A Review Meant for Another Company

A complaint about a job you never did

A one-star review turns up on your Google listing describing work you do not recognise: a street you have never worked on, a product you do not sell, a crew member nobody has heard of.

The first explanation to consider is the plainest one. The customer may have reviewed the wrong company.

It happens most between businesses in the same trade with similar names, and when the company the customer hired has no listing of its own, so yours was the nearest match.

Handled calmly, a misplaced review costs very little. Handled badly, the reply does more harm than the review ever could.

How reviews end up in the wrong place

• Similar names, one word apart, in the same trade.
• A missing listing, so the search found you instead.
• A shared address, where another business used to operate.
• An old name of yours that matches someone else's.
• A subcontract, where the customer never knew who did what.
• A hurried search, where the first suggestion was tapped.

The second catches established businesses most often. Someone searches for the firm they hired, it has no Google listing, and yours is the closest name on the screen.

Check your records first

Before writing a word, search your own records. Look for the reviewer's name, the street, the approximate date and the kind of work described.

Try variations: a spouse's surname, a company name, the property manager who booked the job. Check work done under any former business name, and any job you subcontracted.

Ask whoever was on the crews at the time. People remember a difficult job better than a filing system does.

If the review describes work you do not offer at all, note it. That is the clearest sign of a mix-up, and it can go in the reply.

If it turns out to be yours

Sometimes the search finds the job after all: under the landlord's name, booked by a relative, or done by someone who has since left.

Then it is a genuine complaint and deserves a genuine answer. Reply briefly in public, phone the customer, and deal with the problem itself.

That is the whole reason to check first. Telling a real customer they have the wrong company would do far more damage than the review.

Replying when it is not yours

Reply publicly. The reply is what later readers will see, and it is often the only way to reach the reviewer at all.

Keep it short and polite. Thank them for writing, say you have checked your records and cannot find the work, mention what you do or do not do, and invite them to call if it was you after all.

Do not name the company you suspect. You may be wrong, and attaching a complaint to another business in public is not your place.

And leave out details about any other customer while explaining why the job cannot be yours.

A worked example

A paving company with three crews lays asphalt driveways and parking lots across a valley region. Another paving firm forty minutes away has a name one word different, and no Google listing.

In January a one-star review appeared on the company's listing: a driveway that had sunk and cracked within a year, and nobody returning calls.

The office searched six years of job records by surname and by street and found nothing. The review also described interlocking pavers, which the company has never installed.

The reply thanked the reviewer, said the records showed no job on that street, mentioned that the company lays asphalt only, and gave the office number in case the work was theirs.

A few days later the reviewer replied that they had checked their paperwork and had the wrong company, then deleted the review.

Had they not, the reply would still have told every later reader what had happened.

Asking the platform to remove it

If the reviewer does not respond, report the review. On Google, use the flag beside it on your listing in Google Maps and say it is not about your business.

Google's review policies ask that reviews reflect a real experience with the business being reviewed. A review of another company does not.

Facebook pages and most review sites have a similar way to report a review. Expect it to take time, and do not expect every request to succeed.

What not to do

Do not call the review fake. A real customer wrote it about a real job; it simply landed in the wrong place.

Do not ask friends or staff to post reviews to push it down. Reviews from people who are not customers break the platforms' rules and mislead readers in their own way.

Do not argue in a string of replies. One calm reply says everything that needs saying.

And do not reply in the first hour, while it still stings. The review will keep until the records have been checked.

Making the mix-up less likely

Make your listing hard to confuse: the full business name, photographs of your actual work and trucks, and the area you serve.

Put the business name clearly on quotes, invoices and job signs, so a customer looking for you later finds the right listing.

If customers regularly confuse you with another firm, say plainly on your contact page where you work and what you do. A sentence there settles many calls before they happen.

The counter-case

Some misplaced reviews stay. The reviewer never comes back, the platform declines the request, and a one-star review about someone else sits on your listing.

That is less damaging than it feels. A calm, specific reply beneath it reads as what it is, and a steady flow of accurate reviews from real customers puts it in proportion.

None of this replaces checking. Now and then the review that looked like a mix-up turns out to be yours.

Check your records, reply once and politely, and ask the platform only when the reviewer cannot or will not move it.

When one appears

1. Hold the reply until the records are checked.
2. Search your records by name, street and date.
3. Ask the crews who worked at the time.
4. Reply once, politely and in public.
5. Say what you checked and what you do.
6. Invite a call in case it was yours.
7. Flag it if nothing changes within a week or two.

Step two decides everything else. The wording of the reply and the case for removal both depend on knowing for certain that the job was never yours.

Catching up on genuine reviews in a sensible order is covered in reviews left over the holidays.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.