Do you ever leave bad reviews?

[Mingenious]

And if you do how to you escape the bad feeling?

I paid someone to do some work in August that should have taken a couple of weeks, tops. There’s been delay after delay and communication has been awful. This has meant the thing I had the work on was unusable. I’ve been waiting 8 weeks for the last thing and today have had enough and have paid £80 to get it from somewhere else so I can use it and wash my hands of the whole episode as I’m completely fucking done with it and the absolute twat who did the work.

I swing between wanting to leave him a scathing review (all his others are ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐!) and just walking away pretending it never happened.

What would you do? Are you a reviewer?

I try to always be fair when leaving reviews. I always start with the things that I liked/view as positive then go on to the more negative things. I attempt to remain factual but I will finish by saying if I would/wouldn’t recommend or return. Rarely, very rarely I will leave a scathing review but that would not be my preference.

As above, I've occasionally left negative reviews, but am totally fair and keep it factual eg self catering house is great location but had no cutlery or bathtowels

Yes I do leave bad reviews because I want to help other people not make the same mistake as me.

I used a roofer and all his reviews were 5 star and banged on about how great he was. And he had the most amazing pleasant Mr Nice Guy persona. He put a lot of pressure on me to leave him a good review because he said that's what his business depended on. But he was a cowboy, as I discovered along the line. So I think I owed it to other people to leave an honest review, although in his case I was genuinely worried that I might have unpleasant consequences for doing so.

I think bad reviews are more important than good ones.

It’s not a bad review, it’s an honest review!
Slightly bad service in a restaurant I wouldn’t bother leaving a review for. But if it’s something that could save someone else a lot of time and money I would definitely leave an honest review.

This is so true, it would be completely honest! The work he’s done is actually great but it’s taken something like 2000% more time than it should have and still isn’t finished! I’m so sick of being stressed about it!

I would like to warn others off but it’ll likely to have a really detrimental effect on his business.

I don't get all this hand wringing over reviews. The purpose is to help other customers make a decision, not to make the business feel warm and fuzzy.

If you're honest you have nothing to feel guilty about.

Yes you’re absolutely right.

I try to give honest reviews. If something/someone is amazing then I will say that. If it wasn't great then I will say why and also make suggestions for what they could have done to make things better (if I had perhaps already spoken to them and tried to resolve things if a work person/if a day out or place we have visited I just add those suggestions for improvement to the review unless it's really bad in which case I have emailed the attraction to complain to give them a chance to rectify).

Absolutely.
I also give great reviews where due.
Over the years I have had a lot of work done on my house.
I am fussy.
Those that have done a good job have had it repaid dozens of times with me passing their number on.

I am constantly being asked would i recommend someone, and people just go with them simply because they know if I was happy they must be good.

Similarly I had someone do a job but he messed me about. The work was good because I insisted it was, but it took 3 times as long.

The job has been much admired but I alway say I wouldn't recommend him as he wasn't reliable and went MIA a few times, with marital problems, funerals, illness, loads of excuses. I wouldn't wish the annoyance on anyone.

I don't think I would leave a bad review for a small trader. I might mention a problem but only if there was something good to say as well, eg 'Andy did a lovely job with the tiling through progress was slower than we hoped; he was pleasant to have around and cleared up thoroughly.'
I have no compunction about leaving bad reviews for large utility suppliers and so on.

Generally I’ll either leave a glowing review if I’m impressed or no review. Occasionally when something has gone badly wrong I’ll leave a bad review to try to stop the same thing happening to others. So when we got severe food poisoning (d&v for 3 days) from eating out, that place got a bad review. To be fair, we were honest that the food tasted good, but we won’t be going back!

I left a bad review for a taxi driver who didn’t turn up. He had the audacity to contact Yellow Pages to have it taken down. I stood my ground.

Exactly

I left a bad review for a Spanish youth hostel many years ago, booked through Hostelworld. It was freezing, and the American stoner dude running it was horrifically rude to my friend several times. We (two late-20s females) felt quite unsafe staying there. Dude rang me the following day, absolutely screaming down the phone: how dare I leave a bad review, no one has complained before, the description makes it obvious it's a relaxed kinda place (oh sorry I didn't read between the invisible lines that said fellow stoners only) and we were the wrong sort of people. He followed up with a nasty, personal attack on my friend. I complained to Hostelworld and never heard back from them. Did not put me off posting further honest reviews on the website, but luckily no place was as bad as that.