We have a legitimately looking (and not only looking, REALLY LEGIT!) website, and… We’re still getting a bunch of feedback that looks like this:
It’s one of the letters that reach us via our client support email. We’re trying to communicate it all & answer each and every one of these letters we get. However, after some time, it gets a bit disappointing, if I may call it that. RatePunk is a free tool helping people save money on travels, and we feel like this scam-shaming is a huge stopper to using this tool for some.
We have ads running on Facebook in quite a few countries, and these are what comments we mostly receive:
Even though it’s not constructive criticism in most cases, it’s still quite massive & gets on our motivation. However, when we think about it from the user’s perspective, we notice the POTENTIAL reasons behind it quite easily:
A super young company
We launched only in February and the systems that check RatePunk’s legitimacy name it as a suspicion.
Not a lot of reviews
Even though all of them are positive, the number of these compared to the number of installs could get users questioning.
And what we think is the main one…
The notice to give RatePunk access to all information on the user’s phone when installing it. It’s completely normal practice with browser extensions, but it might seem sketchy for some of our potential customers. The reason we need access to this is to be able to add more booking websites in the long run without having the user to re-install it after each. However, from the pop-up that shows up when installing RatePunk on Chrome Store & Safari, users think we’ll gain access to their personal data and information, such as bank account details, putting their safety in danger.
We get it as a sign to start working more on increasing brand awareness: we’re trying to get in the press and gather different mentions on as many platforms as possible, especially focusing on reviews & safety aspects. Also, we wrote up our terms & conditions in detail, and we’ll spread it as widely as possible for more people to see it and have assurance. We’re not stealing anyone’s data & we don’t need any information for non-OTAs-related information, and we really need to show it to the world.
Our users are the most important part of RatePunk. I would like to show our office fridge to everyone thinking we’ll scam them: we print out the positive reviews & stick them here as motivation and a reminder of what we’re working for 👇
