That Review Quotes A Price You Never Gave

The review says you quoted four hundred dollars. You have never charged four hundred dollars for that job. The person who takes those calls has been doing it for six years and would not have said it.

Somewhere between the phone call and the review, a number changed shape. Maybe they heard a range and remembered the bottom of it. Maybe they were pricing three places that week and put your name on somebody else's number. Or your guy said "around four, maybe four fifty depending what we find," and the second half of that sentence did not survive the drive home.

You may never find out which. What you do know is where the number ended up. It is on your profile, in public, and every person who reads it starts their own pricing expectation right there.

Why you cannot just let this one sit

Most bad reviews are about an experience. A stranger reads them, weighs them against the other twenty, and moves on. This kind is different, because it is not really a complaint. It is information. It reads like a fact about your business that a previous customer is helpfully passing along.

So people believe it. Then they call you with that number already in their head, and your real price sounds like a bait and switch on a promise you never made. You end up defending a quote you did not give, on the phone, one customer at a time.

Call them before you type anything

If you can tell who wrote it, pick up the phone.

Not to argue. To find out what they were actually told, and by whom. Half the time you learn something uncomfortable and useful. Somebody on your team really did give a number off the top of their head. A promo that expired in March is still sitting in a text thread. The estimate was for the small version of the job and then the job got bigger.

The other half, it is a plain misunderstanding, and once you have talked it through the customer will often edit the review themselves. A review the writer changes is worth more than any reply you could have written, and it cost you one phone call.

If you cannot reach them, or they are done talking to you, then you write.

Writing the correction without calling them a liar

The reply is not addressed to them. It is addressed to the next person who reads it, who has no idea what happened and is deciding whether you are honest.

That means you can correct the number without ever using the word wrong. Give the real one, say how the pricing works, and leave their memory alone.

Something like: "Thanks for the feedback, and I am sorry the pricing was not clear. Our brake service starts at $260 and moves up from there depending on parts. I would like to go through what you were quoted, because that number does not match our pricing. I am at 555-0100 any afternoon this week."

That gives the reader your real number, which is the whole point of replying at all. It also signals there is another side without arguing one, and it moves the rest of the conversation somewhere that is not your review section.

Do not quote the review back at them, and do not write "we would never say that." Keep it short, because a five paragraph explanation reads as defensive no matter how calm the words are.

When your team actually did say it

Sometimes the call goes the other way and you find out the quote was real.

Then you honor it if you reasonably can, and you say so in public. "You were quoted $400 and that is what we should have charged you. I have refunded the difference." You will spend a little money and buy back something worth more than the difference.

Then fix whatever let a number get invented over the phone. Usually it is because no written estimate ever goes out, or because the price list lives in somebody's head and the team is allowed to guess to keep a caller on the line. Both of those are fixable this week.

Do this

1. 1Work out whether the number or promise in the review is something anyone on your team could plausibly have said.
2. 2Ask the person who probably took that call, before you decide it never happened.
3. 3Call the customer if you can reach them, to learn what they were told rather than to defend anything.
4. 4If it was real, honor it and say so publicly.
5. 5If it was not, reply with your actual price or policy, offer a direct line, and never use the word wrong.
6. 6Keep the reply to three or four sentences.
7. 7Make sure the right number is easy to find on your site, your profile and your written estimates, so the next reader can check it without taking anybody's word for it.
8. 8Start sending written estimates if you are not, so the number lives somewhere other than a memory of a phone call.

Where the card fits

The card does not fix this review. Nothing fixes this review except a reply and time.

What it changes is how loud the review gets to be. A wrong number sitting third from the top on a page that adds nothing new is one of the first things anybody reads about you. On a page collecting fresh reviews every week, it slides down and becomes one voice among many. A tap card from shop.optechsol.llc is how a busy shop keeps that steady without anybody having to remember a link.

That is the argument for staying current here. One review saying something untrue does less damage on a page where twenty recent ones give the reader something else to go on.

The short version

A review that quotes a price you never gave is not a complaint, it is misinformation, and strangers read it as fact. Find out whether anyone on your team could have said it. Call the customer to learn, not to win. If it was real, honor it in public. If it was not, state your real pricing, give a phone number, and leave their memory out of it.