You may have noticed if you’ve been looking into getting a solar system for your home or business that there are lots of reviews for the various solar businesses out there.
There are literally hundreds of solar companies willing to sell you a solar system in SE Queensland and Northern NSW. Obviously, there are not hundreds of solar companies based in this area.
In your looking around the internet you may find a fancy looking website and think… Hey, this ‘Fancy Solar Pty Ltd’ looks pretty good. This company may even have a few testimonials on its website. But here’s the question: are the reviews real or fake? Well it turns out that in a lot of cases, they are fake and the ACCC has in recent time busted quite a few companies for posting fake reviews. Authorities are trying to clean up fake reviews on websites, to stop undeserving companies getting a good reputation online.
Here’s an example of one of them…
“The Federal Court has ordered by consent that P & N Pty Ltd and P & N NSW Pty Ltd (trading as Euro Solar) and Worldwide Energy and Manufacturing Pty Ltd (WEMA, formerly trading as Australian Solar Panel) pay combined penalties of $125,000, for publishing fake testimonials and making false or misleading representations about the country of origin of the solar panels they supply” Source https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/145000-penalty-for-fake-testimonials-and-false-solar-energy-country-of-origin-representations
So how can you know for sure if what you read is written by real people who’ve had real experiences?
Luckily there is one platform where it is quite tricky to generate fake reviews – Google.
The bottom line is that when searching for customer testimonials – look no further than Google. Simply open up Google Maps. Type in the business name and/or address and its listing will pop up on the left of the screen. Click on reviews to see the latest ‘real’ reviews attributed to that company.
Google take reviews very seriously. They can and do police the reviews and if found to be suspicious or not appropriate they can be removed.
At Australian Solar Installations we now ask each of our clients to give us feedback on their experience. And we ask them to send their review through a specific link that takes them to our Google Maps site where they can write their feedback. This then becomes a permanent part of our Google Maps site.
So when you read reviews written by Australian Solar Installations’ clients you can be assured they are genuine.