Buying a service online can sometimes be a lottery. And if that company has glowing testimonials, they must be good, mustn’t they? The answer to that may well be ‘No’!
Not from a verifiable source? Don’t trust it!
When you find a company online, check out their client testimonials. If they are from an anonymous source, we recommend you look elsewhere. Any testimonial from the ‘Marketing Manger’ of ‘a major supplier’, or from a XYZ ‘Consultant’ could well be a work of fiction. They might as well come from Miss X of Bangor, and you know what her reputation is like!
Testimonials can only be taken seriously if they are from a verifiable source … that is a real person, from a real live company. And if you have any doubts, give them a call and double check.
Testimonial plagiarism scam!
If this sounds cynical, here’s a scam we’ve recently come across. We were checking our website for plagiarism using Copyscape, a specialised application based on Google’s Search Engine. Electronic copy can be very easily stolen and how would you ever know? By running a check, that’s how.
And that’s just what we did. To our total amazement, it wasn’t any of our own copy which had been stolen, it was one of our testimonials! The original is on our website and states our client’s name, company, and a link to their site. We’ve spoken to our client, who assures us he was the original author.
So how did an almost word for word copy turn up on a large London-based branding company’s website? Is it any wonder their testimonial came from an anonymous source? Of course not … it couldn’t be attributed to a real person, because it wasn’t real, it wasn’t factual … it was STOLEN!
More stolen testimonials
We dug a little deeper and found at least one other fake testimonial on the company’s website and another which is suspect. This is morally indefensible.
Here is a large London branding and website development company with a very high-profile MD who, if personally innocent of plagiarism, is clearly guilty of not keeping his finger on the corporate pulse.
So ‘Mr X from London’, you can expect a formal letter of complaint. And we will expect an explanation, apology, and removal of any bogus testimonials stolen by your company or your employees. Unless of course you decide to do nothing … in which case we might be forced to ‘name and shame’.
You can check out your online copy for plagiarism by visiting www.copyscape.com.
Blog post by Joy McCarthy
WORD-right Copywriter's Blog 
19 comments
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April 7, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Nigel Morgan - Morgan PR
Name and shame Joy – go easy on the shame and the defence of Fair Comment exists for you if they get nasty! Besides, look what social media did for Hidden Eloise over the Paperchase plagiarism (which incidently wasn’t, but no-one remembers that now!).
We’ve had stuff lifted and not attributed several times that we know about and have always succeeded in getting it removed.
If you are an FSB member their free legal helpline has experts on copyright theft and how to deal with businesses who pinch copy.
Back in my dizzy distant days as a young journalist we used to be frustrated to see our copy appear in the nationals without getting a penny for it. I ran the lineage pool and we simply started invoicing for the copy – and more often than not got paid, or at least into a discussion which meant we got listened too in the future when we had copy to punt!
Back to my first point – name and shame (or email who they are with links etc and I might on my blog!)
April 7, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Joy McCarthy
Nigel – many thanks for your comments and support. Stealing a testimonial seems to be so much worse than plagiarising the other website content. It is such a personal thing … the business equivalent of a personal message. To make it worse, there was even a spelling mistake on the plagiarised copy! And that has to be the biggest insult to any professional copywriter.
April 7, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Jez Hunt
GREAT post Joy!!
As you know, testimonials are a big deciding factor for many when they are looking to buy a product or service from a business they don’t know – but it doesn’t stop at testimonials!
There seems to be an assumption that because it is written on the web that it must be available for anyone to use – clearly NOT the case.
I have taken a number of people to task over plagiarised copy and managed to get them to remove the offending text, but the protests they made at the time… In many cases people don’t see a problem with what they are doing.
One of the problems that this kind of plagiarism will cause, will be to erode the effectiveness of testimonials, and ultimately the believability of the company.
It’s just a shame in their case that they didn’t have any qualified testimonials of their own… or does that just reflect the quality of the work they provide?
Sad times…
April 7, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Joy McCarthy
Thanks for both your comments Jez. The testimonial was lifted from a full case study about our work with the client’s company.
As you say, if a company has to resort to stealing testimonials, it doesn’t say a lot for their service. One is tempted to wonder about the authenticity of their client list, or indeed if it that belongs to someone else too.
April 7, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Imogen Dennis-Newton
Joy, I think you should name and shame. Stealing a testimonial is theft! There’s no other way to word it… and you know how much I love words.
What has the world come to. Clearly ‘Mr X’ of London doesn’t have many satisfied clients otherwise he’d be able to come up with his own testimonials.
I quite agree with your comments. You work so damned hard to meet and exceed customers’ requirements so, when you do receive praise, thanks, and a lovely little testimonial, it makes it all worth the effort. And it tells prospective clients you’re exactly who and what you say you are. Unlike your ‘word burglar’…
Good luck in retrieving what’s rightfully yours.
April 7, 2010 at 2:08 pm
SEO Sheffield
Name and shame! This type of behaviour is despicable. When companies are working hard to build a reputation and garner real testimonials, it’s unbelievable that some people just buy testimonials… or even worse, steal your hard earned ones! Thanks for bringing this to light.
April 7, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Joy McCarthy
Thank you for your comment. We work very hard on our clients’ behalf, and for someone to simply plagiarise the testimonials shows a total lack of integrity and professionalism.
April 7, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Jody Fletcher
That’s a very interesting point Joy – I have recently amended our website to take off the full details of the person who left the testimonial – I did this for a number of reasons – partly to protect my client from unwanted sales calls, but also to limit the chances of my competition obtaining details about my client and in some cases what they had ordered and then trying to undercut me – perhaps I shouldn’t be so sensitive, but in a very cost sensitive environment I thought it was best! I can assure everyone that all the testimonials on our site are genuine and would happily confirm all the details with a prospective client but you have now got me thinking that perhaps I need to find another way round this! Excellent food for thought!
April 7, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Joy McCarthy
Thanks for your comments Jody – your business is a combination of service and products, so it is quite a different situation. Having named companies on your website would be a risk and I think people would appreciate that.
However in this case, one is just left wondering what they have to hide … and given what we’ve uncovered … the answer is ‘quite a lot’!
April 7, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Jez Hunt
One thing I forgot to mention…
You can help with the credibility by using a picture of the person with the testimonial wherever possible, or alternatively, you can use video testimonials which are becoming much more common and are certainly powerful.
Also, a lot more difficult to rip-off (and get away with!)
April 7, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Ian Gentles
Thanks Joy for an interesting artical.
For those who value scribed testimonials on their web-site or Blogs, there is software that will protect them from being stolen.
However from my humble position as a marketer, if they haven’t got the persons picture, their full name, address, phone number, email address, and the date it was posted; I consider it worthless!
The good news is, we now have social media, particularly Facebook; that offers the opportunity to demonstrate beyond what the unscrupulous seller wants the potential customer to see. It does not surprise me to see those businesses fail to tap into this opportunity. I wonder why?
The future is bright!
April 7, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Joy McCarthy
Many thanks for your comments, Ian. We will just have to make sure we are one step ahead of these unscrupulous people!
April 8, 2010 at 8:25 am
Helen Loggin
To date, I have never used testimonials on our website mainly due to my scepticism of their actual value. However, having revised my opinion in these challenging times, I am now intending to incorporate them within our next website revamp and this blog has been very thought provoking. I like the idea of using a picture; obviously this would be very easy for us to implement and hold more credibility.
Great blog – the big boys London company should be ashamed of their complete lack of integrity and thanks also for the Copyscape tip.
April 8, 2010 at 8:53 am
Joy McCarthy
Many thanks for your comment Helen. We tend to favour ‘case studies’ which is where the testimonial came from in the first place. You can tell the whole story that way and they are very potent. But like testimonials, they have to come from a ‘real person’.
April 8, 2010 at 8:32 am
catherinewarrilow
Really interesting article, off to check out Copyscape.
Hopefully you’ll have one very shocked Mr X MD!
I really like Jez’s idea about video testimonials too.
April 8, 2010 at 9:57 am
Anthony Lloyd
As always Joy, thought provoking post. Not much more to add than has already been said. Name and shame is the game. Video testimonials is one of the ways forward for me.
It is extraordinary that a big brand resorts to this. Can only put it down to it being less work for an employee responsible for obtaining testimonials, to lift some one else’s than it is to get their own.
Perhaps you give the MD an opportunity to “pull” before going viral!
April 8, 2010 at 11:15 am
Georgina Willis
I was appalled to read this. What sort of service does this company
provide that they need to steal someone else’s testimonials? I think it
just goes to show how ethical and professional WORD-right are not to
have named them already.
April 23, 2010 at 4:35 pm
David Burn
Joy,
I admire your restraint. And I hope they ignore you so you can name the thieves. But spelling mistakes can be really useful in this sort of dispute. When a very well-known dairy company launched aerosol cream into the UK market they inadvertently descibed it as diary cream on the side panel. Guess what a competitor did when they launched a near-identical pack? Hook, line and sinker came to mind.
So include the odd deliberate spelling, grammar or logical error and prepare your carefully-crafted legal letter in readiness. Good Luck.
April 23, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Joy McCarthy
Thank you for your comments David. Of course the problem is even having deliberate mistokes can be damaging in itself. Watch this space.