How to Take Out Bad Google Reviews that Hurt Your Dealership

Bad Google reviews can hurt your dealership, since most prospects trust them as much as word-of-mouth recommendations from trusted sources.

The hard truth is that you cannot prevent others from writing bad reviews about your dealership. However, you can try to manage the review outcome, or in the case of fake reviews, try and delete them. Here’s how.

1. Respond to the Bad Review

Assuming that the negative review is from a real customer who has a valid issue, the first thing to do is to respond to it. If you offer the right solution, then your customer might choose to edit or remove the Google review. Even if that is not done, at least potential customers who read the conversation will be able to make out your side of the story as well.

Remember, always be polite when responding to the review.  Apologize for the inconvenience, offer a convincing solution, and then take the conversation offline by sharing your phone number or email id.

2. Flag Fake Reviews

When you are sure that you have received a fake review, then you can flag it, after which Google will consider removing it. If the bad Google review has violated review terms, then it will likely be removed.

It might take several days for Google to review and take a decision. Meanwhile, you can request others to flag the review as well.

3. Report to Google

If none of the above techniques work, then you can report the fake review to Google Business Support.

4. Move the Review Down

Most people indeed decide on a dealership after reading less than six reviews. If you encourage your happy customers to leave a review, then you can push the bad review out of sight of most prospects.

5. You May Take Legal Action

If competitors or angry customers make patently false statements about your dealership, then you can consider suing them. To begin with, you may want to request them politely but firmly to remove the malicious review. If they are not ready for it, then legal action is an option.

6. Rebranding

Rebranding is the very last resort, when a dealership is saddled with a lot of bad reviews and there is no way to repair their reputation. But, you should be aware that rebranding can cost a small fortune.