Protecting Your Business Name and Reputation via Google Alerts

google-alerts-typesThere is an article in the Sept/Oct edition of the Austin Apartment Association magazine “Window on Rental Housing”, written by Austin Attorney Bill Warren, which addresses the growing problem in the apartment industry of rouge reviews and rants about apartment complexes and the management. 

As a renter moving to Austin, you can go online and find reviews about the various apartment complexes. There isn’t a central repository of reviews, or a website that dominates this niche, but there are numerous websites trying to capture this market. These are not generally glowing reviews. The ones that are favorable often don’t seem genuine because they’re just a bit too gushy, so one wonders if the apartment personnel wrote some of those.

I’ve found a smattering of reviews about Austin Realtors as well.

Not surprisingly, most Realtor reviews are unfavorable. Sylvia and I solicit our own reviews from clients after every deal via a survey we mail out. We post them on our website (though I need to update that page). We’ve never received a bad review.

But because we also manage rentals, we are subject to the rants and anger of tenants. Just yesterday one of my tenants called to say he needs to break his lease. I explained what the lease agreement says about that, and what needs to happen to remain in integrity with the lease agreement, and of course, as usual, it went down hill from there.

“I knew you were going to be difficult to deal with”, the tenant said. To which I replied, “Whoa, hold on there. What are you being asked to do that you didn’t already agree to when you signed your lease contract?”.

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