins available for most ecommerce platforms
- Less deliverability issues
- TP branding is trusted
Cons:
- Sends to everyone (including unhappy customers) by default
- Harder to remove bad “verified” reviews
- Less control over timing, language, and formatting
- Customisation often locked behind a paywall
- Recipients may have already chosen to unsubscribe from ‘all TrustPilot invites’
Option 2: Send invitations yourself (manually)
Most e-commerce platforms can send emails after a sale. So you can easily add your TrustPilot invitation to an operational email, or create a dedicated invitation email just for TrustPilot.
Pros:
- Total control over who received the emails
- You can write in your own tone, brand voice, or timing
- Good to single out VIPs or high-value customers
- Lots of ways to send invites – plugins, manually, etc
- More brandable
- Uses your own ESP
Cons:
- Reviews are ‘unverified’
- Doesn’t automatically count toward “collecting reviews” status
- Manual effort; easy to forget or fall behind
- Technically against TrustPilot rules if you cherry-pick recipients heavily
- Email deliverability (junk email) may become an issue
Option 3: Upload a recipient list to TP yourself (recommended)
This is the method I usually suggest. TrustPilot provides a sample .csv template with basic fields like name, email, Order ID and purchase date, so you can just fill it with the customers most likely to be happy. It is the best middle ground for most small-to-medium businesses.
How it works:
- You export a list of customers who had a good experience (or didn’t have a very obvious bad experience).
- Upload the .csv file to TrustPilot’s backend as often as you like – once a week or month
- TrustPilot sends verified invites on your behalf
Pros:
- You control who receives an invite
- All reviews count as ‘verified’
- Qualifies for the “actively collecting reviews” badge
- Lower risk of sudden bad reviews tanking your score
- You decide when to send – useful when you sell products with a high return rate (like fashion)
- Less deliverability issues
- It can contain trusted TP branding
Cons:
- Requires a bit of discipline to prepare the list
- Delays review requests (they’re not real-time)
- Mistakes in the .csv can delay or block invites
- It can take a while for TP to send the entire list
Navigating the category system
All businesses on TrustPilot are assigned to at least one category. However, by default the online category map only shows a selected range of profiles.
To show up in the default filters a profile must:
- Have at least 25 reviews
- Show activity in the last 12 months
- Be flagged as “actively inviting” reviews
These rules favour paying accounts, but free accounts can qualify. Point 3 (actively inviting users) is usually the sticking point. There is a hidden tick-box in your admin panel to let TP know you are actively asking for reviews. Find that option, tick it, and you are all set.
In late 2019, TrustPilot synchronised their categories with those used by Google Ads. If you are running PPC or retargeting it makes sense to choose categories that match your paid audience.
- You can choose multiple categories
- Select a primary category that best fits your core product/service
- Some categories are very competitive, while others may be an easy path to top placement
- Some old pre-2019 categories remain, but they are harder for visitors to find.
In the UK there are several gaps in the category structure where the original US-centric categories were not translated properly.
For example, there isn’t really a ‘perfect’ category for contract mobile phone retailers. There is still a pre-2019 category called ‘mobile phone store’ (with the more American ‘cell phone store’ in the URL), but users cannot easily find or navigate to it.
The best you can do is submit your site to as many relevant categories as you can, and make sure at least one of them can be found in the TP category tree in the top menu.
Disputing reviews
TrustPilot allows businesses to report individual reviews they believe are false or misleading, but there is a catch. Your account will be penalised or sanctioned if too many cases are not upheld.
Sanctions are automatically applied based on percentages, which are not generous. Exceeding these arbitrary numbers means you must abusing the system, regardless of any context or extenuating circumstances.
If the raw volume or ratio of reviews you receive or the disputes you raise change significantly this can easily trigger sanctions. Not necessarily because you are being naughty, but due to how the shift impacts Trustpilot’s very simplistic formula. A sanction will usually prevent you from raising new cases for a set period of time.
I once received sanctions because we briefly stopped disputing reviews when a staff member went on holiday. We disputed just two cases the following week, but when one failed it was interpreted as a 50% decline rate. That triggered an automatic ban to prevent us from ‘abusing the system’ with more disputes. As I said, it’s a very simple formula.
The whole process is not especially fair, transparent, or well designed. I would encourage anyone who needs to do this regularly to read all the guidance available, think about how they apply to your business. Never bend the rules or overuse the dispute process.
A note on the TrustBox widget
There is only one ‘official’ way to show your TrustPilot score on your site – the official “TrustBox” widget.
TrustBoxes look quite good and do showcase your TP score prominently, but they also come with downsides. On our site we observed that the TrustBox contained a lot of code and also loaded third-party analytics scripts, noticeably increasing the page loading times. The results of these analytics were not shared with us, so we did think it was inappropriate for TP to be gathering info about our users without disclosing what it was.
When it came to complying with the new GDPR rules (we are talking a few years ago here), TrustPilot simply wouldn’t share a list of the data they store and process from our site, so it was almost impossible to be GDPR compliant while the TrustBox was firing. This was several years ago, but consider your compliance requirements carefully – I am sure some things have changed since then and some haven’t.
The other benefit is that TrustPilot can tell when a reviewer arrived via a TrustBox. That helps their automated systems to ‘trust’ the review and encourages less manual scrutiny of your account – arguably the best feature of the TrustBox. As a rule the less excuses you give a human to examine your account the better, as they cannot do anything beneficial – only apply sanctions or other negative effects.
Is there an alternative to the TrustBox?
From a technical point of view it could well be safer and quicker to share your TrustScore in a different way, like a regularly updated static image or a via a third party plugin. However, that isn’t the only consideration.
Simon Blackler from Krystal Hosting recently posted about their experiences with TrustPilot, noting that presenting the score or review excerpts outside the TrustBox is actually against their terms and conditions, although the wording doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny and it only applies to ‘free’ users. Paying customers are afforded more leeway, which one assumes is the point. Simon sometimes comes across as a bit of a bully but on this he is spot on.
Basically, if you use a free TrustPilot account, tread carefully, They do watch for ‘unauthorised’ use of TrustPilot material, send warnings and apply sanctions if they are unhappy – see the Krystal article.
If you subscribe to advanced services you have more options. Manually displaying your score or a sample of reviews on your own site is less likely to be contested if you are a paying customer.
TrustPilot as an attack vector
Despite its branding as a platform for honest feedback, TrustPilot can be exploited, intentionally or otherwise, by people with no direct relationship to the business.
Malicious reviews can be left by:
- Competitors posing as customers
- Disgruntled ex-employees
- Forum communities (like HotUKDeals or Reddit) acting as a mob
- Customers who were refused service or blocked from purchasing
- Bots and click farms (though TrustPilot is improving detection)
This isn’t just theoretical. I have personally dealt with multiple attacks, including the HotUKDeals attack mentioned earlier where members coordinated hundreds of fake 1-star reviews. Most of these people never purchased anything and a few even said so in their own reviews, yet most of the reviews remained.
Why it is possible
TrustPilot permits ‘service reviews’, which do not require a reviewer to buy something to leave a review. That means anyone who browses your site, interacts with your customer support or even just sees a tweet they dislike can leave a public, score-impacting review.
Once published:
- These reviews count toward your TrustScore
- They are often treated as legitimate, even if clearly malicious
- They are within the rules so you have limited options to defend against them
Verified invitation reviews are harder to challenge than service reviews, but most attacks come via the latter so you can dispute them. However, service reviews are hard to argue against. If you raise too too many disputes that are not upheld, your account can be sanctioned.
If the volume of negative reviews rises sharply, TrustPilot sometimes issues automated “consumer warning” banners – a huge red notice that further damages trust, even if the reviews were a coordinated attack or artificial. This is akin to the much maligned ‘this item is often returned‘ flag on the Amazon Marketplace. The reality is often more nuanced than the simple wording implies.
On the other side of the coin, I have also heard reports of a banner that warns visitors that “this account may be under attack”, though I have never seen it in the wild.
Practical countermeasures
- Monitor forums and social media for oncoming storms (e.g. HotUKDeals, X, Reddit)
- Pause auto-invites if you sense a backlash coming; You don’t want those users getting official review requests
- Push verified invites to loyal customers immediately after negative events to rebalance the score
- Use the 12-month expiry rule to your advantage. Fake reviews will eventually drop off
- Document patterns of abuse in case you need to argue with TrustPilot about a wave of bad reviews, but remember, general trends won’t be considered. Hard evidence is best.
- Intimately learn the guidelines and rules for escalations and sanctions. TrustPilot don’t have the manpower to ‘do you a favour’ – every action they take has to be justified by the rules.
Responding to reviews
TrustPilot allows you to reply to reviews on your profile page with a public message that the public can see. TrustPilot recommends you actively respond to all reviews, and indeed it is a key selling point for their paid service, but it can also be a double-edged sword.
Done well, it shows professionalism and a willingness to engage, which can go a long way with both current and prospective customers. A thoughtful response to a 1-star review might soften its impact or (rarely) point out a glaring omission that renders the whole review null and void.
Replying is not always the right move. Negative or hostile reviews are often difficult to respond to without escalating the situation. It can easily trigger a flame war, or encourage the reviewer to “update” their post repeatedly to keep it at the top of your page.
Once a hostile reviewer realises they have your attention they may even attempt to leverage the situation by demanding refunds, compensation, or public apologies that aren’t justified.
We saw this a lot in the mobile industry. Customers often changed their mind if they found a better contract deal outside the standard 14 day return window, and understood that making an almighty noise was the only way to get a refund. The more wrong a customer is, the louder and more unreasonable they tend to be.
So… should I or shouldn’t I?
There is no right answer here. Before replying, ask yourself: Can I actually improve the situation? Can I stay calm, professional, and brief, no matter what they say? If not, it may be better to leave it alone.
In this case the customer service team did respond to reviews, and quite frankly it set my teeth on edge every time. They usually didn’t have anything to contribute except a mildly sarcastic “thanks for your feedback”, and it often made the situation worse. Most of the time we would have been better off not engaging. To avoid personal attacks we used a pseudonym, calling our CS rep “Penny Farvekridt”, which is Danish for “Penny Crayon”.
If you do decide to reply to reviews, commit to it properly. Consumers notice when companies pick and choose who to reply to or go silent for long periods, and the risk of making individual cases worse will outweigh the reputational benefit if you just reply to a few.
“Boycott this brand”
A lot of reviewers use extreme language like “avoid this company at all costs”, “everyone should boycott this brand” or the ubiquitous “SCAM”. Luckily, the more alarmist the review the less weight it tends to carry with everyday viewers.
These reviews still affect your TrustScore of course, but the content is less of a problem. A frothing 1-star review might look alarming at first glance, but most reasonable consumers know to read between the lines.
In contrast, a calm, well-reasoned complaint with clear details tends to carry far more credibility and influence. They are the ones you want to take seriously – in both your public response and how you resolve the issue behind the scenes.
Don’t ignore the message behind the noise
While TrustPilot may not always seem like a fair or trustworthy service, it does offer a rare, unfiltered window into what real customers are thinking.
Not all negative reviews are fake, malicious or misguided. If you are willing to set aside your irritation with the platform and read between the lines, TrustPilot can act as it was meant to as a useful feedback tool – even if it’s not one you chose.
You have to fix the underlying issues
It should go without saying, but no amount of finessing will help if your service levels are consistently bad. A well thought out TP strategy can help good feedback bubble to the top, but if you regularly deserve bad reviews you won’t make much progress. You do have to look honestly at your service levels address the underlying issues.
Patterns in the feedback, especially around delivery, service or undelivered promises, can highlight areas where your business genuinely needs to improve.
A lot of our quick wins came from the technical implementation of TrustPilot and the way we managed the account, but there were plenty of genuine problems to solve as well. The most argumentative customer support manager was moved to an IT support desk well away from customers, and we stopped selling our most controversial product – mainly for commercial reasons, but it still helped reduce negative reviews. There was much more we could have done, but that tipped the scales in our favour.
Remember the 12 month effective period; If the average score for your current reviews is higher than the same time last year, your TrustScore should also be higher. As long as the volumes are similar you should see your changes start to affect your TrustScore within just a few weeks.
Don’t search for your brand on TrustPilot
I appreciate this sounds bizarre, but go with me on this one. It mainly applies to new or very small brands who are not on TrustPilot already and would prefer to keep it that way.
TrustPilot automatically generates profiles for almost any e-commerce business it comes across – even if the business hasn’t signed up or claimed their page.
One of the main drivers behind this (though probably not the only one) is Trustpilot’s internal search engine. When you search for your own brand name or web address on TrustPilot, it indicates to TP that your site exists and might be worth indexing.
That means your company could already be listed with a blank profile and a “Write a Review” button before a single customer has posted feedback or you have had a chance to decide whether you even want to work with TrustPilot.
These empty, unclaimed profiles are discoverable in Google and other search engines, and they are optimised to capitalise on searches for your brand. In the early days you don’t want extra competition for your brand name. When people search for you, you want the first result to be, well, you.
If you are not yet listed on TP and want to avoid accelerating the process, don’t search for yourself on TrustPilot directly. Instead, use Google to search for your brand with the prefix site:trustpilot.com to limit your search to the TP domain.
1* review search limit (100 pages)
If you have a lot of bar deviews there is aquirk that will help hide some of them, eventually.
Users can browse through a merchants old reviews with no limits, but as soon as they filter the profile by a star rating like “1*”, the results are limited to 100 pages. At 20 reviews per page that is still a lot of negative vibes (2000!), but it does mean older reviews become harder to find given enough time.
This isn’t as useful as the 12 month rule, but still good to know. Long established accounts can easily have tens of thousands of reviews and many thousands with a 1 or 2* score – this limit means only the first 2000 are easily accessible.
For the merchant we are using as an example, there are ~35,000 reviews, and the 2000 limit means you can only search and browse 1* reviews going back to mid 2023.
Should I pay?
TrustPilot is free for consumers to use, so they are obliged to give merchants enough tools to manage those reviews free of charge. You can build a respectable profile without ever paying them a penny.
You don’t have to pay – but it is sometimes appropriate, especially for larger businesses. There are definite perks for paying customers: advanced analytics, automation tools, moderation support, access to widgets and APIs, and resources to enhance your on-site trust messaging.
Free users are also held to a slightly different standard. Their tools are more limited and they are scrutinised more closely. The terms and conditions are almost used as a sales tool to compel free users to become paying customers. When you are under fire for, say, listing your TrustScore or featuring a good review on your own site, paying for the advanced service will often make the problem go away.
If you need the tools and will actively use them, it might be worth the investment. If you just want to tidy up your profile and move on, it is often not necessary.
Free users can:
- Collect verified service reviews using basic email invites
- Respond to reviews publicly
- Display a basic TrustBox widget
- Access limited performance stats
- Be flagged for “actively collecting reviews”
But they do not get:
- Product reviews
- Advanced integrations
- Deep customisation of profile or email invites
- Enhanced moderation rights
- Most SEO benefits
- Any control over Trustpilot ads on their profile
- Permission to use TP branding outside the TrustBox
Reported numbers
Over time TrustPilot has been automating more of their processes. In 2023 TrustPilot removed over 3.3 million reviews from their service. Over 80% of those deletions carried out by automated systems.
However, it isn’t clear if they were malicious posts by users or attempts by retailers to manipulate the TrustScore system. Since anyone can readily purchase thousands of low quality fake reviews on Fiverr for just a few pounds, that 3.3 million deleted reviews could just represent the low-hanging mass-generated fruit.
They also issued 46,000 warnings to businesses violating guidelines and published nearly 7,000 public consumer warnings on company profiles.
That’s why I advocate a low-key response. Sanctions are common and often automated, so it is best not to risk scrutiny. Don’t stand out with huge interventions or attempt to ‘game the system’ for a big advantage. Just move with the herd and make small but meaningful adjustments that mitigate the risk of their their more harmful policies and processes.
Recent changes
In 2025 TrustPilot made two positive changes. First, they updated the process for reporting or escalating reviews for deletion by allowing retailers to provide more detailed explanations.
Second, they stopped automatically prompting every unverified reviewer to provide proof of purchase immediately. This is good. The TrustPilot dispute team can’t possibly understand every business and product on the platform, so they often approved incorrect or fabricated evidence without checking it properly. By only asking for evidence of a purchase when it is required they can focus their attention and do a better job.
Good luck
The biggest change for us was simply acknowledging that we did not enjoy working with TrustPilot. We did not trust their decisions as we should trust a close partner, and felt they presented a risk as much as an opportunity. While we could of course stop paying them, that wouldn’t them from collecting and publishing reviews for our brand. We did need the ability to control and respond to reviews so we really were caught in the ‘trap’ a lot of TrustPilot customers describe.
Once we accepted that TP was a tool and not a friend or ally, we made peace with being strategic, selective, and just a teeny bit subversive when required.
- Use their tools, but don’t overpay unless you need to
- Some features have a usage cap. You can negotiate higher limits if you get your account manager onside
- Solicit reviews strategically
- Learn how scores are calculated
- Understand all processes intimately
- Don’t expect TP to be ‘fair’
- Never put all your trust in one platform