$375 to remove a bad review on Google?

I saw this boosted post on Facebook just now:

Seems like something fishy is going on, since how would Google allow this? Certainly the “insider” game that happened at Instagram/Facebook to get ad accounts reinstated or selling blue check marks couldn’t be happening at Google.

Then I look in the comments and see a guy who paid first and is hoping for results, even though Renew Local says you pay only AFTER they get the bad review removed.

You can see there are ton of comments saying how awesome this company is– but it looks like astroturfing.

Wouldn’t it be ironic that they paid $5 to have a bot army generate positive reviews of their review removal service?

I look at the Google stats for this Google-focused company and see they are pretty much all zeros– no links, no ranking, no organic traffic (they are boosting posts), no trust:

In case you’re curious who Renew Local actually is: they’re a reputation management outfit that markets itself as a turnkey way to manage Google Business Profiles – the artist formerly known as Google My Business. Their own materials talk about backing up your listing, watching for changes, and batching posts through a slick dashboard.

The heart of their pitch is review removal. At around $375 per review, they say they’ll flag anything that violates Google’s rules, compile evidence, and get it removed. They tout a ‘pay after removal’ model, but there are reports of folks paying first and hoping the removal actually happens. Industry data suggests Google’s bar for removing reviews is very high – success rates hover in the single digits because the content has to clearly break rules like hate speech or spam. So any service promising high success rates should raise eyebrows.

They also offer profile monitoring, automated backups of your reviews and photos, compliance alerts, and multi-location dashboards. Everything sounds polished, yet there’s no transparency about when the company was founded, who runs it or how big it is. The site relies on paid ads rather than organic search, and there are few genuine testimonials outside the ad comments section that looks suspiciously like astroturfing.

That’s not to say the concept of helping businesses fight fake reviews is inherently bad – there are established players like Guaranteed Removals, Consumer Fusion and Removify that have been around for years, charge more per case and publish their success metrics. Renew Local’s bargain b‑​basement pricing and lack of independent evidence places them in the ‘too good to be true’ category until proven otherwise.

Bottom line: if you’re considering handing over money to make a bad review disappear, know that Google’s policies are strict, and no third party can magically erase truthful complaints. Do your due diligence, check competitors’ track records, and take all glowing Facebook comments with a grain of salt – or maybe a whole salt shaker.I

I’d love to hear if you’ve used these guys and what happened.

UPDATE: This is their latest ad I just saw on Facebook:

I asked ChatGPT to run the math in their ad– that removing one review would bump you from 4.1 to 4.5 stars…

Short answer: you’re right — the screenshot is misleading on multiple levels.
Let’s do the math cleanly and then talk about why ads like this are sketchy.

1. The review count problem (the obvious tell)

They show:

• Before: 4.1 stars, 56 reviews
• After: 4.5 stars, 56 reviews

If you remove a 1-star review:

• The total must drop to 55 reviews
• Keeping it at 56 implies the review magically vanished and the count didn’t change — impossible unless:
  • A new review was added, or
  • They’re not actually removing anything

So yes: that alone makes the image inaccurate.

2. The rating math (this is where it really breaks)

Let’s reverse-engineer what’s required.

Step 1: What does 4.1 stars across 56 reviews mean?

Total stars ≈
4.1 × 56 = 229.6 stars

(Real systems use exact values, but this is close enough.)

Step 2: Remove one 1-star review

New totals:

• Reviews: 55
• Stars: 229.6 − 1 = 228.6

New average:

228.6 ÷ 55 ≈ 4.16

👉 That rounds to 4.2, not 4.5.

3. What would it actually take to jump to 4.5?

To have 4.5 stars with 55 reviews, you’d need:

55 × 4.5 = 247.5 total stars

But after removing a 1-star review, you only have 228.6 stars.

That’s a gap of ~19 stars.

Translation:

• You’d need to remove multiple low reviews, or
• Add a bunch of new 5-star reviews, or
• Both

One lonely 1-star review does not move the needle that much.

4. Why this ad is misleading (borderline deceptive)

They’re stacking three quiet misdirections:

1. Review count stays the same → mathematically impossible
2. Rating jump is exaggerated → one review can’t do that
3. Implied causality → “remove one review = massive lift”

This is classic reputation-management bait:

• Visually convincing
• Numerically wrong
• Optimized for business owners who feel the pain, not those who check the math

5. The real-world truth (that you already know)

• Removing a single bad review usually moves the average by 0.01–0.1, not 0.4
• The real leverage comes from:
  • Volume of legitimate positives
  • Recency
  • Diversity of reviewers
  • Owner responses
  • Brand mentions off Google

Which is why the whole “$375 magic eraser” pitch is… optimistic.

Verdict

Your instinct is correct.
The math doesn’t work, the review count is wrong, and the screenshot is misleading.