Visited a dealer on Saturday who had a wide selection of cars . But I found out from one of the staff that his main business was property development. But runs the car sales as a sideline, buying cars from auctions all over the country.

Not sure why that matters? It's such a volatile industry most sensible people involved have something else to fall back on.

I’ve noticed the same Xileno.

A friend in the trade told me certain dealers get their relatives to post good reviews. And certain dealers tend to have more relatives than most ! So we have to rely on the MOT history when buying a car.

Visited a dealer on Saturday who had a wide selection of cars . But I found out from one of the staff that his main business was property development. But runs the car sales as a sideline, buying cars from auctions all over the country.

Its a pity that Trust Pilot isn’t taken up by more dealers. But according to Watchdog , in order to get a review on Trust Pilot , the company has to sign up and I expect pay a fee.

same as Good Housekeeping and maybe the Which Recommeded Provider award ?

Not really a surprise to me either - it happens a lot in today's interweb era - because you can put up fake reviews (positive or negative) quickly, repetitively and, best of all, completely anonymously.

I am a volunteer Resident Director of the Residents' Association where I live, and a previous firm we used as Managing Agents have, in my view padded their Trust Pilot page with (obvious IMHO) in-house faked positive 4 and especially 5 star reviews - odlly enought from people who don't review any other firms/organisations and who refer only to a small number of (call centre) operatives they may employ, but rarely any knwon Property Managers.

They apparently got reported by someone (possibly a rival firm - I also suspect a good number of non-specific 1 star reviews are from rivals) who proved that one of the reviews was from the boyfriend of a Property Manager, but the review stayed up.

On the other hand, negative reviews - whoever they are from (fake or genuine) - are far more likely to be reported by the firm themselves to Trust Pilot (for example - I'm sure the same happens on other similar sites) as being fake or repeating the same negative review as an earlier one (i.e. on the same subject) just to push down the overall firm rating out of spite.

To sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff, I prefer to take not of the scores and words from reviewers who a) have more than one review generally, b) those reviews are not for the same firm again and again, or in the same line of work, c) are not all low or high ratings, and d) are specific and detailed enough to be credible.

Review websites appear to not be trusted by the public these days - look at all the problems with (IMHO) overly praiseworthy shill reviews about films on well-known sites by 'profressional film critics' (many of whom are, in my view paid hacks on little-known websites - not even those working for newspapers, etc) or using faked (often copied) positive (or negative, often in response for the other) reviews by people who have 'seen' said film or TV programme (who mostly haven't) - some of which may work for production companies or studio PR firms.

We all know about fake (mostly positive) reviews on two very well known internet only retail sites, or reports of certain holiday providers (including smaller hotels) including clauses in their contratcs with holidaymakers not to post negative reviews under pain of financial penalty, or people deliberately positing fake negative reviews of (often) smaller holiday establishments to get refunds in return for deleting their review.

It's a shame that people don't known their neighbours/local community that well (including regularly chatting with them), because that is often the best way in which to determine which tradespeople and businesses are good/trustworthy and who aren't.

On websites (including forums) people can easily hide what they really are behind anonymous handles. It often takes year to be sure that the person they are (occasionally) conversing with online is who they say they are and can be trusted.