As a business owner, I love positive reviews. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling every time a customer feels compelled to write an online review about their experience using our services. We don't prompt customers to write reviews nor do they receive any sort of kick-back or compensation. I believe that such practices lead to bogus reviews that only skim the surface and lack real insight about the business in question. I'm proud of our online reputation and will do my best to live up to it.
Now that you know how I feel about online reviews I'd like to introduce the star of this post, the "Bad Review Bully!" The particulars of the tale get rather lengthy so I'd like to some up the important points. A customer reported a possible warranty and would accept nothing but us dropping every other customer and address their warranty. I'd like to add that this was concerning service done a year prior and there was no real emergency. After various accusations and a threat to write an "appropriate review" we agreed to send a technician out to take care of it. I'd like to say that my tech's attitude was awesome to go out after hours during the first snow storm of the year to take care of this customer. Upon review of the possible warranty our tech found that the warranty claim was not valid. After being threatened by the customer though he relented and performed work under warranty so as not to get the dreaded bad review. After evaluating the part in question in our office we reconfirmed that the part in question was not a legitimate warranty and should not have been treated as such. In the end we decided to let the customer keep their new windshield with a refund, but they would have to find someone else to take care of future services.
I'm sorry to say they tried and succeeded in holding us hostage by the threat of a bad review. This was the first time we have confronted a person and did not know how to responded properly. This person was not open to rational discussion and we feared the bad review no matter how unfounded it may be. While the customer may have been irrational I did want to make sure that we had done our due diligence to honor our warranty. I still don't know what the best course of action is in such a situation and I'm open to any guidance.
