After more than a decade in business, I’ve come to a counterintuitive realization: negative reviews aren’t just unavoidable—they’re actually a feature of a healthy competitive landscape. While this might sound strange, let me explain why having some negative reviews might actually be a sign of an authentic business.
The Three Sources of Negative Reviews
In my experience, negative reviews typically come from three sources:
- Genuine service or product issues that weren’t handled well
- Competitors trying to damage your reputation
- Irrational or unreasonable customers
While addressing genuine service issues is crucial for any business, today I want to focus on the latter two categories, which reveal why you should actually be more skeptical of businesses with perfect review scores than those with more nuanced feedback.
The Competitor Conundrum
Success inevitably attracts attention—and not all of it positive. Competitors, particularly in highly competitive markets, sometimes resort to creating fake accounts to leave negative reviews. Despite their obvious spam nature, platforms like Google and Facebook often struggle to effectively address these issues. It’s an unfortunate reality of modern business that success can make you a target. For example, when we opened a new outlet, we got hit by negative reviews by spam accounts targeting only us.
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The Case of the Irrational Customer
Let me share a recent experience that perfectly illustrates this challenge. A customer (let’s call him “BTL”) recently contacted me through my public Instagram account with various complaints after being dissatisfied with how my team handled it. After my prodding, these were the key facts:
- His membership had lapsed for a period of time due to a failed payment, though our team had already waived his reinstatement fee as a courtesy
- He had deliberately attempted to bring in a non-paying guest despite signages informing it was not allowed
- When caught during a routine check, he refused to show identification or pay the required fine, forcing our staff to involve the police
- Even when interacting with the police, he refused to provide identification to them initially
- He tried to frame his actions as “helping” our business by referring potential customers
After laying out these points to check if my understanding was accurate, he went silent. However, what happened next was telling: his previous positive reviews on a few locations disappeared, replaced by multiple negative reviews from a suspicious new account (“Matt Leung”), all posted simultaneously. Despite reporting this obvious nefarious activity, the platform took no action. He also took the chance to leave a negative review on a competing business in the same educational sector near his place of operations.
How a reasonable person can view his behaviour as justifiable is beyond me, but it is what it is. We believe the general public are discerning about genuine reviews.
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Gaming the System: A Common but Flawed Strategy
Many businesses attempt to manipulate their reviews by offering incentives—a free drink here, a small discount there—in exchange for positive reviews. We’ve made a conscious decision never to engage in such practices. It goes against our principles, and we believe it ultimately does a disservice to both businesses and consumers.
A More Nuanced Approach to Reading Reviews
As both a business owner and consumer, I’ve learned to approach reviews with a more discerning eye. Here’s what I look for:
- The overall pattern of reviews rather than just the star rating
- Whether the negative review seems fair and balanced compared to others
- If the number of reviews seems reasonable for the type and size of business
- The authenticity of the reviewer’s profile and review history
Perfect reviews don’t exist in the real world of business—and that’s okay. What matters more is how a business handles both positive and negative feedback, and whether they maintain their principles even when it might cost them a few stars in their rating.
The next time you’re evaluating a business through its reviews, remember: a few negative reviews might actually be a sign of authenticity rather than a red flag. It’s not about having a perfect record; it’s about maintaining integrity and continuously striving for improvement.
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