For a removal company, there aren’t many ways that you can show a prospective customer that you are good at what you do before the job date. I mean.. You can tell them all you want but who will take a company’s word for it? Don’t all companies claim to be very good at what they do? It’s one of our selling points. But without a personal recommendation, it is difficult to cut through the fog and shine!
We opted for customer feedback at Monstermove Removal Company which we take very seriously. We use third party websites so that our reviews can be seen as genuine and unadulterated. Freeindex is the one that we have pushed for years. Freeindex is like the Tripadvisor of the tradesman world. They monitor all reviews and any that could have been left by the company themselves are removed. We know they are strict in what they do because we have had some excellent reviews removed on the grounds of them looking ‘iffy’ and I can honestly say that we have never fabricated a review. Even to the point where we’ve had customers who have been so pleased with our service that they have offered to leave two reviews, a his and hers if you like but we decline. It is a good feeling knowing that a) you have a good reputation and b) it is all honest and genuine. You can try us, ask us if we’d like you to give us an unfair advantage when we work for you!
It’s not all good!
It has had its downsides over the years though. As a removal company, we have found some customers have been down-right unfair, unreasonable and even gone as far as blackmail, using our reputation as leverage in order to have us carry out tasks outside of the agreement. We even had a stint some time ago whereby we received bad review after bad review from names we had never heard of! It started on 24/10/2015 (my birthday of all days!), sometime around 3am we had a review saying that we were late, we had thieved jewellery and ‘tried to charge £50 more’. Initially, I, as the company owner flicked through the pages of our diary, then went onto our customer relations system, then onto emails, then onto text messages and couldn’t find anyone of that name. They also claimed that the police were involved, trading standards too! I took it very seriously at first, freaking out you might say. It wasn’t until the following weekend, at the same time, 3am we had another terrible review left. This one claimed that we’d damaged her American Fridge by riving it through her door, damaging the door, the door frame, the fridge itself. Really painting a bad picture. A real work of art in fact! She went on to say that I was on the job and she had spoken to me personally, complained and I had denied her our insurance details. This is where I started to realise that someone had it in for us. A rival company perhaps? A former employee who didn’t make the grade? Whoever it is, I don’t think that they have hurt us. We’re a strong removal company, we’re really well organised and have a strong team and a great reputation. This can be considered as something to make us unpopular with some people, particularly people in the industry. Nobody likes a clever sod but we’re not being clever, we’re just doing our absolute best to be as good as we can at what we do!
I read some statistics on reviews the other day on AIM (Alliance of Independent Movers). 60% – 70% of consumers trust positive reviews, this jumps to 85% for bad reviews. Reviews are what separates us from the animals I find. It sorts the men from the boys and the cowboys from the genuine companies who are out to make an honest living. You can find our feedback on Google+, Facebook, The Hull Daily Mail & Hull Colour Pages
Have you had an experience that you’d like to share? Feel free to comment below with your story