True Local

Signed up for a 6 month contract to advertise our business. Did not receive one phone call from anyone looking for our (trade) services. When I tried to cancel the advertising from the end of the contract I was told to ring back a couple of weeks later as they couldn't action the cancellation until then! What the? When I rang back I had apparently missed the deadline to cancel and have been billed an additional month, plus a pro rata half month. Again, huh? This company is dodgy. Run, don't walk away from advertising with them. They only got one star because I couldn't give them none or even a minus rating.

I use various sites to report on my experiences with businesses, either because they were excellent or because they really sucked. My negative reviews of businesses have never been published by Truelocal. I must conclude that Truelocal are biased and only publish positive reviews. This in itself is misleading conduct!

This company scams customers if they are overdue on their purchases like put caveats on your property beware of the invoice there is a small clause do not sign and get it removed if you want to purchase an airconditioner from them... they claim default interest and legal fees from you... I would not recommend this company to anyone.

Stole $100 from me via direct debit and they lied about it for about 6 months until I asked fair trading for help. Truelocal's response was to just give the money back. They refused to let me cancel the contract early and billed me for six months even though they had clearly broken the contract by engaging in fraudulent behaviour. I will take this review down if I receive a refund

I've tried to remove my business listing as I sold my business 3 months ago and the name and owner have now changed.
They keep refusing to remove the listing!
It's not your business - it's mine so why won't they close the listing? It's just giving false information to it's customers about real businesses that are not actually open and trading anymore. Stupid policies from this company.

Signed up 3 months ago for a 6 month contract. In the 3 months our business has been listed we have received 15 views and supposedly 4 'leads' (a click for our mobile number), but NOT ONE CALL. Cost = $366.30 for ZERO RETURN. 3 months to go and can't wait to cancel contract. I have never seen any advertising by True Local for their product. What a way to make money - set up an 'advertising' business, don't promote it, rake in the money.
Save your money, use someone else that is more reputable and supportive of your business, and that promotes theirs. Only gave 1 star because I couldn't get review published without it.

We have a few negative reviews on True Local, most of them completely inaccurate as they state fees which we don't have, and how our service has failed them in timeframes that we don't work to, and our Terms of Service are somehow on there and 3 years out of date.

The latest review calling us a Scam is completely unverified and hurting our business.

We have been told if we pay we can have the reviews removed; to me this is the real scam!

I recently had a bad experience with a company - and upon writing an honest outline of my experience it got declined with no further specific explanations as to why. If you don't want to publish the truth however bad it might be what's the point of reviwing anything anyway?

Finding that we only had a 1.5 star review we asked our good customers to with genuine reviews based on true experience.
I approached 5 of our good clients and asked for a review to be left to boost our star rating they all obliged, less then 5 days later the positive reviews had been removed.
We sent a legal letter after much back and forth, the response was simply, our positive reviews are fake/ written by the business (This was not the case).
And that the negative reviews are fact, this is not the case. (Without sounding bias).

We have since been contacted to pay true local money in order to boost our position in there marketing/ our online position... This sounds, looks and feel's like a modern-day extortion.

We have been left with nothing, and no way to defend our small business. Thanks "True local" and Sensis... Nothing like kicking the little guy to the curb.

A pointless site if you're looking for a balanced and fair review of a business. True Local simply only publish good reviews and reject negative reviews without entering into any discussion why. They simply reject any review which talks negatively of a business which they promote on their site. If you then try to republish your review, even if it's edited, True Local stops you from publishing it with a constant error message stating "you cannot review the same business within a 24 hour period" this is even if you haven't written a review for this business for a week.
This makes their whole review policy pointless as you are never being given a true overview of a business, just being shown any positive feedback from consumers.

This company is harmful to small businesses. My dealings with them from 6 years ago, still harming my business to this day. They couldn't care less. In business 14 years, 6 years ago, I received a malicious review on True Local site. It was full of lies and contradictions and I dealt with each and every one of them, explaining I have a "no questions asked replacement/refund policy" and had in fact already refunded the item (which wasn't faulty, just not the same blue as on her computer (online site.) Never had another bad review on this or any other site in 14 years. At the time I asked them to retract this malicious review but they would not, despite my reply which discounted every accusation. 6 years later, I requested a retraction again - what good could come of that one bad review after 7 years and after 14 years in business? No, they would not. Do they exist solely to damage good businesses? Seems so. Avoid like the plague.

Submitted a bad review about a company and they won't post it. They cut and paste all the reason why they didn't post covering off all sorts of bogus excuses like it can't be a food poisoning claim when I was reviewing a courier company.

They are jsut as bad as the companies that are being reviewed. They'll hide behind their postive touch feely responses but in fact completely useless.

If they don't post honest reviews then they are dishonest themselves.

Let's face it if you've gone to the trouble of writing a review your pretty passionate about the bad experience you just received and you almost certainly paid for it as well. In my case the courier company has thousands of bad reviews on another site but amazingly True Local come up with a bogus excuse. Dodgy stay away

Still have not called back or followed up They Also are frowned upon by their parent company sensis which owns Yellow Pages. True local is not worth it. Spend more time calling them then getting calls from their advertising. They get my address wrong, my listing wrong, cant even speak to the person who signed me up. Sounded pretty stupid and didnt know about advertising yet is selling it. What happened to sales people knowing something about what they sell?

Truelocal infringes on business online presence by defacement, falsification, or removal of registered trademark but not limited to other IP rights, or its false use elsewhere without the sole proprietor's explicit consent. Truelocal's alleged purpose is to gain commercial advantages such as commercial competitive edge & revenue profits. Truelocal gives the impression of collaborating or networking with unlisted Truelocal businesses or individuals. Truelocal will allegedly override & impersonate by uploading to unrelated Truelocal businesses or individuals' Google Search -Images & Videos. These infringements are carried out with the intent to maximise Truelocal SEO ranking in local search results. Truelocal knows about its wrongdoing, but it will blame its current clients. Truelocal acts in bad faith conduct.

With multiple emails of requesting the listing of my business that was NOT approved or have permission to publish in the first place, this is affecting my current business as the details are wrong and the store has been closed down for over a year.

They seem to be a law unto themselves. Once you sign up, you cannot remove your profile. You cannot edit your review if you need to clarify something (or even to fix a spelling error). They delete reviews at a whim. Reviews that need to be removed because the situation has changed or were written under duress they refuse to touch.

If they don't like your review then they simply delete it. They don't offer you to review and edit then submit it again, just simply delete it. So unprofessional. They also state in app store that "We have the most customer-generated reviews in Australia. That is a straight out lie. Tripadvisor has way-way more for example.

Our business has been targeted by anonymous defamatory reviews that aren't true. Small business are being forced to defend reviews with no name, no proof of purchase. They treat Australian businesses like they are criminals - Guilty before innocent. Time for class action and ACCC to get involved.

I contacted them to cancel my listing as I closed the business 5 years ago. I've never advertised with them. They replied that they can't identify that I am the business owner. All they have to do is ring the number they have listed. So basically they are listing a business that doesn't operate anymore.

They did not publish my review which was my experience. I followed True Local guidelines in my review. I just wanted to warn other customers of this business. They
Showed a lack of empathy and care in their treatment of myself. They were rude in their dealings. Very dissappointed in True Local also now, as they state will publish reviews if they are negative as well, but this is not the case

Hi, when ever true local directory customer service call you for to get paid membership they will show you we are on google first page and they will ask you monthly $211+ and months contract and contract cancellation 1 months period required.
They will appear on google first page 1 or 2 months after that they will disappear from google coz they are not paying to google and they will keep charging you money just for nothing just be careful they are big scammer.
I don't way they are showing us google top page when they want contract with people and when you complaint them they give you there are many reason coz their business not showing on google like reviews listing etc but actual reason is they are not paying to google and they are charging you coz they said they are on top page of google.
So be careful from True Local Directory

Wrote a review regarding a local lawn mower company on Bribie Island which did not paint the company in a good light at all. True Local decided not to print my review even though there were no profanities, no untruths, no racist/sexist or homophobic remarks contained in the review. What is the point of having a TRUE local review if you can't tell the truth as it pertains to your experience!

These guys only seem to publish positive reviews of businesses. They have a huge list of supposed 'guidelines', which basically amounts to "we don't publish it if it seems against the business". You might sneak a few it was great but xyx things through, but they won't let you actually say how terrible a business is. A complete hoax of a review site.

EDIT: response to their message below. I did in fact rewrite the review to be in line with the guidelines, completely and utterly in line with them in every respect. They then started arbitrarily claiming I had not actually been to the shop and was not posting about a genuine experience. Then they invoked a legal principal which applies to the banking sector thinking I wouldn't know what it was, claiming I was breaking that legal principal. When I pointed out that they were not using the legal principal correctly they said they "would get back to me" then did nothing. Total hoax of a site. Don't believe any review posted there.