Let me start by saying, whilst I have a keen eye for what is fair, I am not a lawyer. That said, I feel like I have a very good sense of what is 'legal' and also what is outside my area of expertise for knowing if it is 'legal'.
What I don't like is companies taking away the rights of individuals, or, other companies.
Background
A company I run does not pay for TrustPilot and has thousands of reviews at a true average of 4.8 (TrustPilot use a recency average.. fine). That is to say, we do not subscribe to their services because simply I do not think we need them. Perhaps this comes from my simple view of the world that is, if people feel like they have had a good experience, they will find TrustPilot and write about us, or we could ever ask them to leave us a review (we'll come back to this later, but in short, this is not allowed by Trustpilot).
Here is the pricing:
You may, like me, have already spotted the problem. The "thing" you are paying for is the ability to ask people to leave a review. Huh? You have to pay to be allowed to ask people to leave a review? Doesn't that defeat the point of an open review system, anyone can ask, and anyone can leave a review. Not so, apparently.
Issue one: We are abusers
Instead of paying for a 'licence' we simply put the word TrustPilot (literally, html, plain text), our score and a link to our review page on our website. It looked like this
Nope, cue this email from TrustPilot:
We recently got in touch to let you know that you’re incorrectly using Trustpilot’s Brand on [redacted], and asked you to use the TrustBoxes that are available in your Trustpilot Business account. We’re disappointed to see that this hasn't been done. Since you continue to use our brand in a way that breaches our Legal Brand Guidelines and Content Refresh Guidelines, we have placed a Consumer Alert on your business profile page to let consumers know that you are misusing Trustpilot content. We’ll reassess the need for an alert once the problematic use of our brand is rectified, but reserve the right to place it again if we notice further abuse.
So trustPilot feel they own the right to police the use of their brand name, even when referring to facts, like "I drive a BMW" (/I don't) NOPE. Email from BMW.
Or my app has had 1 mill downloads on the Google play store (it has) NOPE email from google.
Issue two: You cannot link to TrustPilot unless you pay them money
This is perhaps the most jarring. Trustpilot are insisting, see except of email below, that the only way we can link to our review page to collect reviews, is to use their JavaScript widget, which by the way COLLECTS ALL TRAFFIC VOLUMES ON YOUR WEBSITE AND SENDS IT BACK TO TRUSTPILOT.
...you are still misusing our branding by using third-party widgets to redirect to your Trustpilot profile page and by displaying our trademarked name on your website in a non-compliant manner.Once again, you can redirect consumers to your Trustpilot profile page only via the widget available for your plan and you can display our name only in conjunction with a compliant widget.
Hello! Thank you for your e-mail. Please note that Trustpilot is not a word, it's a trademark. We suggest once again that you familiarise yourself with our Legal Brand Guidelines. If you display a link, which redirects to your Trustpilot profile page, it must be compliant with our guidelines. As already explained, since you are on a Free tier plan, the only widget you can use to redirect consumers to your Trustpilot profile page is the one visible. Third-party widgets redirecting to your Trustpilot profile page are unacceptable.
Its there in black and white, if you are on the free tier Trustpilot feel like they can tell the Internet when and where you can link to their site. Bizarre, anti-competitive and surely in no way allowable in the sense of "the internet/web doesn't work like that" people can link wherever they want, that's kind of the whole deal.
It gets worse, you cannot simply ASK for a review, i.e. in a customer support email, i.e. if feel like you have feedback, leave a review on trustpilot. NOPE NOT ALLOWED.
Issue three: You cannot quote what a member of the public said about your business, unless you pay TrustPilot money
This is a close second in the 'egregious stakes'. Here's the play: Member of public uses your service and says "Service was great, thanks". You take these words and place them on your own website, with attribution to the person that said them.
NOPE. Trustpilot email incoming:
As regards the third screenshot, it shows actual Trustpilot reviews, when displaying those is not allowed for your plan.
Think about this. Trustypilot are saying they own the rights to display the words of the member of the public, despite the fact that the rights of these words are clearly and irrevocably the rights of the person that said them, the editorial content of what someone said cannot be owned by a third party willy nor nilly. But if I want to display the quotes.. you guessed it, I am allowed to install a widget, which by the way does not show actual quotes, just the number of reviews and score.
Conclusion
Yes. I can close my account and perhaps, mildly perversely, not be bound by any of the above as I will not have agreed to the terms and conditions, and you know, maybe thats what I'll do. TrustPiloters will likely still come after me. However, by doing so I revoke the right-of-reply, a kinda keeeeey tenant in the whole "free-speech" thing. I don't fully love the idea of people who haven't used the service i.e. my competitors, just writing trash, knowing I can't respond.
Is it just me, or is it completely crazy that without paying a third party, online rating system I cannot:
- Ask for reviews
- Send users to the review page
- Use the word "Trustpilot" in plain text on the website
- Quote a review, typed by a random member of the public
Just me?