Automaker Calls Police on Negative Car Review Posted on Social Media

You've done it before, you've jumped onto YouTube or another social media platform to check out reviews of a certain product. From deciding which restaurant to dine in to choosing your next car, it's good to get another customer's experience.

It's especially important when making big purchases, like, say, a car. If you're the viewer, you should beware before blindly trusting another person's opinion, and if you're the reviewer, be prepared for some potentially demoralizing backlash or even a call from the police. 

According to a Reuters report, the Vietnamese automaker VinFast lodged a complaint with the police against someone's negative review of one of its cars on YouTube. 

The local customer in question, Tran Van Hoang, apparently made less-than-stellar comments about his VinFast Lux A2.0 car, which the car company is claiming to be untrue, and which could affect its reputation. 

The video was removed from the YouTube account but has since been reuploaded on another account (in Vietnamese, embedded below). 

It seems that VinFast, which has plans to start selling its fleet of EVs in Europe and North America by 2022, as The Drive explained, and which is Vietnam's first domestic car manufacturer, is taking the matter very seriously indeed.

Impact of social media reviews

In some ways, it's easy to see why. A 2018 report on the impact of social media reviews for car makers explained that 81 percent of car buyers would be influenced by positive and negative car reviews alike. 

On top of that, one in six car buyers turn to social media reviews to help them decide on which car they should buy, and 53 percent of car buyers have themselves gone onto a social media platform to leave a review of their car.

However, as the report notes, car buyers should beware of what they read or listen to on social media reviews, as these could have been uploaded by bots or hackers, like what happened to the Robinhood app, aren't typically written by a professional, and can turn towards the negative. 

As for the Vietnamese VinFast reviewer, it's hard to tell what the outcome of this police investigation will be, but for the time being, we'll have to sit tight.