In November last year, a Nationwide insurance agent/adjuster made a mistake while investigating an insurance claim by a couple in Buffalo Township, PA (Pittsburgh area). This agent saw some hibiscus plants in the couple's backyard and mistook them for Marijuana. He then called the police and the couple were treated like suspected marijuana growers while police investigated. The couple is understandably suing the agent and Nationwide Insurance.

When the story was released, people were very upset and they contacted CompleteMarkets and many of them left reviews on this agents CompleteMarkets profile - hundreds of reviews. Many of these reviews  were rejected by our verification process for various reasons, profanity, unable to verify identity of reviewer etc.

The agent quietly logged into the profile and changed all the information. Rather than contacting us and asking us to help state his case. Or, even better, stating his case on his profile, helping to salvage his reputation, he chose to attempt to 'bury' the information under a false name, and false information, but left the profile active. His profile still shows up on Google, so that has not really helped his cause.

Yet, this is a very rare case, and appears to be a terrible mistake on this agent/adjuster's part.

In the vast majority of cases when we get an irate client or just a pissed of competitor trying to leave a tasteless irrelevant review on our website our processes and team is able to suppress these 'invalid and unverifiable reviews' of our agents. We try to keep things fair.

In many cases, our members invite their clients(via email and social media) to review them on CompleteMarkets, as it vastly improves their fortunes because of the trust and credibility factor when prospects are researching them online.

I would love to hear any thoughts from members of this group as it relates to soliciting reviews, being researched online and defending reviews online.

Most of our Prestige Professional members (our low cost premium membership) have great reviews, because they care about their reputation and they provide great service to insureds. If interested, you can review the premium membership here - https://completemarkets.com/shop/product/PrestigePro/

But is this an anomaly - agents looking to manage their online reputation? Are agents too busy to build an online reputation? Do they think it's the responsibility of the agency or the agency owner?

A pretty interesting mistake to make. However we all know that mistakes are made in the world of insurance.
What is most concerning, is the "logg(ing) into the profile and changed all the information.

Agreed, Scott.



And I know this young professional is probably reeling under the repercussions of this mistake. So, it's unfortunate.

But, we were definitely stunned by the outpouring of feedback that we were getting form people that read this story. They mostly provided comments and reviews using their Facebook profiles ( and other social media).

But, these insureds (hundreds of them) googled this person's profile and went the extra mile to authenticate through social media with our site and leave a comment/review.

I believe this is an indication of things to come, more and more people will be looking to review or lookup an agent and agency online before they do business with them.