Overcoming the Critics
It can be SO difficult and disheartening for any small business to deal with negative reviews. For 20+ years of breeding poodles, and 10+ of breeding poodle mixes, we’ve dealt with our fair share of people who weren’t totally satisfied with the service that we provided.
Ariana/Rover’s F1 Cavapoo “Teddy”
Reviews aren’t Reflective of Current Viewpoints
What I will say about negative reviewers is that most of the time, their problem didn’t last forever. I know, I know, you’re thinking… What the heck does that mean? It means that we fixed their problem, or made things as right as we could, but they never changed their review. According to Reino, one of the people that left a negative review, still sends us a Christmas card every year! They gush about how much they love their dog and their entire experience with us, and yet the review would lead you to believe otherwise.
The other thing about negative reviews is that there isn’t a way for us, Google, or Yelp to validate that they even got a dog from us. Plenty of our negative reviews over the years have come from fake buyers, or other breeders who just didn’t want to see us succeed. It’s incredibly frustrating, but it does happen. We keep really good records, so it’s always disheartening to see when people aren’t satisfied. We just want our dogs to be happy and living their best lives in a new home!
Quinn/Dodger’s F1B Cavapoo Girls “Nora & Queenie”
The Psychology behind Leaving A Review
Look. It’s not rocket-science. Most people who leave reviews are either OVER-THE-MOON about their experience, or they’re just genuinely upset. We don’t solicit reviews. We believe that if you’re genuinely happy about your puppy, you’ll do that naturally. Sure, sometimes we’ll ask about updates and testimonials to post here on our website, but we never solicit reviews that are posted on outside websites like Google, Yelp, etc. It’s totally up to the customer whether they want to support us that way or not.
As a Psychology major, I have studied a lot about why people do the things that they do. The gist of it is that we leave reviews only about things that we’re PASSIONATE about. There aren’t many businesses that are majority-rated 3-stars or even 4-stars out there… but there are a lot of 5-star businesses because people were passionate about leaving 5 stars. The same can be said of 1-star reviews. You’re either all in with that 5 star review or you’re all out with the 1-star review. It’s all about Passion.
All of this is to say that it’s so hard to find genuine reviews online nowadays. If you’re looking for reasons to purchase from any particular breeder, you might have a better opportunity asking for references, so that you can get the whole story and experience. We have a few select customers who have volunteered to be contacted in such cases. If you’re one of those customers and you want to help share your experience, please fill out the form below, and we can put you on our references list to share with prospective buyers!
