Google’s involvement in negative customer reviews

It seems that bad customer service can benefit a business, and while companies scurry to hide their bad reviews and complaints from customers, others revel in the dishonesty. Let’s take the latest example of Decor My Eyes, an online glasses and eye wear shop owned by the unsavory character, Vitaly Borker. His mission statement echos, “if a customer costs him money, he tells them where to go.”

Borker is facing charges of aggravated assault after a recent scuffle involving charging a customer for a product the consumer did not want. Borker’s quite adept at threatening and bullying.

Now here is where Google gets involved, and I’m certainly not claiming it is Google’s fault, but nevertheless, see what you think. A person sits in front of their computer to find fashionable eyeglasses online, and because of a plethora of links to Borker’s site from negative reviews, Decor My Eyes is on top. Yes, Borker wants customers to write about him; it’s called “Google juice.” Borker doesn’t know the first thing about SEO, but he does know the more publicity he gets, even if it is negative, he climbs up Google’s search rankings.

“In the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely poor user experience… We can say with reasonable confidence that being bad to customers is bad for business on Google.”

So now we have found out that Google constructs its search algorithms from opinions of a group of people assigned to that particular task. It’s not even based on fact.

So what is our solution to be? There’s a lot of customer service management and expectations online through Facebook and Twitter. We expect instant solutions, but is the social media posts more about rankings and less about the quality of customer service? I really don’t think Google is to blame, but I think the public should become more aware of reading beyond the highest ranked business as a consequence of an example as demonstrated by the likes of Vitaly Borker.

No company is ever going to be exempt from online complaints; there’s just no pleasing everyone, however consumers need to read beyond the drama and study how companies really handle complaints. For instance, I purchased a little black dress a week ago from an online store, and upon arrival the garment had crooked seams and some unbecoming stitching, I wanted to tell them how unhappy I was with their product, and of course I wanted to return it. Within fifteen minutes, a customer service representative emailed me back and sent me a mailing certificate to pay for postage and for me to return the dress, and so my experience online was a good one.

It’s unfortunate that online marketing can be boosted by a bad reputation, because so many good companies earn their reputations the right way.

photo credit: jessjamesjake

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