Of course, Google is a good place to start, but in this article, we will try to narrow your search to save you time and exasperation. We will pinpoint the best search guidelines to use as a consumer. The goal is to get to the truth about the companies you are evaluating.
Getting there is not exactly straightforward. The main reason being that on today’s web, everyone is competing for good reviews. Getting these reviews, and serving them up to consumers, has become a big business in its own right.
Therefore, we have to be clever and discerning in our search. The obvious plumb line is whether the review you are reading has been curated or sponsored. Companies pay Reputation Management Businesses to collect and foster their reviews and to control customer feedback on the internet.
Some of the top recommended review sites:
Home Advisor/Angi
From Angi.com/FAQ:
We ensure that reviews come from real customers — a combination of proprietary behind-the-scenes technology and old-fashioned human investigations — to root out conflicts of interest, self-reporting, and fraudulent reviews.
No biased reviews: Companies are not allowed to rate themselves. All consumers must confirm that they are not affiliated with, or in competition with, the company they’re reviewing.
No anonymous comments: To ensure the integrity of feedback, we do not allow anonymous reviews. Consumers are required to provide their contact information before leaving a review, so we always know who is submitting feedback.
Feedback verification: Any company engaging in fraudulent behavior is excluded from category searches. A notice is placed on their profile. Providers can’t remove their names from Angi, so companies can’t hide poor ratings or fraud notices.
Google Business
These reviews are written and posted by the public, right onto the individual business’s Google Map’s profile page. This is exactly what we want! Unfiltered and unbiased opinions!
Facebook/Meta
The following excerpt is taken from Meta’s own help and support page:
“Business ratings and reviews will be visible within the ads experience. We believe it will help customers feel more confident about the purchases they make after seeing an ad.
Reviews are not visible to customers until Meta has collected enough unique reviews to help make an overall meaningful rating score.”
You can go to the page of the business you want. There will be a reviews tab available on their page. These reviews will be worth the dig because they are written by customers who really want to share their opinion, whether for good or not. Remember you are after the truth, and not a paid ‘reputation management’ review!
In Yelp’s “Guide to Success” for business reviews we find:
“Provide the best experience. Yelp exists to show off actual consumer experiences with local businesses — and most reviewers end up pleased. Yelpers write positive reviews much more often than critical reviews; most reviews are four or five stars.
Engage with your customers. Critical reviews can be an opportunity to build goodwill and trust with your customers. Show your customers you care by listening to them and constructively responding to reviews on Yelp.
Don’t interfere with the natural flow of reviews.”
This sounds wonderful to those of us looking for unbiased, unfiltered reviews. That is, until we see consumers complaining about Yelp on Reddit. Many of these people have observed Yelp’s tendency to delete one and two-star reviews! Is that why Yelp says, “Yelpers write positive reviews much more often than critical reviews”?? Hmmm!!
Users complain that this practice unfairly skews the ratings to appear much better than they really are. Once again, buyer beware!
From the BBB’s website:
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a non-profit, private organization that provides the public with information on businesses and charities. It also handles consumer complaints about firms.
Through the support of their BBB Accredited Businesses, BBB works for a trustworthy marketplace by maintaining standards for truthful advertising, investigating and exposing fraud against consumers and businesses, and providing information to consumers before they purchase products and services.
BBB customer reviews allow consumers to rate their experiences, using a star scale. Both reviews and complaints are sent to the business in question before they are published. A review will have no impact on the business’s letter grade, and it can stay on their profile for 36 months.
However, a complaint can affect the BBB letter grade also, and
it can stay on the business’s profile for 36 months.
For unfiltered, unbiased, and honest opinions or reviews, you can’t beat Nextdoor. If you don’t find anything written about your possible demolition contractors, you just have to ask. Ask neighbors what they think of a certain company, and wait for the reviews to roll in.
Another approach when using Nextdoor is to ask people to recommend a demolition company, commercial or residential, that they like. People love telling the story of their experience when they have an audience!
These freely given opinions are worth their weight in gold.
The business owners on Thumbtack are dependent upon customer reviews in order to win projects on this competitive site. I was impressed by seeing some negative reviews posted by verified customers, not just positive ones. It looks suspicious when everyone has perfect reviews. Thumbtack is worth a look when you are searching for demolition contractors.
There are many other review sources online, but it is important to ascertain whether they are paid reviews that put the company in a favorable light. It is legal for companies to ask customers to leave favorable reviews in exchange for a payment, gift, or discount. However, this should be disclosed to the public.
Another source of background information on a company can be your state or city records of civil cases. All 50 states have right-to-know laws, and many have open records. This may be worth a look for your situation.
The most unfiltered and unbiased reviews are the best. After this quick survey, five stand out from the crowd:
Home Advisor/Angi’s List
Google Business Profiles (inside of Google Maps)
Better Business Bureau
Nextdoor
Thumbtack
Collect reviews from different sources, on and offline, for comparison. And remember to ask the demolition companies themselves if you can talk to some of their past customers.
