Companies who sell fake reviews to hotels and other services are compromising their clients’ integrity and cheating consumers out of an honest evaluation.
If you’ve ever searched the Internet for product reviews before making a purchase, you’ve surely seen them: glowing reviews, telling you how fantastic this audio system is or what a wonderful time was had staying at that hotel. Did it ever strike you as strange that sometimes there seem to be tens, maybe even hundreds, of reviews that don’t have one bad word to say?It just so happens that those reviews you’re reading might actually be fake.
These days, you’ll find a “reviews page” on just about every website that offers a product or service. Everyone from major store chains to online sites that allow you to compare airport parking offer up customer reviews with the intention of helping you decide on the best way to spend your hard-earned cash.But how can unsuspecting consumers decide if they can trust the reviews presented to them? There are two main things to look out for when evaluating reviews on a website.
1. It’s Not All Good News – Sure, when you see that a company has nothing but 5-star reviews, you get a good feeling about them.Keep in mind, however, that no matter how good a service or product is, there will always be issues that arise and cause customer dissatisfaction.If there are no negative remarks at all, chances are someone is removing them to serve their own purposes.
2. Who’s Doing The Reviewing? Be wary of websites that allow anyone who happens along to submit a review.Some sites offer an online form where anybody, regardless of whether they’re an actual customer or not, can give a few bits of information and then say what they like.The most reliable reviews will be found on sites that only allow people who have actually used the product or service to write a review, usually by sending out a customised link directly to the customer.
One type of site that seems particularly vulnerable to fake reviews is the travel comparison website. In an age where you can do almost anything online: compare car hire companies, purchase budget airline tickets, book a boat trip up the Nile or even just compare airport hotels, the possibility of coming across bogus testimonials is increasingly prevalent. One site that has experienced some trouble with fake reviews, and consequently with some negative customer perception of their services, is TripAdvisor. Companies were promising hotel owners that they would post positive reviews of their businesses on high-profile sites (like TripAdvisor) in return for a monthly fee.One hotel actually received several reviews and they hadn’t even opened yet! TripAdvisor, to their credit, have many checks in place, along with human moderators, that police the reviews submitted to them and either remove anything questionable or place a warning on any set of reviews that are deemed possible fakes.
Even with the best of intentions though, the reality is that some fake reviews will slip through the cracks.The public’s best defence against them is learning to spot the signs mentioned above and then just using good old-fashioned common sense.
Tags: airport hotels, airport parking, business ethics, compare car hire, consumer news, fake reviews, tripadvisor