Dear Hellopeter – Why should SMEs pay to defend themselves from reviews on your website?

DISCLAIMER: This open letter is not intended to accuse Hellopeter of any legal wrongdoing. Its intent is to recollect Voys’ first hand experience in crossing paths with Hellopeter, thereby proposing some questions for Hellopeter to consider. Voys believes that it is in the interest of the South African public for our OPINION regarding Hellopeter’s business practices to be considered. This letter was published on 08 November 2024, at which time Hellopeter was charging subscription fees for small businesses to respond to reviews left about them on the hellopeter.com website.

Hello Peter,

We hope you don’t mind if we call you Peter. Recently, our companies have become more acquainted, so we think a first-name basis is probably appropriate at this stage. 

Now that the weather is getting better again, maybe we can have a braai together sometime to bury the hatchet. Of course, that’s only if you can find some time off from your busy schedule of charging small businesses to respond to reviews that are left about them on your platform.

Source: https://biz.hellopeter.com/plans (Screenshot from 08 November 2024)

Seeing that some of these small businesses did not ask to be reviewed on your platform, it’s generous that you allow them a 14-day free trial to manage their reputations on existing reviews. After that, it seems they must only pay R599/month to continually manage their reputation on a review platform they didn’t choose to use. A service that is free on most major platforms like Google and Meta, but we digress. 

Now, Peter, we get it. The internet is an open place where any consumer can criticise any business if they wish. You must know this better than anyone, especially when looking at your somewhat ironic review score on Google. It must be nice that you get to respond to those nasty reviews for free, nê? 

Peter, we 100% support the right of consumers to criticise a business. In fact, we embrace and learn from bad reviews. Slightly less ironically, this is evident by our Google review score, not to get all ‘mine is bigger than yours’ about it (or maybe just a little).

In fact, Voys sees a bad review as a golden opportunity to better our services, resolve issues, and manage our brand reputation by how we respond to customer concerns. We don’t always get things right, so we value every review, good or bad. Most importantly, we value the consumer’s right to leave a review, but we also value our right to respond without being coerced into paying for that right by a platform we do not wish to use. 

As you should know from our recent email conversations, Voys clearly stated that we do not wish to use your platform. Don’t get us wrong—your platform is very fancy and all that, but we are already in a loving and committed relationship with Google. 

We registered on your platform many years ago, but only because we were alerted to some negative reviews left there about us. We were surprised to learn about these reviews, as we were unaware that we even had a profile on your platform. At the time, you only required us to register to respond, which we felt was fair for verification purposes. After all, major platforms usually offer free registration to reply to commentary, so we were happy with that. 

Then, Peter, you seem to have started requesting payment to respond to reviews on a continual basis, and we are not so happy about that. Not because of the cost, and not because of any bad reviews, but because it seems we are given no other choice than to pay you if we wish to defend our reputation on your very prominent and influential platform. A platform that we did not join due to our own desires. 

Now, Peter, due to the enforcement of your subscription plans, Voys has firmly requested that all of our personal data be removed from your platform. Your response was:

As per your instruction, we reported EVERY review (good and bad) so that our profile can ‘maybe’ be deleted. As of 08 November 2024, we see that you have removed all of the reviews from our profile, we thank you for that. It’s a shame we had to first disclose our intentions to explore other avenues. Avenues that we are fortunate enough to have access to due to our European resources, but avenues that many of SA’s hard-working small businesses can’t afford. Now, we wait patiently for our profile to be deleted as well. Further, you have made it clear that removing our profile will not prevent another customer from writing a review for our company in the future.

Eish, Peter! Do you see the predicament you are putting us in here? We don’t want to pay for a service we don’t need, but your platform allows consumers to make claims about us freely. You don’t fact-check such claims with us before they are published, and if we want to respond with our side of the story, we’re expected to pay to do so. Correct us if we are wrong, but it seems a lot like you are facilitating one-sided opinions on your platform, and then profiting from South Africa’s small businesses who must then pay to manage their reputation on a platform they didn’t choose to join. Is that accurate? And if so, does that seem fair to you?

Now, Peter, the good people at Voys are a friendly and fair bunch. We know that you did not ask for our website to mention you. We know what that feels like. So, because it’s almost Christmas, we’re offering you a “flexible plan” to “help your business grow.” For only R599/month, we’ll publish your response to this letter on our website. Just like your offer to us, we believe in giving fair options.

We wish you all the best, Peter. Please do let us know if our understanding of the situation is inaccurate. We will be very happy to honour our Christmas offer to you.

Team Voys.