With so many websites dedicated to reviewing rental properties, it becomes far to easy for you to receive at least a couple of negative reviews over the course of time. The written word can make you or break you, it doesn’t take much for a bad review to go viral on Facebook, Twitter, and the many other types of social media. To be sure we live for those great reviews, nothing wrong with that. But do you have a plan in place for dealing with the occasional negative review? Read on for a few good ideas to help you handle the negative comment.
There is one thing you can count on, the only way you can do something about those negative reviews, is to find them. No one really wants to spend time looking for negative reviews, but as a property management service, it is part of your job. Take the time to seek out negative reviews, read through the local review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, and read the reviews. The more frequently you do this, the more others are likely to notice you care about your tenants. You never know that a simple courteous response may be all it takes for a renter to give a second chance.
So, now that you are looking, you have come across a negative review. What do you do about it? You have a couple of options. First, you can choose to ignore it, especially if it is buried deep in a swath of positive reviews. Chances are good, the negative review isn’t getting much notice, so you can afford to do this. In a situation like this, letting it go without commenting can actually work to your advantage
Some sites actually offer a delete option, others allow you to contact them and ask for the comment to be deleted, especially if they don’t meet the website’s standards. According to the California Apartment Association, “A false statement of fact published on the internet may be actionable, including as libel (harmful to a person’s reputation), trade libel (harmful to a person’s business reputation), interference with contracts (e.g. interfering with leases with current residents), or interference with prospective business relationships (e.g. interfering with prospective applicants for tenancy).”
What this says is that if an individual or business is engaged in continuously writing statements that are untrue and damaging to your business, you may have the legal right to serve them with a “Cease and Desist” letter. In most cases this is not likely to happen, a negative comment is more often written by someone who was genuinely not happy.
Your best option is to respond to the comment in a positive way, empathize with the person, offer them a solution to the problem or make the necessary repairs. Not only will you be doing the right thing from a moral point of view, but others will see that this is the type of property manager you are. What better way to take a negative comment and turn it into great positive advertising for your property management service.
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