Are you looking for online reviews to help you determine which providers of merchant accounts or credit card processing companies are worth using? If so, you should be wary of trusting everything that you see or read online. Why is it important to scrutinize everything that you read online?
Some Reviews Are Paid For
A provider of merchant accounts or a credit card processing company could pay someone to write a positive review about the services that the company offers. Conversely, a company could pay someone to write a negative review about their competition. This means that you are reading nothing more than what someone was paid to write and that you aren’t getting a true indication of what the company can provide to its customers.
Testimonials Could Be Created by the Company Itself
It’s possible that a company could make up a quote and put a stock photo of a person next to it. While unethical, it isn’t necessarily illegal to do so. Therefore, you can’t assume that a testimonial is an accurate representation of the company even if you see a picture of a person associated with the testimonial being given. To confirm what you are reading, you may be able to actually talk to those who have offered their testimony or talk to consumer groups that may know how worthwhile a company may be.
Why Would Companies Create Fake Reviews or Pay for Bad Reviews?
Companies will often pay people to write bad reviews about their competition with the hope that those words are the first thing that comes up about the competition on search engines. Research indicates that the first search result that comes up is the one that is most likely to be read and clicked on. If a company does not make a good first impression, a customer is likely to go elsewhere. The process of writing bad reviews about the competition is referred to as negative SEO.
Never assume that a review that you have read online is accurate. It is too easy to pay someone to write a review or for a company to pose as a customer writing a review that serves that particular company’s agenda. Therefore, a positive review should only be viewed as part of the vetting process before spending money with any particular organization.