As part of our common business practice, we encourage clients to leave reviews for us on business review sites. We want to constantly hear what clients say so that we can continue to do what our clients like and work on things that we can improve on. Our reviews consist largely of positive reviews, with a very small fraction of them being negative.
We feel that the negative reviews posted are strongly biased, and that it is necessary to make some explanations.
First of all, the negative reviews do not display a true picture of what has actually transpired. Many situations lead to negative reviews, and it is unfair to judge a business based on a few sentences, without understanding the entire occurrence.
We are always striving for perfection.
In addition, a large amount of these review sites out on the market today (will not mention names) are corrupt. They are commercial driven entities designed to make money off of businesses.
As of Aug 2020, we manage approximately 800 rental properties and have dealt with over 4,000 related clients within the past four years. From this, we have received less than a dozen of negative reviews. While it is a small percentage as compared to our large scale of operations, we still attach great importance to it. After all, we are always striving for perfection. With that mindset, we decided to look a little closer into these reviews to identify the cause and effect of each, and categorized them into the following groups:
1. Unqualified and Denied Rental Applicants
Cause: When an applicant’s rental application is denied
Effect: The applicant becomes upset and leaves a bad review; we become their venting target.
2. Denied Applicants Requesting for a Refund on the Application Fee
Cause: When an applicant’s rental application is denied after they paid a fee
Effect: The applicant becomes upset to lose their application fee and leaves a bad review; we become their venting target.
Our online application clearly states that “The Application Fee is Non-Refundable”. All application fees collected are paid to an outside source.
3. Tenant Requests Denied by Owner
Causes: (a) When property owner denies a tenant request; (b) When a property owner fails to repair or provide certain standard required items to the tenant
Effect: Tenant is upset and leaves a bad review; we become the venting target.
Being a property manager and a representative of the property owner, our control over situations are limited. We act on behalf of the property owner to communicate, respond to requests, maintain tenant relationships and address concerns. When property owners deny a request, tenants need to be aware that the property owner makes all of the final decisions, not the property manager.
4. Tenants Evicted Through Court Proceedings for Failure to Pay Rent
Cause: Tenant fails to pay rent and gets evicted
Effect: Again, being upset about the situation, the tenant leaves a negative review. Triumph Property Management becomes the venting target.
5. Tenant and Landlord Disputes on Security Deposit Refunds
Cause: Tenant and property owner disagrees on who is liable for certain expenses at the end of the lease term.
Effect: Tenant is upset when they do not receive the security deposit they expect to receive and leave a bad review; we become the venting target.
The security deposit refund is often a grey area and more challenging to determine who is liable for the expenses incurred. Situations like this would be out of our control, but when things don’t go smoothly in either direction, we become the victim of negative reviews.
6. Anonymous Reviewers
These anonymous reviewers can originate anywhere from our competitors to bitter individuals, but there is no need to further discuss this.
Additional Notes:
- Our study shows that all of our positive reviews come from property owners while negative reviews are written by tenants.
- We hold the duty to keep all property owners’ information confidential, and do not release any property owners’ information without their approval.
- A lot of the information in the business review sites are unreliable. One example is a site that approached us to join their Dispute Resolution Program for arbitrations/mediations for a fee. They also solicited us to pay recurring fees to become an accredited member. As a result of not participating in their program, we received a low rating. These sites provide nothing but network chaos and inaccurate information.