Who Sucks? - ReviewBoost Sucks

ReviewBoost Sales: 234-738-4396 Service: 234-738-4394 Fax: 760-266-5130 sales@reviewboost.com reviewboostvam@gmail.com

I was contacted by an employee of ReviewBoost regarding an apparent customer of theirs, Michael Lawton. The company purports to perform reputation management services and online reputation defense. They wanted me to remove a negative complaint, a posting by a co-worker of Mr. Lawson saying he was "one of the most self absorbed, RUDE, genuine piece of shit people I've ever met".

I, personally, would agree with that statement, as Michael Lawton has sent me an insulting and derogatory message in the past. I have never met Michael Lawton in my life.

The reasoning used by ReviewBoost, if you can call it reasoning, was that Mr. Lawton no longer worked at the Toyota dealership the complaint was referencing and therefore the statement no longer applied. She also intimated that the complaint was somehow "false and slanderous". Besides being redundant (slander means an uttered false statement), she probably should have regarded the posting as libelous, which is a printed false statement.

My reasoning was, and remains, that the complaint is legitimate because it is the poster's opinion of Mr. Lawton. The poster did not infer anything false, as in that someone was a drug dealer or car thief. The poster stated an opinion with respect to Mike Lawton being "one of the most self absorbed, RUDE, genuine piece of shit people I've ever met". However strongly worded, the opinion of the poster is neither slanderous nor libelous. It is a perfectly valid expression of opinion. And I expressed just that sentiment to ReviewBoost.

Considering their goal was to have negative posts about their client removed, for a fee which they were not offering to share with me, ReviewBoost certainly could have made some attempt to be diplomatic. As it is, they simply solidified my opinion of people who use, and work at, reputation management service companies; that they should engage in legitimate "reputation management" by apologizing to the poster and offering to make amends rather than attempting an end run trying to have negative material removed.

Of course, there is a lot of benefit in not being obnoxious and rude in the first place. I would be willing to bet that the times Mr. Lawson did not engage in being obnoxious and/or rude to people, if any exist, did not result in any negative postings.

The biggest problem I have with so-called "reputation management" companies is that they largely post false-positive comments about their clients in an effort to offset negative postings. That is inherently dishonest, and it deprives the public of legitimate information from which to form opinions and make decisions.

ReviewBoost sucks.