Since you are here, you are most probably concerned about fake Ripoff Report scams that are affecting your business.
Today we are going to help you deal with the Ripoff report and we will walk you through some of the most effective removal options that you can use. There are some removal options like lawsuits, rebuttals, how to bury them in Google, and many more.
If you ever had an extremely critical review that was written on Ripoff’s report about your business then you are definitely aware of how hard and stressful the removal process can be.
Many people are sure that once a user puts a written Ripoff report about your company it will stay there for a long time and maybe forever. We would like to inform you right from the beginning that this is not entirely true because there are some tools and other options that you can use in order to confront Ripoffreport.com.
Additional Information About RipOff Report
This website Ripoffreport.com is a privately-owned, and for-profit website. Ripoff Report is working as a controversial consumer complaint website that is founded by Ed Magedson in 1998 with the primary idea to empower consumers.
Looking from the other side this website has some weak points that directly concern any company or individual especially if they are targeted by a third person. The main problem is that the Ripoff report allows any person to post or publish an anonymous review and doesn’t request any verification, just a valid email address.
This is the main reason why people started abusing this service and scam complaints have flooded the internet because of the same reason.
Ripoff report business is very similar to Pissedconsumer.com, and what is more interesting or better said what is more ironically there are a lot of comments and complaints on pissedconsumer.com about ripoffreport.com.
It is true that the Ripoff report requires honesty when someone is putting his review, however, they do not have any option like fact-checking system in order to check the reviews that people are posting on the website.
There is guidance on the website that requests from the users for their reviews to be complete, accurate, and most importantly appropriate. Ripoffreport is trying to explain its policy by claiming that Facebook and Amazon are not verifying review authenticity on their website either.
We believe that now you are more informed about the whole process happening on this website and their lack of protection has led to uncontrolled abuse on the Ripoff Report website.
Additionally, we would like to mention that the Ripoff Report is a lawless domain and because that reason fake and vicious reviews made by competitors or former upset employees became the everyday norm.
Because of this reason, Ripoff Report has very low ratings in some important places like the 1.4-star rating on ConsumerAffairs and an “F” (lowest one) rating on Better Business Bureau (BBB).
On top of everything, the European Union banned this website for European consumers on 5.24.2018 and they need to display a banner at the top of the website with content going like this:
“NOTICE! Those consumers located in the European Union, effective 5/24/2018 due to the GDPR, citizens of any GDPR applicable country or anyone sitting in, or operating from, such country are prohibited from using this site. Read our “Terms of Service” to learn more. By using our site you understand and agree to these terms. Don’t blame us…blame Europe! This site uses cookies to store information on your computer which may track your browsing behavior on our site and provide you with ads or other offers that may be relevant to you. Some are essential to make our site work; others help us improve the user experience. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more.”
You need to know that those reviews on the website are not going to bring so many consequences on their own. Unfortunately, Google plays a massive role in this situation because they favor the Ripoff report in their search results.
The normal question here would be, why? It is because this website hosts a big number of business reviews and for Google, that is a very important thing because of that reason Ripoff reports are ranked so high and are almost impossible to ignore.
Ripoff Report and Their Legal Immunity
When it comes to avoiding defamation lawsuits, the Communications Decency Act is actually helping Ripoff Report. A website like this one and those similar are protected by CDA from legal responsibility for third-party content material that is posted on their domain. It is an important thing to know that Ripoff report is not able to edit the content posted on their website in any way.
The Ripoff Report is using this as an excuse to declare immunity from any scandalous statements made in the reviews that this website is hosting. Ripoff reports also claim they can deny your request to take down certain reviews because they own them, they own the content on their website.
What is more frustrating is the fact that Ripoff Report refuses to remove the reviews even if they know they are false or even if the consumer who posted the review, requests for his comment or review to be removed. This is happening because they think removing Ripoff reports will enable and encourage companies to censor damaging reviews by forcing unsatisfied customers to delete them.
Scams on RipOff Report
With all the freedom that every individual has when they join Ripoff report, you can imagine the number of fake reviews and scams that are happening on that website. There are some patterns and tactics that people are using in order to scam small business owners.
Consumers usually contact small businesses and then complain they didn’t receive their orders. The next step is to threaten the business owner with a bad review unless they don’t send them money.
There are some other more disgusting ways that these crooks are using in order to squeeze money. They usually act like a fake customer who writes and posts false reviews and then sends the link to a specific small business owner and requests money to remove the bad review.
Luckily there are some options and tools that you can use in order to protect yourself from situations like this. In this article, we will give you some options in order to help you deal with the Ripoff report in a proper way.
Removing Bad Reviews From RipOff Report
We already mentioned there are different options in case you want to counter the Ripoff report. We are going to mention some of them, in the hope they are going to help if you are one of those who are trying to fight against Ripoff or any similar website.
Ripoff Report Corporate Advocacy Program
The Ripoff Report Corporate Advocacy Business Remediation & Customer Satisfaction Program (CAP) is paid service made to help people that are having problems with bad reviews or false accusations and allow them to petition ripoffreport.com to check the claims that are made against your business.
As we said Corporate Advocacy Program is a paid service that has very expensive monthly charges starting at $7500, followed by a per Report fee and monthly service fee.
You need to know there are also some additional fees for participation in the Corporate Advocacy Program and they are calculated based on the number of gross sales of the products or services mentioned in the RipOff Report.
What is more important if they find any evidence of online libel or something else done against the rules they are not going to remove the complaint. Instead, they will post the outcome of their investigation above the offending report.
They will additionally offer you direct contact with the person that posted a Ripoff report and let you resolve the situation with the customer on your own. Most usually in these cases, business owners are offering refunds or any other service in order to resolve the situation.
If your company participates in the Corporate Advocacy Program you will be requested to agree in advance that you are not going to sue any customer or client for putting a review on Ripoff Report even if that review is false or defamatory.
Verified Program By RipOff Report
The Ripoff Report Verified Program is a membership program that will allow you to use a Ripoff Report Verified Logo which suggests that your business is dedicated “to making customers happy and keep them satisfied with your services.”
In order for your business to become part of this Ripoff Report Verified Program it will need:
- To make a written commitment that you are going to provide great customer satisfaction.
- To allow third-party verifier for on-site inspection.
- To participate in the electronic interviews.
VIP Arbitration Program By RipOff Report
The “VIP Arbitration Program” is another service offered by the Ripoff report that gives you the opportunity to prove the accusations false and starts at $2000 which is not a flat rate and will vary depending on the complexity of your problem or request.
In this situation, everything will be reviewed by a neutral third-party arbitrator and if they are able to find that any statement written in the RipOff Report is false they will redact (remove) it from RipOff Report. You will need to know that complaints will remain on the website under the same URL and only the part that contains false statements will be removed from the whole report.
This will probably lead you to the website you are “fighting” against and you will need to pay a large amount of money to that website to mop up your company’s reputation. Because of that reason a lot of businesses had complains that this VIP program is another Ripoff Report scam which is very similar to extortion.
Filing Ripoff Report Lawsuit
For businesses of any type or size, generally, lawsuits are not a good option and they are not looking good in the eyes of other people. However, you can seek legal advice and probably sue Ripoff Report if you are so desperate to save your company name. We are saying desperate because this kind of lawsuit against Ripoff Report has a very low success rate since the company hides behind the free speech rights and Communications Decency Act.
Once you decide to institute legal proceedings against this company you need to be ready to spend a big amount of money (probably thousands of dollars).
You need to know that Ripoff Reports enjoy a general legal immunity and because of that reason, this case may not turn in your favor. We will suggest you think twice before you decide to go against this website and consider the amount of money you will need to spend for nothing (probably).
Suing The Original Author
Since the Ripoff Report hosting libelous content material is in most cases protected against legal responsibility, the only thing that is left as an option is to bring an action or to sue the person who posted a negative review or fake review.
This can become a very difficult task because most of these people who are putting negative reviews are anonymous and that is usually the case on websites like RipOff Report.
The plaintiff would usually need to file a “John Doe” defamation lawsuit in order to start the discovery process and to file a subpoena to the website or host to acquire data information that will be sufficient to identify the person who posted the negative report.
We all know there are many ways to hide or mask your identity online nowadays, and people are usually in a position to retain their anonymity. On the other side, if his or her identity is revealed, the website can provide the opportunity for the person to challenge the subpoena at the early stages.
There is a possibility of different judgment by the court if the person cannot be located and the court decides that the negative report meets the legal definition of “defamation”.
In that case, the court will issue a request directly to Ripoff Report for Ripoff report removal. This will probably be the best solution for your problem, because as we can see this is the only option for the comment to be permanently removed or deleted.
There were examples when RipOff Report resisted court-ordered negative reviews removals in the past, however, a defamation lawsuit is usually the most efficient way for you to delete negative content from Ripoff Report or to remove a Ripoff Report from search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Google, and their search results.
These legal processes that we mentioned above will be really expensive, time-consuming, messy, and really unpredictable. But if you are willing to go through this process and pay the whole amount, that can save your business from big and permanent damage.
Responding to a negative Ripoff Reports
Before going to the Ripoff report post option try responding to a fake review about your business, always consider if there is any truth in the written report. If there is truth and the ripoff report appearing is not made just to ruin your business the best thing you can do is to apologize.
Such an approach will probably maintain your shop’s reputation and will show other customers that you are a sincere person who doesn’t have a problem admitting if he is wrong and that will be a big plus for your business.
If there is a mistake on your site, you should just admit it and try to fix the situation with your customer in the best possible way because complaints remain public.
If you are having an e-commerce business for example, and some of your customers received the wrong item or the item was somehow damaged, just offer to send them a replacement and complete refund.
We know that kind of approach cannot be financially good for your business at the moment, however, it will bring you a lot of positive things in the long run.
Asking the customer to remove the negative review
In case you successfully sorted out everything with your customer you can ask him directly to edit the report written on Ripoff. The sad part is that not even the author can edit or delete the review he already posted. If the customer adds a follow-up comment on that review you risk improving the report’s Google and Bing search results ranking and keep it fresh and active.
You should be aware that the customer can decide to share your attempts to make him edit or delete his review and to paint you and your business in a negative light.
To actually prove that you are a respected business, think about including positive references in the rebuttal. That way, customers reading your response can contact those references to find out on their own how dedicated you are to customer service.
It’s also possible to leave your contact info so other customers can reach out if they need additional information.
Try to bury the Ripoff Report in search results with positive content
This is an interesting option if you are trying to deal with the Ripoff report on your own and with the “tools” that you are having at the moment. You should check the meta-description that is used in the harmful content and take out the key terms they used.
Once you do that just implement those keywords to make positive pages and posts in hope that you will rank high on Google search results or other search engines. If everything goes the plan your fresh and positive content will outrank the negative comments and reviews that were left before and you will push them out from the first page.
For this to work and show results you will need to publish your posts on major online platforms that are better and rank higher than the website you are trying to push down.
You need to know that this method will be time-consuming, but once you succeed in ranking your content the results you get will be well worth the time and effort.
The positive side of building a great online reputation
Once you establish your business you can be sure that reviews and reports on Ripoff Report or any other similar website are not going to do so much harm to your business. Building a strong online reputation is the best way to avoid issues like this with bad reports, negative content, or fake reports.
You need to keep a fair relationship and communication with your customers and gain their trust. Once you gain their trust many of them will come to you directly if they have any complaints instead of going to different websites and writing some bad online reviews.
Be aware that mistakes, accidents, and misunderstandings can happen and because of that reason our article is important for you to find out how to deal with them in a proper way without ruining your business reputation.
We really hope that you are not going to find yourself looking down the barrel of a Ripoff Report or any similar website, but if you do, try to use the information that you got here in order to save yourself from a bad situation.
Has anyone tried to take down the Ripoff Report?
In 2007, William Stanley made the “Defamation Action League” in order to force Ed Magedson to shut down or close the Ripoff Report.
This Defamation Action League by William Stanley claimed to be devoted to fighting against online defamation and because of that reason they had a strategy that involved protesting the businesses which hosted Ripoff Report by setting up sites where people were able to protest.
The DAL also allowed individuals to engage in irritation strategies like classified ads with telephone numbers from companies about products they were not selling, and additionally sending mass emails to other customers.
In the end, this plan backfired and it was considered a defamatory act against Ripoff. Magedson filed a lawsuit later that year and in the end, William Stanley and his people were found responsible for defamation and also for making death threats.
A Great Online Reputation is the Best Way to Stand Apart From the Rest
We already saw that building a great online reputation is the best and most efficient way to stand in the way of these bad reviews. Once you build your reputation, bad reviews here and there won’t be able to hurt your reputation, you will not have to spend time and money to deal with those problems and you will be able to focus on better things.
In case you still didn’t build your reputation on such a high level we hope in our article you will be able to find all the answers to your problems. There are a lot of methods that you can try and implement in order to maintain your business at a high level.
Looking for a professional team to help build your online reputation and erase the complaints against your company? Contact us now at EraseComplaints!