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The star rating can help attract new customers, but some small business owners say their reviews have been hijacked by scammers trying to extort money.
TAMPA, Fla. — Alison DiChristopher and her husband have owned A DiChristopher Appliance Service for the past 30 years.
“It’s family owned,” she said.
But lately, what’s been keeping her busy is what’s been popping up on her company’s Google reviews.
“Our reviews have been 99% positive,” she said.
But that changed a few weeks ago, when Alison received a text message.
“It had a picture of the two bad reviews, and it said someone paid me to do this and cancel you off of Google or suspend you. Do you want me to proceed?” DiChristopher says. “And since I hadn’t gotten a notification from Google that I got these reviews, I just fluffed it off that it was just fake.”
‘Pay me and I’ll take it down’
“The next day I got a notification that I got those two one-star reviews, and he said, ‘Pay me and I’ll take it down,'” Alison explained.
Still refusing to pay, Alison said the reviews kept coming.
“In 20 minutes, I had about 16 one-star reviews with fake scenarios of what happened, which didn’t happen,” she said.
“It was scary,” she said. “I felt that this guy had so much power. We’ve been in business for 32 years, and in 20 minutes, he has lowered our ranking in Google — what took years to accumulate and, you know, get to a certain point. In 20 minutes, he lowered our ranking, and he said, ‘I’ll keep doing it. I’ve got 40 more I can put up.’”
And it wasn’t just Alison’s business that was targeted.
He’s hit dozens of other businesses across Florida and the country.
“4.9 is our average — four stars out of five,” Erin Polson, of Polson Painting, said. “I don’t think we’ve had a bad review in years until about a month and a half ago.”
The same person hijacked their reviews.
“I got a text message on our business line from somebody with an exchange from Pakistan, because I looked up the phone number,” Polson said. “He said that he was paid money to leave negative reviews for us to ruin our business. And also, to ruin our business profile. And he didn’t want to do it. So immediately, I knew this was a scam.”
But the scam had already taken a toll. Both businesses said they tried to contact Google, but there was no phone number, no email. The only thing they could do was flag the reviews and hope they would be removed. Polson says there should be more help from Google to get the fake reviews down.
‘I think Google has a responsibility as Google’
“Well, not only do I think there should be steps in place to reach out to Google,” Polson said, “I think Google has a responsibility as Google. I mean, there should be a way to stop these reviews. There should be a way to see it’s coming from another country. Specifically, there should be a way that, you know, if you see somebody that’s targeting multiple businesses in a negative way.”
Jason Brown, a consumer advocate, says this isn’t new.
“They’ve been hammering businesses for several years now, and Google is just really slow to address it,” Brown said. “So it’s bad right now.”
He says Google has a backlog of at least five months to address review issues, and he believes the problem got worse when Google enabled messaging on business profiles.
“What Google should do is shut off the ability for businesses to be messaged through the Google Business Profile platform,” Brown said. “That’s when it all started. They’re sending messages through WhatsApp so you can’t trace where it’s coming from.”
Business owners are hoping something changes before more damage is done.
“Just when you think you’ve seen a low one, they get lower,” DiChristopher said. “And they put us in panic mode, and I don’t want to relive that. And I don’t want another company to go through what we did.”
Our investigative team reached out to Google and provided the names of every company we know has been impacted. We asked what measures are in place to stop this, but the company has yet to answer those questions. We do know that in the meantime, the fake reviews have been removed.
If you’re reading reviews and want to know if one might be fake, click on the user’s profile. See where they live, how many other reviews they’ve left, and how legitimate it looks. A quick check could help a small business survive.
