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 many years, we have invited our customers to share their experiences 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 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 variety that we stock
• A “Sort By” filter on all product category pages

We also have a live chat button, so messages are usually answered within minutes. Had the reviewer been unable to find what they were looking for, help was one click away.

Unlike many small businesses that use pre-built websites like Shopify or WordPress, ours 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 wasn't 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, their country, 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, this fake review was not removed.

Fake online reviews, especially on Trustpilot, can be incredibly damaging.

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 Trustpilot reviews to their name.

I then opened a formal dispute to enable Trustpilot to investigate. In their 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 that 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 still no reply.

A week later, I contacted Trustpilot a third time via their main Help Centre, once again explaining that I couldn't challenge their decision over this fake review 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 it was being upheld.

We Fully Support Authentic, Genuine Feedback

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

It’s not typical browsing behaviour to land on a website you've not visited before, fail to find whatever it is you’re looking for, and then turn to Google to search for the same product, on the same website, instead of relying on the website's own search facility.

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".

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 of crystal websites in the U.S., many of which offer free domestic shipping. Yet despite being so desperate to shop with us, this user made no attempt to get in touch with us to ask for help.

Yet Trustpilot has repeatedly stated they believe this review is based on a genuine experience.

In reality, the person who wrote this review did so with malicious intent. For reasons known only to them, 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?

Fake reviews are very common and a widespread problem across the internet. Many businesses buy 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 a review unless they’ve had an extraordinary experience, positive or negative, and unsolicited reviews are relatively 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. 

The Saga Continues... 

Several weeks later, I wrote a review for one of my suppliers, using my personal Trustpilot account. Although it was initially published, I then received a notification that said: 

"To ensure our community can trust the reviews they read on Trustpilot, we use automated detection technology and a team of experts to look for patterns of unusual behaviour. If something doesn’t look right, we stop reviews from appearing on Trustpilot, or we take them offline if they’re already visible. In this case, your review may have been flagged for one or more reasons."

I was told I could challenge this by proving my experience was genuine, which meant submitting documentation such as a receipt, order confirmation, or phone call history. Any evidence had to include my business name.

Bear in mind, the fake review I had previously disputed was never challenged.

To confirm the review for my supplier was genuine, I forwarded my latest invoice. Trustpilot replied:

"We appreciate you taking the time to provide us with documentation of your experience... Unfortunately, we still have concerns about unusual patterns flagged by our automated detection technology or by our specialists. Therefore, to protect our platform and community, we've decided to keep the review offline."

When I asked why they didn’t believe my review was genuine, they refused to explain. Even after sending additional invoices showing I had been doing business with this supplier for several years, it made no difference.

Having tried twice to raise a complaint, I received no reply. After raising a new ticket through their Help Centre, I received this response:

"Further to your complaint, I have completed a thorough review. The review posted by Karilynn Davis has now been removed as it violates one or more of Trustpilot's guidelines. As a result, we are unable to investigate the matter further and will be closing this ticket."

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. They had removed the fake review left for my business a few weeks earlier, which had nothing to do with the review I had written for my supplier from my personal account, the same account I was using to communicate with them.

When trying to get them to remove the fake review, while communicating with them through my business account, they insisted it was genuine, yet were now saying it had been removed because it violated their guidelines.

When I again asked about the review I had written, they replied:

"After a thorough review, we have decided not to reinstate your review due to multiple parameters suggesting potential fraudulent activity or a breach of our guidelines. Please note that your account on Trustpilot has been found to violate multiple parameters. Your review was flagged by our fraud detection systems."

They refused to share any further details. Upon asking whether the problem was because I have a personal account and a business account, they confirmed that's not a problem.

As a result, I have stopped using Trustpilot altogether, both for reviews of my business and for leaving reviews for others.