I had an exactly the same experience with Trustpilot.
They took down my negative review of a business, asking me to change it despite it being factually correct (I was reporting fraudulent bait-and-switch tactics used by a German air travel site), while they left a bunch of clearly suspect 5-star reviews, thus skewing the overall score of what was clearly a fraud of a service.
The best part: the link that takes you from the vendor's Trustpilot page to their service is a referral link.
The whole 'independent' review service concept is inherently flawed for at least two reasons: a disproportionate number of bad reviews (people will more likely go to such a service to vent their frustration about, rather then to lavish praise on a vendor), and a dependency on advertisement revenue, often coming from the very subjects of the reviews that you are featuring.
They took down my negative review of a business, asking me to change it despite it being factually correct (I was reporting fraudulent bait-and-switch tactics used by a German air travel site), while they left a bunch of clearly suspect 5-star reviews, thus skewing the overall score of what was clearly a fraud of a service.
The best part: the link that takes you from the vendor's Trustpilot page to their service is a referral link.
The whole 'independent' review service concept is inherently flawed for at least two reasons: a disproportionate number of bad reviews (people will more likely go to such a service to vent their frustration about, rather then to lavish praise on a vendor), and a dependency on advertisement revenue, often coming from the very subjects of the reviews that you are featuring.