ReviewGun

Guide

How to respond to a negative review

You cannot edit or delete somebody else’s review. What you can do is answer it, and the reply is not for the person who wrote it — they have already decided. It is for the twenty people who read your listing next month, working out whether you are the kind of business that fixes things.

Here is the reply that works, the sentences that reliably make it worse, and the narrow cases where a review can actually be taken down.

The reply, in four steps

  1. 1Do not answer it in the first hour

    You are annoyed, and it shows in writing. Read it once, go and check the job sheet, then reply within a day or two. A considered reply the next morning reads like a business; a reply written at nine at night reads like a fight.

  2. 2Acknowledge the thing they were unhappy about

    Name the substance without repeating the accusations: “you are right that the second visit took three days, and that is not the standard we work to.” Naming it is what proves you read the review rather than pasting a template, and it is the sentence the next customer is looking for.

  3. 3Say what you did or are doing about it

    Short and specific. If you made a mistake, say so plainly — that costs you nothing with the reader and buys you a great deal. If the facts differ, correct them once, flatly, without the word “however” and without a second paragraph of detail.

  4. 4Move it off the review page, and sign your name

    “I would rather sort this out properly than argue in public — the number to reach me on is …” Then sign off as a person: “— Dave, owner”. A reply with a name on it reads as somebody who will pick up the phone.

What makes it worse

  • “We are sorry you feel that way.” It is the most recognisable non-apology there is, and readers hear it instantly.
  • Arguing the details point by point. You may be right, and you will still look like the difficult one to the twenty people deciding whether to call you.
  • Mentioning private information — the invoice total, their address, what happened on the job. It reads as retaliation, and it is a privacy problem of its own.
  • Blaming somebody: the customer, a supplier, the office, the new starter. The reader only takes away that nobody takes responsibility there.
  • Replying with a template. “Thanks for your feedback” underneath a one-star review is worse than silence, because it shows the reply was for show.
  • Offering money, a free call-out or a discount to take it down. That is an incentive to change a review, which is prohibited — you can risk the listing trying to fix one review.

The few reviews that can be removed

Removal is for reviews that break Google’s content rules, not for reviews that are unkind or exaggerated. That list is genuinely short:

  • The reviewer was never your customer, or is a competitor or an ex-employee posting about the business.
  • The review is spam or an advert for somebody else, or it is off-topic for your business.
  • It contains personal information, or it harasses or threatens somebody.

Reporting a review because it is one star will not get it removed, and the google's review policy: what is allowed sets out the full position, including what to attach when the reviewer was never a customer.

If you are getting the same complaint twice

One bad review is an event. The same complaint arriving twice — nobody called back, quoted low and charged more, left a mess — is a process, and no reply fixes a process. Read the last few reviews as a set rather than one at a time; the answer is usually something that can be changed in a week, and the reviews change a month later.

The only other thing you control is the ratio. You cannot stop a bad review arriving, but you can make sure it is one voice among thirty rather than a third of everything you have — which is what review request text templates exist for.

Questions contractors ask about bad reviews

Should I reply to every negative review?
Reply once, briefly, to every one. A business with a single bad review and a calm, specific reply underneath it reads as credible; the same business with no reply at all reads as though nobody was listening. Reply once and then leave it — replying repeatedly turns one bad review into a public argument.
How soon should I reply?
Within a day or two, once you have checked what actually happened. Not in the first hour, while you are still angry, and not a month later either — a reply that arrives late reads as though it was written only because you were pushed into it.
Can I ask the customer to remove the review?
You can reply publicly and invite them to contact you, and customers sometimes soften or remove a review themselves once they have been heard. What you must not do is offer anything in exchange for the removal — a discount, a refund or a free visit falls under the same incentive rule as paying for a review, which is prohibited.
What if the review is fake, or from somebody I never worked for?
That is one of the few cases where Google will remove a review. Report it as not a genuine customer experience and say why: the address you never visited, the date you were somewhere else, the invoice that does not exist. Put the detail in the report itself rather than expecting somebody to go looking for it.
The customer has also named one of my technicians. What do I write?
Reply about the standard, not the person. “The way you were spoken to is not how we work” is a complete sentence, and it commits you to nothing you cannot keep. Whatever needs saying to the technician is a conversation in the yard, not a paragraph in a public reply.
Does replying just draw more attention to a bad review?
The review is already visible and already being read; not replying does not hide it. What a reply changes is what the next customer thinks about how you handle a problem — which, for most home service work, is the thing they are actually nervous about.
Should I reply to the good reviews as well?
Briefly, and without turning it into a pitch. A sentence that mentions the specific job does more than a paragraph about your services, and it shows the reviews are being read by a person rather than collected by a system.
Will replying to reviews improve where I rank?
Google does not say that replying changes ranking, and this page is not going to pretend it does. What a reply changes is the customer reading your reviews before they decide to call — and the reviews themselves, since customers who are answered carefully tend to write more carefully too.

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Review requests for your trade

Whatever you do, most bad reviews start as an unanswered question. These pages cover the jobs and the timing that come up in yours.