Reviews - Believe It Or Not

Business reviews are extremely helpful in assisting potential customers to make a decision about selection.
Reviews can also be instrumental in growing a business both organically and via search algorithms used by search engines such as GOOGLE.
Customers can use the review sites to express their experiences and these can both be positive and negative.
If a business receives a negative review, the business can use this feedback to reflect on why the customer felt the need to write the review.
Customers generally will usually only write a review if they have received exemplary service or have had a less than satisfactory one.
The business should see this as grist for the mill and attempt to placate the customer with an apology or offer some restitution.

Unfortunately, there are some businesses that abuse the review sites.
A business may receive a spate of poor reviews from customers which lowers the rating.
In order to increase the rating, the business either places fake reviews or incentivizes customers by offering rewards such as cash vouchers.
The cash vouchers would generally only be paid out to those reviews which rated the business high.
Using this method the average star rating can quickly be positively increased.
It is very obvious that this sort of manipulation is being carried out by a business by viewing the star rating, the dates posted and the frequency of posts.
For example, a business will receive few posts due to customers posting only when the service is at either end of the experience scale.
A business may receive a number of poor posts over a period of a month giving a star rating of 1 or 2.
In order to negate this, the business offers cash incentives and the sudden increase in posts, sometimes more than 5 in a single day of the maximum 5 stars, pushes the star rating back towards the maximum of 5.

Of course, this is all completely false and tricks customers into selecting a business which is rated highly only because customers have been paid.

Before you select a business based on reviews, follow the guidelines provided by the ACCC to ensure that you are not tricked.


ACCC - Online Product Reviews