What to Do About a Bad Review

Your phone buzzes while you're loading the truck. One star. Three sentences about how you showed up late, charged too much and left a mess.

Your stomach drops, and your thumb is already heading for the reply button.

Put the phone down for an hour. Then work through this.

First, don't reply yet

The worst replies get written in the first ten minutes. And your reply isn't a private message. Google posts it publicly under the customer's review and notifies the person who wrote it.¹

So you're really writing to the next fifty people who look you up. They weren't there. What they can see is how you talk when somebody's upset with you.

Before you type anything:

• Pull up the job. The date, who went out, what was quoted, what was billed.
• Ask your crew what happened.
• Decide what's fair. Would you fix this if they'd called instead of posting?

What a good reply has in it

Google's own advice for answering a negative review is short: acknowledge any mistakes that were made, but don't take responsibility for things outside your control, show empathy, and for anything complicated, politely ask the reviewer to contact you by phone or email to resolve it privately.²

In practice that's four lines:

1. Their name, and a thank-you or an apology.
2. What you're owning. Be specific. "We were 40 minutes late and didn't call" beats "we're sorry for any inconvenience."
3. What you'll do about it.
4. A phone number and a person's name.

Keep it short, and leave out the sales pitch.

Replies you can copy

Swap in your own details wherever you see brackets.

None of them argues the details, because the details get settled on the phone.

Google also checks replies against its content policies before they go up, and customers can still change their review after reading your reply.¹

When Google will take a review down

Less often than owners hope. Google says only reviews that violate its policies are eligible for removal, that you shouldn't report a review just because you disagree with it or dislike it, and that it doesn't get involved in conflict between businesses and customers.³

A review can break the rules when it's:

• Not a real experience. Google's policy says contributions should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business.⁴
• From a competitor, or someone with a conflict of interest, such as a current or former employee.⁴
• Off topic. A rant about politics, or about a different company.⁴
• Abusive. Harassment, hate speech, profanity or someone's personal information.⁴

If it does qualify, open your Business Profile, select Read reviews, and choose Report next to the review. Google says the evaluation typically takes several days. If it comes back as no violation, you get a one-time appeal.³

Reply while you wait, so the review has your answer under it.

What never to do

• Don't post their private details. No address, no invoice, no "this customer still owes us $400." Google's tips say never to share a reviewer's private information or engage in personal attacks.²
• Don't threaten. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews bars using groundless legal threats, intimidation or knowingly false accusations to get a review removed or changed.⁵
• Don't pay to make it go away. The FTC says offering an incentive to remove or change a truthful negative review could be an unfair practice.⁵
• Don't put a "no bad reviews" clause in your contract. The Consumer Review Fairness Act makes it illegal to use contract terms that penalize a customer for giving a review.⁶
• Don't post fake five-stars to bury it. Google's policy covers that as fake engagement.⁴

We're not lawyers. If a review is seriously false and costing you work, talk to one.

Fix it on the phone, then ask once

The public reply is for the people reading later. The fixing happens on the phone.

Call them and listen to all of it. Then offer what you'd have offered if they'd called you first: redo the caulk, knock off the trip charge.

If it ends well, you can ask, once and with no strings: "If you feel like we made it right, would you consider updating your review?" The FTC says its rule doesn't prohibit simply asking a satisfied customer to update a review.⁵

If they say no, leave it.

The real fix is more reviews

One bad review among six is a problem. One among sixty is a Tuesday.

Send every finished job a review request, the same way every time. We laid it out in how to get more Google reviews without being pushy.

Don't screen out the customers you're worried about. Google's policy says businesses may not discourage negative reviews or selectively ask for positive ones,⁴ and a page of nothing but five stars looks fake anyway.

Reply to the good ones too. BrightLocal's 2025 survey found that only 7% of consumers don't expect businesses to respond to reviews, and 63% expect a response within a few days to a week.⁷

A lot of bad reviews start as a call nobody returned, so it's worth knowing what happens when you miss a call.

The bottom line

Wait an hour, check the job, then post four calm lines with a phone number and make the call. Report the review only if it breaks Google's rules. After that, go back to asking every customer.