A good number of the posts aren’t accurate and they cause real grief for victims, often small businesses that aren’t well equipped to fight back.Ī 2013 story in Forbes magazine did an excellent job of tracking down business owners and others who say they were unfairly maligned by Ripoff Report reviews and who were suffering dire consequences. That last slogan is rather ironic, because Ripoff Report acknowledges it lacks “the internal resources” to ensure that the posts on the site are truthful. Ripoff Report says it’s all for the average guy and gal against the businesses who would do him or her wrong. Of course, Ripoff Report tries to cast its activities in a spunky, populist light. While the target of a false or negative review does have a couple of options for responding that don’t involve contracting services from Ripoff Report, these alternatives tend to be ineffective. “We are not a judge and jury.” And after publication, Ripoff Report stubbornly digs in its heels about editing or deleting reviews if they are wrong. “Who are we to say what is true or not?,” Ripoff Report says on its site. But Ripoff Report doesn’t fact check a bad review before publishing them.
The reviews are invariably negative and they rank very high on Google searches. Ripoff Report is famous, or infamous, for running reviews on products and services.
I started thinking about businesses that profit out of problems that they themselves have created as I was preparing to write about Ripoff Report. Consumer protection investigators caught I-75 mechanics spraying barbecue sauce on car alternators and using surgical instruments to slash tires, all so they could turn around and sell new parts and services to the drivers whose cars they’d sabotaged. While checking under the hood, a pump jockey would put Alka Seltzer tablets in the battery, and wait for the explosion so he could sell the motorist a new battery. It used to be called “Ripoff Road” because of all the sleazy service stations that preyed on tourists heading south. When I was growing up, I remember hearing about the dangers lurking on Interstate 75, which runs from Michigan to Florida.
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