Newbie Finds This Site is a Great Resource but all the 10s are ridiculous

by Tim in Toronto 10 months ago

This is a great resource that has made my job of getting and organizing quotes for several projects much much easier.

But really, don’t all these 10 out of 10s seriously damage the credibility of the review part of the site. Where are all the 8 and 9 out of 10s?

Here’s a test, look up any contractor you have dealt with and the ones you had a poor experience with have just as many 10/10s as the ones you had good experiences with. I bet the average score is not all that different either. I suppose the number of reviews is a better indicator of quality (or at least industriousness).

Here’s a suggestion, look at some of the features in the most trusted recommendation sites (e.g. eBay, amazon, tripadvisor). None of these is perfect, but all have more features that make it easier to spot phony reviews and to see what are the good experiences and what are the bad experiences with a company. Things like being able to see the most positive and negative reviews, being able to sort on the helpfulness of reviews, being able to easily see whether the review is from a new or trusted reviewer, etc.

by Dave in North Vancouver 10 months ago

I just discovered a moving company that has umpteen 10s out of 10 on Homestars because they have merely posted glowing reviews of other moving companies they had found on the internet. I Googled parts of some of the reviews and found they were word-for-word the same as other reviews that had been posted on earlier dates. It took only a few minutes to find a half-dozen such plagerisms.

Here’s an example. The first sentence of one review was: “Made a reservation pretty last minute; was given an incredibly fair quote for loading my truck and the movers were really accommodating to my schedule.” That review was posted on Homestars on December 18, 2010. When I Googled that (in double quotes—try it yourself), the Homestars review came up, but so did a word-for-word copy of an earlier review of “All Moving Systems” that had been posted on a different review website on October 25, 2010. To be fair, it was not exactly the same. The earlier review concluded with, “(if only they had a location in Boston!)”; the Homestar review, “(if only they had a location in Winnepeg)”!

Homestars is not the only company that has this problem, of course. One of the Homestars reviews I checked was identical to a review that had been posted on another website on a later date, meaning that the Homestar review had been plagerized (or that is was part of a chain of plagerisms).

I chose this moving company largely because of all the favourable reviews here. After being ripped off royally by them, I wondered why they had so many glowing reviews. I wonder how many others have also been ripped off.

I suggest Homestars adopt software similar to that used by universities to detect plagerism of student papers.

by jodi from douro 10 months ago

Thank you for your thoughtful post David.

We have a number of systems in place to judge the trustworthiness of each review. The addition of a plagiarism tool would be a great addition – it will certainly be added to our trust toolkit.

thanks again – have a nice weekend.

by jodi from douro 10 months ago

Tim,

We are working hard on that issue – too many 10s is in fact damaging. There are layers to why this happens from fraudulent reviews to homeowner psychology all requiring an individual strategy.

This blog post highlights some of the things we do. And you’d be hard pressed to find any other review sites on the internet that take these bold steps.

Transparency and our review process

It doesn’t end there – it never ends as we are constantly finding new ways to move the needle forward. The ideas raised in this thread are all on our list.

thanks for this thread. We are passionate about this issue too.

Jodi

by Dave in North Vancouver 10 months ago

Jodi, you should consider penalizing companies that are found to be misusing your review service in this way. That may be the most effective way of dealing with the issue. Perhaps an initial six-month suspension (i.e., remove the company from Homestars), then permanent banishment for a second offence. Plagerism may not always be clear, but where there are many positive reviews that are virtually word-for-word identical to earlier reviews elsewhere…

Cary

by jodi from douro 10 months ago

David, we do in fact take serious steps when we find a company is trying to game their reputation – see the link above I posted to Tim’s initial posting.

removing them doesn’t help homeowners – but highlighting them as offenders gives transparency so homeowners can evaluate them based on the information we have about them.

Plagiarism isn’t always an offense (e.g. a homeowner may be writing about that company on other review sites), but it is cause for investigation as it can be a sign of other fraudulent activities

Nice conversation Dave (-:

by info@maidsofcanada.com 10 months ago

I couldn’t agree more. I like to take a look at the reviewer’s other reviews. If there are none I tend to raise a few eyebrows. Most customers are hard to pin down to give reviews. Unless they use the site already, most can’t be bothered….just a note from my experience.

by John at B.B.G. 9 months ago

I agree and
d have earned a lot of 10 out of ten on the carpentry section bbg carpentry.

Theremust be away to set the score card to give point for more different aspect of the whole experience with the contractor.we are not all perfect and a 8 or 9 are still good scores but the way the site is set io it’s seems like anything lower than a ten is bad.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm

by Rizwan from Oakville 7 months ago

I agree with this post. The site Is great and provides a great service to businesses and to the consumer. However it appears there are some reviews that are self posted.
It must be hard to balance in making it too easy to post or making it too difficult to deter phony self promotional reviews. I always check to see if the person reviewing has more than review? Thayer helps me If this is a real person not..