Online Reviews

Online reviews are a very important part of our business, and how consumers perceive us. Unlike a product that can be returned, or tested before purchase, consumers don’t have the ability to return or test our service before they hire us. Actual reviews, by paying customers help consumers make better decisions. I know it’s helped me make better decisions about what restaurant to eat at, or what auto body shop to hire.

Consumers have many places to post both good, and bad reviews about companies they hire or do business with. As a business owner, it becomes hard to manage multiple accounts like Yelp!, Merchant Circle, Yahoo Reviews, Google Reviews, Angies List, and many others. Each outlet has its own set of guidelines, and rules for both businesses and consumers. Consumer can post untrue or slanderous statements that do not reflect the facts of the situation. This leaves companies like College Muscle Movers in a difficult position.

While negative reviews potentially give a negative impression of our company, we try to learn from each experience so our processes and interactions with our customers improves every day.

As the first post on our official company blog, I would like to respond to slanderous statements made by one of our customers, and her reviews about us on multiple outlets throughout the internet. I’ve included our official response to Yelp! below in hopes they would remove the posting, which they have not. Because Yelp! doesn’t allow businesses to post more than 250 characters in response to a customers review, I decided to create this blog to state the facts of reviews, but to also start a conversation about how reviews affect consumers and businesses.

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Letter to Yelp sent on January 18, 2011

To Yelp! Representative:

We are writing to express our concern and frustration regarding a review about our company, College Muscle Movers, LLC in St. Paul, MN, that we believe to be not only slanderous but also completely unfounded.

The user’s alias on Yelp is Anne N. and her post was on 1/17/11. In her post she addresses three areas of her dissatisfaction. I will quickly outline each of these points and if more information is needed we can further provide documentation and proof to substantiate our position.

1) “I was charged twice ($2400) and it took a week to get my money refunded by Cameron Carson (office mgr).”

a. At College Muscle Movers we use Intuit Merchant Processing for our credit/debit card transactions. After Anne’s job was completed we charged her card on file – as it was the payment method she chose – for the balance of her move which totaled $1,035.00. The first attempt to charge her card was declined so we attempted to charge it a second time and it went through. Anne contacted our office 1 – 2 days later informing us that her statement showed a double charge. We immediately contacted Intuit to investigate what had happened and discovered that her credit card company despite no authorization number being assigned, while it was correctly declined on our end, carried through the first transaction attempt. We had our office staff spend at least 3 – 4 hours on the phone back and forth between Intuit and her Visa provider to ensure that the mistake was corrected as soon as possible. There was no intent to double charge her credit card as the mistake was out of our hands but we ensured that it was corrected.

2) “Wardrobe armoire was damaged and unable to be fixed, I filed the necessary paperwork for the claim, it’s been over 3mo and Cameron has done nothing but make excuses and put the blame on me.”

a. Anne did submit a claim for her damaged armoire and I received the claims form on 10/26/10. We attempted to call her a couple of times/week before we made contact via e‐mail on 11/17/10. We were not able to leave messages for Anne because her voicemail inbox persisted to prompt us for a “remote access code”. She refused to believe that we had attempted to contact her because she could not find our main office number in her caller ID log but I had been calling her from my direct line and my cell phone depending on where I was when I attempted to call. After we made contact, I informed Anne of our claims process and that we ask for 6 – 8 weeks to resolve the claim so that we have time to propose the best resolution. She replied to this e‐mail saying that timeframe was acceptable. Anne then contacted us on December 8 demanding an immediate resolution. In our service contract, where she acknowledged our legal obligation with her initials, we state that the minimum liability we are mandated by legislation to uphold is $0.60/pound of an item.Because she wanted an immediate resolution this was what I offered her ‐ $0.60/pound of her armoire. We did not receive a response back until 1/17/11 once again demanding a resolution when we had been awaiting a response to our e‐mail from December 8. The e‐mail chain since then has gone back and forth several times with her refusing our resolution but we have the record and can forward to you at your request to substantiate the timeline and events as well as the service contract that she signed.

3) “Jerad Poling (owner) is no better to deal with, he and Cameron have another business together which is obviously their priority.”

a. We do own another start up company that is in an R&D phase. Our main focus is still on College Muscle Movers and also have other supporting staff. This statement bears no connection to the issue at hand and should not be considered as relevant. She does not have any insight into how we operate on a day‐to‐day basis and the claim she makes that our “[other] business together is obviously [our] priority” is a wild accusation.

Our Yelp rating is very important to us as we have a significant customer base that has found us through our good ratings. We always welcome honest comments and reviews, good and bad, as long as they are honest. In today’s business economy the average consumer now has many tools to hold businesses responsible but when such tools are abused their effectiveness is dulled. We hope that you will consider our position on the issue and promptly remove this review, as we do not deserve to have our reputation inaccurately represented.

Once again, if you need any further supporting documents or clarification of any of the above please let us know and we will promptly supply it to you.

Sincerely,

Cameron Carson Operations Manager

Jerad Poling General Manager

We are the Muscle Movers!

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Look for more posts about reviews, good and bad, and how we work with our customers to resolve claims and service issues. Our goal is to be open and honest about how we run the company.

J

Welcome.

Welcome to the official blog of College Muscle Movers. We’re a moving company in St. Paul, MN.