The google listing scams

I'm just another person who refused to answer questions until the caller identified himself.  He refused and said something about a bad mark on my Google business listing.  I have never owned a business.  I don't have a listing.  I don't know why phone scammers robo-call me 12 times a week because I have never bought their snake oil.  Stay sharp, kiddies.  There's a sucker born every minute.  (P.T. Barnum)

I'm supposed to trust a 'reviewer' that can barely spell? No thanks

...why are you replying to a  5 year old post from 2013???

"they stave in it"? Say what?

Why are you 2 replying to 5 year old posts?

...replying to a  5 year old post from 2013???

It’s a scam company. I worked t Brandrep. 90% if the accounts are not optimized. Those that are optimized are so local that it doesn’t really help. Customer don’t realize they’re better of own their own

Today, we received a Google Business Listing robocall from Business Listing 411 (not sure if there was an 's' at the end of listing) using the number 248-301-2174. After not receiving any of these calls for two months, I guess we were overdue.

My internet search to try to find information about this particular company was unsuccessful. I've reported the call to Google.

(edit) Google has a new URL for its robocall complaint form -- https://support.google.com/business/contact/gmb_3p_complaints

These calls are very annoying.
Unfortunately we don't have call display so I have no idea what number is calling.  They are a pain and. I am sick of these robo calls!

😡

Buy a challenge-response type call blocker.  Problem solved.

The BBB (Better Business Bureau) is just a fancy polite racket.  Do not expect them to help you the consumer in any way.  All they do is harass local businesses until they agree to pay the BBB a few thousand dollars a year in exchange for a sticker to place on the company entrance.  Having a sticker from the BBB on the entrance to a business in no way guarantees anything at all -- well, except that the business paid $$$$ for the sticker.   You can call up the BBB to complain about a local business all day long and as long as that business gave money to the BBB then the BBB doesn't care what you think about the company.  Please stop referring to the BBB as if they any kind of legitimate gatekeeper because they are not.  I used to own a small business, that's how I know.

While true, there is still benefit. Is the company at least responsive? If not, that's bad. It's almost trivially easy to get an A+ rating, so any company with an F should be steered clear of. Also, look at the complaints. If there's a lot of negative complaints, that's still a problem even if they have an A+ rating. Look at the company responses, if it's almost identical boilerplate, then that's not good.

One company, in dozens of complaints, always mentioned "our carefully maintained Do-Not-Call list". Yeah right, if it was that carefully maintained, they wouldn't be having dozens of BBB complaints, would they? And who knows the number of people that didn't take the time to report to the BBB.

So true.  All they need to do is respond to the complaint and they get an extra point for "making a good faith effort to resolve the problem".  After so many points they get an A+.  They are sometimes good for finding the location of a business, and I always try to read the complaints as well.  One new thing I have found is that the BBB is now hiding the complaints.  They register the complaint but do not post the body of what it was about.  Tricky in that you cannot see what the business was doing to generate the complaint itself.

Here is the perfect example.  Portfolio Recovery.  Accredited A+ rating with 1,487 complaints, 31 negative reviews and government actions.  Seriously.  What is even more laughable is that they have almost a 4 star rating based on..wait for it... the 33 reviews they received of which 1 is positive, 1 is neutral and of course we have the 31 negative ones.  How does that rate 4 stars?

Today, we received a Google Business Listing call from Direct Listing using 248-587-1244. I was unable to learn more about the alleged company name online, but I've reported the call details to Google.