Bad reviews or fake reviews?

[sheerpetal Roussel]

Hi guys, i'm writing here because i got a problem.

I've just came back after a year of inactivity and i decided to open a new store...my old store was DAD DESIGN'S and the new one is LOVE.

DAD DESIGNS'S has been opened for 3 years, i've sold thousands of products, including items priced 20.000\25.000 linden and i NEVER had a problem.

With the new store, i had already 3 bad reviews in few days, but since i'm not a rookie in SL, i know that those are just personal attack by the same person, with different nicknames (3 italian avatars, no pics, no interests, no payment info used and they wrote almost the same things).

I don't believe in coincidences and first of all, I know exactly how to build all my products, i try them over and over and they are all exposed in my store, so that anybody can try every item before the purchase.

Merchants have several rules to follow and I want to know if there is a check for the people who write these things.      

This is an embarassing situation and i'm getting tired of these evils.

What should I do and what do you advise me to do?   

[Ariel Vuissent]

I can see your point with one particular reviewer, who reviewed three of your items using the same name for two and a different name for another. It's fairly easy to tell that they are the same person. The problem is that there's nothing WRONG with the reviews. A customer came on and said he/she didn't like your product. You'll have a difficult time proving that you're being attached personally, since the reviews read as a dissatisfied customer. Still, you can contact LL, point out the similarities in the reviews, and say that you feel they're less than honest. Particularly if the product backs you up and not the reviewer. LL may remove the negative reviews if they feel they're dishonest and/or a personal attack against you. It helps that you have them to try instore. Maybe you could point that out in your product description? "All products available for testing instore. Come on over!" or something. You can also leave a comment on the negative reviews. Nothing negative; try to be as helpful as you can, even though I know you're irritated.

[Restraint]

There are indeed malicious individuals here like anywhere else but the real problem is the lack of involvement from the governance team, as I see it, because what this really does in effect is encourage the abuse to continue when there is little to no risk of banishment, which I feel is truly the only thing that might deter a merchant from attacking a competitor such as yourself.

For the non-merchant, second life is an open door where they have absolutely nothing to lose because they can just as easily copybot their way back in with new accounts, say what they want, pay nothing if they wish when it no longer seems to be the issue because linden lab truly, has lost control in this respect.

Second life from an economic perspective is doing terribly so merchants who are barely getting by will naturally feel threatened by new merchants who are far more cabable and making profit when they aren't. You see this all over so, the fact that you have some haters means you are a capable merchant interpreted as a personal threat because no one who has something to offer this community, that people might actually want to purchase, will deny you your ability to sell unless it was obvious enough how much better you are then they are and that of course, won't sit well with them.

What you can do as I've alluded to, is just do nothing because it is doubtful you will beable to keep up with their mischief if they really have it in for you. Sales may or may not be effected on the short term but second life shoppers are not as dumb as you might think especially at your prices or if a product is desirable as I have found so, wait it out and if you're still having problems, contact me in world in a couple of months because I have an idea and I would love to help you out here if I could.

[JeanneAnne]

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sheerpetal Roussel wrote:

Hi guys, i'm writing here because i got a problem.

I've just came back after a year of inactivity and i decided to open a new store...my old store was DAD DESIGN'S and the new one is LOVE.

DAD DESIGNS'S has been opened for 3 years, i've sold thousands of products, including items priced 20.000\25.000 linden and i NEVER had a problem.

With the new store, i had already 3 bad reviews in few days, but since i'm not a rookie in SL, i know that those are just personal attack by the same person, with different nicknames (3 italian avatars, no pics, no interests, no payment info used and they wrote almost the same things).

I don't believe in coincidences and first of all, I know exactly how to build all my products, i try them over and over and they are all exposed in my store, so that anybody can try every item before the purchase.

Merchants have several rules to follow and I want to know if there is a check for the people who write these things.      

This is an embarassing situation and i'm getting tired of these evils.

What should I do and what do you advise me to do?   

 

 

 

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So you have an unscrupulous competitor who uses alts to post bad reviews of your products in the belief that doing so will stifle competition and thereby drive up sales of their own products?

How is this not a legitimate business practice under the paradigm of dog-eat-dog capitalism?

How is this not just one more example of how the entire paradigm is rotten?

Why don't you do the same thing? Make a bunchuv alts & bad mouth all your competitors' stuff. Turn around is fair play, right?

LL would have to pay staff to look into abuses like these. They are all about laying people off, not hiring people to look into this kind of thing. After all, they care about their own profit, not yours. The pittance you pay them in upload fees & tier does not offset the wages of someone they'd have to hire in order to provide you with the support you deserve.

My advice to you is to just suck it up. The way LL runs SL, such things as you describe is only to be expected. Not that it's right, not that it's ethical ... just that such abuses are inherent to LL's predatory business model. This being the case, there isn't much you can do about it, besides...

Enjoy SL for free!!! :smileyhappy:

Jeanne

[Lasher Oh]

"What should I do and what do you advise me to do?"  

Join the loud and growing lobby to have the whole useless gamed and cheated review and rating system dumped completely.

^L^

[Chelsea Malibu]

Well, as I have said many times, the Review System has to go for this very reason.  Too easy to game with complete impunity.

[Josh Susanto]

My own tactic has been not to concern myself with reviews unless they make a demonstrably inaccurate statement, and just keep listing more stuff. If you have enough stuff, your competitors aren't going to buy all of it just to write bad reviews. It would be too easy to prove that is what's happening.

[Madeliefste Oh]

I agree that the review system is too easy to game. But there is also an aspect I like about te review system. It is a way of getting feed back from your customers. Sometimes people point to properties of a product that they like very much, what you not even did think about, while making it. Sometimes people find little faults in a product, like a texture that is missing the right permissions. Some people contact you in world for this, but it happens often enough that they don't and let you know in a review.

The only thing that bothers me is that we are not notified when a review is placed. Sometimes I discover a complaint only half a year later. 

[Medhue Simoni]

Well, you are in a tough spot here. First thing to do is to evaluate the review and decide whether you can get any removed, because the review does not apply to the product. After that, there is not much you can do. Way back in the day, It was common to get new reviews and ratings daily. It was easy for the customer to rate and review products, so every1 did it. Today, it is not easy, and the customer can't just rate a product. They are forced to write some kind of review. Plus, we don't have any way for the customer to contact us thru the Marketplace, so it is very common to get bad reviews because of bad deliveries. Even after you get the product to the customer, they tend not to remove the bad review, cause they can't even find their way back to the review.

So, basically, you are screwed, or rather, we are screwed. Merchants used to cry like babies about getting negative ratings. It was so easy to quickly rate a product, and many people rated products. To me, this was the perfect system. Even if some1 had a grudge against you and tried to keep rating your product down, it didn't matter because it would not be long before real customers would make their ratings invalid. Your competition would have to work pretty hard just to make sure you stayed low rated. This is of course if the product is good, and other customers actually do rate you up. LL actually listened to all those people that complained about the old system, and now we have this system. The problem is, people like to be anonymous, which is fine with me, and don't like to post full reviews and have their names permanently connected to it. So, the result, no1 ever reviews a product, unless they are pissed. So, no matter how good the product is, it is way more likely to get negative reviews than positive 1's.

Oh, and despite us all ranting and raving about this new flawed system, LL has done nothing at all in well over a year. Not even a response about our complaints.

The only good part about the new flawed system, is that you can leave comments on reviews. So, I always add a comment to bad reviews, asking the customer to contact me inworld to correct the problem. I've also had customers that bought the product inworld goto the product on the marketplace and leave nice comments in reviews. If the review system was easier to navigate, I'm sure that most of my negative reviews would of been removed or corrected, but the customer just can't find their way back to editing the reviews.

[Dora Gustafson]

For your mini island mod01 item you've got one bad review for the item not being delivered
That is not you fault, but I would make sure the customer got a copy and make him change he's review

Honestly, for your 24 palm item you've got one, one star rating and one bad review out of 9 .
Look at the bright side: you have 8 good reviews
It is obvious that one review does not represent a majority of your customers

[Tealthantos]

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Lasher Oh wrote:

"What should I do and what do you advise me to do?"  

 

 

Join the loud and growing lobby to have the whole useless gamed and cheated review and rating system dumped completely.

^L^

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Pretty much this, its the system that enables it, I'm a fan of personal responiblity but with no real consquences there is no incentive for people doing bad/fake reviews to damage others businesses to stop.

 

However what you can still do is report them under the "flag this review" link for flaming, under the lindens guidelines a customer -must- try and approch the content creator about possible issues before posting a bad review otherwise their in the wrong.