Eliminate Bad Reviews
Since the invention of the internet (and Yelp-type sites) property managers have had to fight negative reviews that generally pop up when tenants feel the manager has violated their expectations or after move out when the tenant realizes the manager charged them for damages and withheld some of their deposit. We’ve had tenants stay 10, 15 and 20 years in the same property and had a great relationship with them until they saw what we charged against their security deposit and then it turned ugly. No matter what we did, they felt the needed to tarnish our reputation on the web and alert future customers of what terrible people we were.
Because of this trend, managers need a way to ELIMINATE BAD REVIEWS FOREVER and not simply try to offset them with good reviews. In an effort to help managers with this challenge several vendors offer a reputation management service to help managers clean up their online reputation. You can pay vendors $1,000 a month for them to attack your online reputation or simply adopt this document and solve the problem once and for all.
Twice we were invited by the BBB to withdraw our membership because they were going to decertify us due to the number of filings about us on their site. We tried embedding language in the lease but it didn’t work. Tenants didn’t read the lease or felt we didn’t have any power to enforce the non-disparaging language in the lease.
When we tried the non-disparaging approach we got serious pushback from tenants. They didn’t want to sign the document as it took away their right to disparage us if they felt we deserved it. They would sign the lease and ancillary documents but a third of them refused to sign the non-disparaging agreement. Many felt it was unamerican to prevent them from announcing their unhappy experience with their landlord on the web so we had to step back and rethink how we did this. Once we got the document right we had no problem getting tenants to sign it and stick to their promises. This final document ended all bad reviews.
Dispute Resolution and Non-Disparaging Agreement
Here’s what you get:
1. A document drafted by attorney, Monica Gilroy along with training notes as to how to tweak it to your model. Over 100 managers in 17 states currently use this document with the same results that Crown had for 15 years. NO BAD REVIEWS.
2. A document taking you through the steps of implementation. There’s more to do than just get the tenant to sign it. Follow these six steps and you’ll end bad online reviews forever.
3. A reference letter.
4. A letter to the tenant if they violate the agreement.
5. A training video to compliment the documents and training.
Your options are: pay a reputation management company $1,000 a month, keep fighting the battle yourself, or embrace this strategy and end bad online reviews forever.
Price: $35
