Their Dirty Little Secret

Work has been crazy and some of that is great and some not so much.

We are "advertisers" on Angie's List.
What that means is that we pay them $400 a month to be noticed on Angie's List when you click onto a category.
So as a consumer if you are looking for a plumber let's say and you type that in the plumbers who pay will show up on the top. Those that don't are lost.

Now if you are a company who does not advertise and you have reviews you are buried.
We used to be that company.
If a consumer can find you they can leave a review but they don't make that easy.
Surprised aren't you?  Yep so was I. It's their dirty little secret.

Sunday I was in our work email and saw we received a review.
I read it and thought, that's funny that customer isn't familiar and we don't service this city. Gee, we never did this job that is being reviewed. 
I wrote an email  to Angie's list and told them to please put this review with the correct business and remove it from mine.
They responsed with no they would not and my rep would call me Monday morning.

Being a paid company on Angie's List I have a profile for consumers to see.
Address, hours of operation, cities we service, credit cards we accept and services we provide etc.

Being a paid company on Angie's List I also have a representative who is supposed to help me with issues and services. I called her Monday morning and we went over the review.
1. it is not in a city we service.
2. it states the cost was $269......there is nothing we do for less than $395 so that too is off
3. it stated that 2 technicians showed up. We only have 1 technician .
4. it stated a date we were in another city doing a full bathroom remodel including new counter tops.

Her response to me was for me to call this man and tell him he put it on the wrong company IF in fact he did.  I told her that I felt that really wasn't my responsibility I felt it was hers and besides how do I know how to contact him when he was NOT my customer. 
She said they will try do that but they will not take the review down unless it can be proven we didn't do this.  I said I can prove we didn't do this. She laughed.
I really had to keep my composure so my head didn't explode.

I asked her, "what if you don't reach this person does this review stay up?"
Her response was YES.
So I pay you $400 a month for no help or assistance in this matter?
Well these are forums for consumers.
I said, "I get that however this is a lie so how does it help the beloved consumer? You are more worried about the consumer than me. I am also a consumer with Angie's list and paid something like $25 a year. Now I pay you $400 a month and get absolutely no service or help?"
"You can write a rebuttal."

I wrote a rebuttal but it did not show up. I called today to ask why.
She told me it was because they have to verify it.
OMG.
Of course my next question was, "What are you verifying?  You didn't verify his review?"
She said, "we verify all reviews"
So snarky Peg asked her what is on your list to verify a review?
She couldn't give me a straight answer. I wasn't surprised.

I think what bothered me most from her was that she acted like I was whining about a bad review. If we did the job there is nothing I can do if it were bad. I was upset that they would not take this down because we did not do the job. How is that difficult to understand?

As a company we have over 82 reviews on Home Advisor/Service Magic.
A few on google and a few on Yelp. All excellent. 
We have reviews on Angie's List as well.
All A's except for the one we didn't even do.

How is this fair?

And while we're at it. I would like an Angie's list for the business owner.
I was talking to another contractor who brought this up and I thought it was a superb idea.
We could look at the list of the people who don't pay etc. Boy would that save us all headaches.
I'd pay for that service!