Someone by the name of Amy who has an alterations shop in Westfield Chatswood has been stealing my customer testimonials (word for word, except name changes) and putting them on her site.

These testimonials have been on my site for years and were provided by my brides and used with permission.

I don’t care who people go to for their bridal alterations, but stealing feedback for my hard work and claiming it as their own is wrong.

But it also makes me think about the authenticity of reviews. How can we be sure the customer testimonials on websites (including mine) are genuine? Even Google reviews can be written by just about anyone, whether they are really your customers or not. The reality is, you can’t really verify the authenticity of customer reviews.

On websites, it all comes down to the integrity of the business owner. We have to trust that they will not deceive their customers by putting up false or stolen reviews. If a business owner has no reservations deceiving their audience, then I doubt they have the decency to do the right thing by their customers.