Hiding complaints is a bad idea. Instead, showcase how your company deals with issues.

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AsstModerator

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I was going to put this in a company-reps only folder, but I want everyone to see it.

One of the most frequent requests (and demands) the FPA gets from companies is to remove negative posts in the forums or reviews. In some cases, a company will refuse to pay money owed to a client until all negative statements, even completely factual ones, are removed.

If your bank wouldn't process a withdrawal or a company owed you a refund and wouldn't pay, you might complain about it. Would you then consider a demand to remove all complaints before money that's owed to you is sent to be reasonable? "Take down that information about my company not paying you or you won't ever get any of your money" is unprofessional, unethical, childish, and very likely illegal. The FPA does not approve of this sort of blackmail.


A requirement to remove all information after the issue is sounds more reasonable, but this is not an option. Some companies have made these "remove all as soon as payment is made" demands so many times that the FPA no longer allows any reviews or forums threads about those companies to be removed. If there was a problem, show off how you fixed it, don't try to pretend that nothing happened.

Demanding removal after issues are resolved is still a bad idea for these reasons...

1. Making a review or forums thread disappear can leave a copy in Google's cache for a very long time. This can also result in people later wondering what happened to the missing information. Do you want people thinking that your company blackmailed someone to hide bad information?

2. Showing that the issue has been resolved shows that even good companies can make mistakes or have paperwork issues, but will take steps to fix the problem. Showcase how you can fix these problems and use the complaints to adjust policies and better train your own staff in how to prevent future problems. This approach also encourages traders to stick around the FPA and try to resolve issues instead of just leaving the same complaint on 20 or 30 forex sites and then disappearing. Would you prefer evidence that your company quickly resolved an issue in a professional manner on one site or would you like to see how hard it is to get posts removed from all over the web? Not all forex and consumer sites allow threads to be marked as resolved or let users leave followup reviews like the FPA does.


Here's how it should work...

In the reviews, the method is for the reviewer to leave a followup indicating that the issue has been resolved. For example, if John the Client's withdrawal gets taken care of, he should leave a new review letting people know that the issue has been resolved. John can make the new review "no rating", or he can assign a rating based on how easy or hard it was to get the problem fixed.

If the client has a Problem thread in Financial Company Comparisons and Discussions, the method is for the forums member to add a reply in the thread stating how the issue was resolved. At that point, the thread title is edited by a moderator to include "Resolved" and "resolved issue" is added to the forums tags for that thread.


Some companies worry that the client will break the promise to come back and leave a new review or post in the forums that the issue is resolved. That's a real concern, but is easy to fix.

All you need to do is to include the FPA in that part of the negotiations. The FPA doesn't need to know the exact terms of the settlement or any other confidential details. The FPA only needs to know that whatever was promised to settle the issue has been done and that the trader promised to amend reviews or forums threads once the issue was taken care of. If the trader fails to make promised changes within a reasonable period of time, I or one of my people will take care of the issue on the FPA end.


Some situations will never be resolved. Even if it can't be resolved, get into the forums and reviews and reply. People will see those posts. Do you want them only seeing the complaint, or would you like to also show them that your company made a good faith attempt to fix the problem and always replied professionally?
 
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