How to deal with a negative online review about your business

While in an ideal world, providing your customers with a great product or service will inspire positive reviews, it’s almost inevitable that the occasional customer may post a review that you consider to be unfair or overly critical. Other reviews can be malicious and make false statements or exaggerate problems.

With 89% of purchasing decisions impacted by negative reviews, you may want to know if and how you can take action to remove an online review to prevent damage to your business and reputation.

Here, Carys Thornton lays out your options when it comes to dealing with negative online reviews — whether the customer is being honest or dishonest about their experience… 

How to deal with a truthful but negative online review

When receiving a negative review, the first thing to consider is whether it’s a truthful reflection of the customer’s experience. This is because they may have legal defences if what they’re saying is true

Although the review may be upsetting to read, if a customer is dissatisfied with the product or service you provided to them, they’re well within their rights to post an honest review online. 

Subsequently, there’s no legal basis to take action against an honest reviewer. However, you can attempt to engage with the reviewer to resolve the issues that resulted in the negative review. It’s often best to do this publicly, so that other potential customers can see how you treat your customers and that you’re proactive in addressing their concerns. 

This can lead to the review being amended or even removed by the customer.

How to deal with a false or dishonest online review

If a false or dishonest review is published about your business online — and causes (or is likely to cause) serious harm to your reputation — this could amount to defamation or ‘malicious falsehood’. 

This means that you may be able to take legal action.

Anonymous reviews

Where a review is anonymous, a good place to start (before turning to litigation) is with the Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013. 

This states that, under certain circumstances, a complaint can be made to the operator of the website on which the defamatory review was published. After receiving a complaint, the website operator has 48 hours to take action to enable you to identify the anonymous poster. 

A failure to comply will mean that the website operator can become liable for defamation itself, so we find that complaints of this nature very often result in the reviews being removed from the website.

Identifiable reviews

Where the reviewer can be identified, claims in defamation and malicious falsehood can be considered.

Under the Law in England and Wales, a defamatory statement can be defined as a written or spoken statement that’s published to someone other than the person to whom it relates, is untrue and tends either to:

1. ‘lower’ a person in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally
2. expose a person to hatred ridicule or contempt
3. disparage a person in their office, profession, calling, trade or business
4. cause the person to whom it relates serious harm or financial damages.

Alternatively — or, as is often the case, additionally — a claim could be brought for malicious falsehood. As with defamation claims, malicious falsehood claims deal with the publication of false statements. 

Damages can be assumed when the disputed words are deemed to cause financial damage to the claimant and published in writing or in respect of his office, professional calling, trade or business.

Seek legal advice on tackling negative reviews

It’s rare for a claim to be the first port of call in any ‘bad review’ situation. Legal proceedings can be difficult to prove and a lengthy process may follow. Instead, it’s important to consider your options and develop the right tactical approach. 

If you feel as though you’ve been defamed, our defamation and privacy litigation team can help.

Talk to us by giving us a call, sending us an email or completing our contact form below.