Fake Reviews on Trustpilot

Why We've Lost Faith in Trustpilot Reviews

At Stone Mania, we take great pride in offering an honest, reliable, and trustworthy service to our customers. For years, we have invited those who shopped with us to share their experience by leaving a review on Trustpilot.

However, we recently received a fake review that we believe was posted with the intention of damaging our business. Despite extensive communication with Trustpilot, they have refused to remove it, which raises serious concerns about the credibility of this platform.

Why This 1-Star Review Doesn't Add Up

Trustpilot claims to have robust systems in place to detect fake reviews, yet accepted this one as a genuine customer experience, despite the facts not adding up.

This 1-star review criticises our website’s search facility, even though we offer multiple, clearly visible ways to find products. These include:

• A standard search bar at the top of every page
• A “Search by Mineral” option listing every stone variety that we stock
• A “Sort By” filter on all category pages

We also have a live chat button that comes directly to us via WhatsApp. Had the reviewer been unable to find what they were looking for, help was one click away.

Unlike many small businesses that use prebuilt websites like Shopify or WordPress, our website runs on Joomla, a powerful, flexible content management system trusted by developers and organisations worldwide.

Joomla gives us full control over how our website is built and maintained. Its search and navigation systems are robust, deeply integrated, and used by us daily, making any claim that our search facility “doesn’t work” simply not credible.

Furthermore, Google Analytics enables us to see how many visitors have used the search bar, and according to this data, it hasn't been used by anyone in the U.S. for the three months leading up to this review.

Google Analytics is a tool that helps businesses understand how visitors interact with their website. It shows traffic volume, where visitors came from, which country they’re in, which pages they view, how long they stay, how much time they spend on each page, which page they were on when they left, and much more.

Custom 'funnels' can also be set up to track specific actions, such as use of the search facility, starting but not completing a purchase, or navigating certain paths on the site. This deeper insight helps a business identify drop-off points and improve the user experience.

Ignored, Dismissed, and Let Down by Trustpilot

Despite providing detailed evidence to Trustpilot and inviting them to test our search features, the fake review was not removed.

Fake online reviews, especially on Trustpilot, can be incredibly damaging. When a review is published without meaningful context, from someone who never contacted the business or made a purchase, and the platform allows it to remain, it undermines trust, not only in the business being reviewed but also in the credibility of the review platform itself.

Trustpilot’s internal investigation, handled by their Content Integrity Team, was equally flawed.

As soon as the review appeared, I flagged it as fake. As part of that process, I requested additional information from the reviewer to identify whether their experience was genuine. No response was received. This person has no other reviews to their name.

I then opened a formal dispute so Trustpilot could investigate. In the outcome email, I was told the review would remain, as their policy allows users to leave feedback even if they've only visited a website and have not made a purchase.

The email stated I could dispute their decision by clicking the "Dispute our Decision" link, yet no such link was present.

In my reply, I explained the missing link but received no response. I sent another email a few days later but received no reply.

A week later, I contacted Trustpilot a third time via their main Help Centre, once again explaining that I couldn't challenge the decision because of the missing link. Again, I received no response.

Later that day, I received a Customer Satisfaction questionnaire, which is only sent once a case has been closed.

Only after contacting Trustpilot for the fifth time, and leaving two negative reviews about them on their own platform, did someone finally respond.

Having disputed the decision over the fake review, I was told the decision was being upheld.

We Fully Support Authentic, Genuine Feedback

Although disappointed by Trustpilot’s refusal to remove this malicious review, the reality is that options for collecting customer reviews are limited, and Trustpilot remains one of the most widely used platforms.

Customer feedback is important to enable any business to grow and improve. We’re proud of the positive reviews we’ve received, many of which mention our excellent service, quality products, and responsive support.

It’s not typical browsing behaviour to land on a website, fail to find what you’re looking for, and then turn to Google to search for the product instead. And despite not even making a purchase, they then used Trustpilot to search for our business, purely to leave a negative review. All this was done without making any attempt to get in touch with us.

How did this reviewer know what to search for if they hadn’t already looked through our products to see what we stock? And if they couldn’t find something, perhaps it’s because we don’t sell it.

For Google to find a specific product on our website, several factors must be in place. We would have to stock the item, the search would have to include the exact wording used in our product listing, and it would also have to include the term "Stone Mania UK", because we're not the only company called Stone Mania who sells rocks and minerals.

That level of persistence, from someone who just happened to find us online, has never shopped with us before, and lives in another country, so shipping would be considerably more expensive, is highly unlikely.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of crystal websites in the U.S., many offering free domestic shipping. Yet despite being so desperate to shop with us, they made no attempt to use live chat or email to ask for help.

And Trustpilot believes this was based on a genuine experience.

In reality, the person who wrote this review did so with malicious intent. They wanted to damage the reputation of our business, but knew they couldn't claim to have made a purchase, because we would have been able to prove that wasn't true. So they created this story about not being able to find something on our website.

How Common Are Fake Reviews?

Unfortunately, fake reviews are very common and a widespread problem across the internet. Many businesses purchase positive reviews to boost their credibility and attract new customers.

It's not unusual on websites that have only been trading for a few years to have thousands of five-star reviews, numbers that simply don’t make sense.

For a small specialist business, receiving that volume of reviews is extremely unlikely. Most people don’t write reviews unless they’ve had an extraordinary experience, positive or negative, and unsolicited reviews are rare, except on marketplace platforms like eBay and Etsy.

Trustpilot’s Own Reviews Tell a Story

It seems that my negative experience with Trustpilot is far from unusual. They have hundreds of negative reviews, many criticising their handling of disputes, lack of transparency, and the overall inconsistency of their moderation process.

For a site that claims to be built on trust, it’s troubling to see so many businesses voicing the same frustrations.

It's completely unacceptable that it took five separate attempts to be given a link to dispute the outcome of their decision, especially when it was claimed, not once but twice, to have been included in their outcome email. How often does this happen, and how many people bother to chase them for the link?

I don't believe for a moment that the missing link was an accident. This kind of correspondence will be built around a template, and if a link is meant to be included, it won't be necessary to insert it manually each time, which suggests it's being deliberately excluded. 
At the time of writing this article, Trustpilot has over 344,000 reviews, with 70% rated five stars and 15% rated one star. The remaining 15% fall somewhere in between.

While a 70% five-star rating may appear impressive, the fact that more than 50,000 users have left one-star reviews is significant. For a platform that positions itself as a champion of trust and transparency, such a high proportion of negative feedback raises concerns.

There’s also a certain irony in the way they advise businesses to handle a negative review. They recommend responding to the feedback with a detailed explanation to "tell your side of the story." Yet on their own Trustpilot profile, they’ve responded to a handful of the hundreds of negative reviews they’ve received.

If they don’t follow their own advice, how can they expect anyone else to take them seriously?

When Trustpilot investigates a fake or malicious review, they should also consider how likely it is that someone would leave a review based on the experience described. That includes whether any effort was made to contact the business, and in the case of this review, how plausible it is that someone would be so persistent about shopping with a small, independent trader in another country whose website they hate.