Fake review on Consumer site

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Fred99

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Topic # 217764 11-Jul-2017 16:34

https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/fake-review-leads-to-pr-firm

Rather generous of Sue Chetwin to not name the person who accidentally doxxed themselves, and also not name the "PR" company.

I expect "slant or bias" from spin merchants - but outright lies by paid shills - that's another story.

Especially if their client (presumably another power company) was aware of the tactic.

I'd like to see the Commerce Commission follow this up - surely that's the kind of disgraceful corporate behaviour they should be protecting us from.

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Master Geek
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Reply # 1819725 11-Jul-2017 17:43

thats why i don't read most reviews 90% are fake

tehgerbil

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Reply # 1819818 11-Jul-2017 19:48

Bahahaha, what a total fool. Who logs in using their personal details to lay a fake complaint!?

I love how they screw up so badly, even their boss had to grovel to apologies.

To honest, it makes me want to check out Flick! They must be amazing if they're going so far to discredit! lol

Wiggum

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Reply # 1819820 11-Jul-2017 19:51

biggal:

thats why i don't read most reviews 90% are fake

This should not be the case with consumer.org.nz, its suppose to be a good site, with genuine reviews you can trust. I once was a subscriber, and use to pay good money for such reviews.

Ge0rge

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Reply # 1819821 11-Jul-2017 19:53

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Wiggum:
biggal:

thats why i don't read most reviews 90% are fake

This should not be the case with consumer.org.nz, its suppose to be a good site, with genuine reviews you can trust. I w=once was a subscriber, and use to pay good money for such reviews.

I think you'll find there is a difference between the reviews done by Consumer themselves (or the independent labs they contract to) and the "comments" that are made by the general public on the Consumer website. The former will influence my purchasing heavily, the latter I don't bother reading. The "review" in question appears to be one of the latter.

freitasm

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Reply # 1819893 11-Jul-2017 21:01

And that's is why we take astroturfing seriously - it's a breach of FUG and many accounts were banned for this kind of behaviour.

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Dratsab

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Reply # 1819961 11-Jul-2017 22:31

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"Maybe it was a mistake. But maybe it was a mistake because they got caught. I’ll let you judge." - this made me laugh. It was a mistake because the commentor put her real name on it. I'd imagine the scenario then went "That's ok, I'll delete it and re-post with some fake credentials. F***!! I can't delete it!" Following that she rang Consumer and it (gradually) became mea culpa from there.

maoriboy

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Reply # 1820023 12-Jul-2017 08:31

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Would be great to be able to read the offending "review" and try to guess the company in question

Astroturfing...never heard of that one before. My new word of the day. Thanks @freitasm hahaha

Dulouz

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Reply # 1820036 12-Jul-2017 08:52

It was probably a naive and over enthusiastic new graduate wanting to show her dedication to the cause.

Amanon

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Reply # 1820037 12-Jul-2017 08:55

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Consumer New Zealand, "Choose what's right for you with confidence"

I wonder how many people read the Flick article, saw the fake comments, and decided to go with another power supplier based on those comments. Its a real shame that consumer NZ does not have the balls to publish the offending company.

Dulouz

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Reply # 1820038 12-Jul-2017 08:56

Wiggum:

Consumer New Zealand, "Choose what's right for you with confidence"

I wonder how many people read the Flick article, saw the fake comments, and decided to go with another power supplier based on those comments. Its a real shame that consumer NZ does not have the balls to publish the offending company.

Yeh - lets ruin her life.

Amanon

freitasm

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Reply # 1820040 12-Jul-2017 09:08

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It's an error of judgement but nonetheless shows the moral compass direction.

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Wiggum

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Reply # 1820042 12-Jul-2017 09:10

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Dulouz:

Wiggum:

Consumer New Zealand, "Choose what's right for you with confidence"

I wonder how many people read the Flick article, saw the fake comments, and decided to go with another power supplier based on those comments. Its a real shame that consumer NZ does not have the balls to publish the offending company.

Yeh - lets ruin her life.

The offending company should be published. I think consumers have a right to know.

Nobody is asking to publish the persons name involved. Offending company should be the ones who decide to take further action against this individual, they can decide to publish her name or not, or simply fire her. But by the sounds of it, offending company does not even know this has happened.

CEO of consumer NZ, Sue Chetwin said the following:

. But what concerned me was the questioning of Consumer NZ’s integrity. One of the beauties of belonging to us is that people trust our advice. We’ve built a business on it. I rang the PR woman who posted it. I wanted to know whether this was company practice (we’re not talking a small PR firm here).

Now I am questioning Consumer NZ's integrity, they seem to be protecting this person, and what steps are they taking to stop this from happening again in the future. I normally trust the reviews on consumer NZ, that trust has now gone out of the window and I will just rank them the same as all other rubbish review sites out there. I sure as hell wont be subscribing to them in future, or reading their magazines.

MikeAqua

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Reply # 1821073 12-Jul-2017 10:11

I remember 10 years ago talking to someone setting up a small website for their creative-based business, selling direct to consumers.

They told me that you couldn't just set up a website and wait for customers. You also had to pay a review writing service to generate a whole lot of favourable reviews. The reviews were about service standard rather than product quality.

Mike

MikeAqua

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Reply # 1821076 12-Jul-2017 10:13

Dulouz:

It was probably a naive and over enthusiastic new graduate wanting to show her dedication to the cause.

Lucky for her she was able to turn on the water works enough for Sue Chetwin to feel sorry for her ...

Mike

freitasm

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Reply # 1821078 12-Jul-2017 10:18

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MikeAqua:

I remember 10 years ago talking to someone setting up a small website for their creative-based business, selling direct to consumers.

They told me that you couldn't just set up a website and wait for customers. You also had to pay a review writing service to generate a whole lot of favourable reviews. The reviews were about service standard rather than product quality.

Yes and no. He was probably talking about those SEO spammers that go around posting how great something/service is in blog comments, forum posts, paid blog posts,etc, with link drops. This got so bad Google started penalising websites by reducing their presence in search results, based on the quality of inbound links.

At some point SEO experts started selling services to help companies remove these companies. They would then approach bloggers, forum owners asking to have these removed - and paying to remove it (ironic in the case of paid blog posts).

I have a couple of blog posts (original, not paid) where I mention one company or another and I posted a link. A SEO "expert" contacted me asking to remove those links. Since it was my blog post, not a paid service, original content, not spam, I didn't even consider. They created the mess, not my problem.

I've seen New Zealand companies fall for this. A job site with the perfect domain name hired a Christchurch SEO company to help them. This company in turn hired some Indian-based spammers to go around posting in blog comments and forums. When someone with the job company's owners name posted on Geekzone I thought it was strange - I know the guy and he wouldn't post with such bad English. That's when he found out his "SEO experts" were actually charging $5000/month to then dump a couple of hundred dollars on a spam service and pocket the rest without doing anything.

Another New Zealand SEO company, a "fast growth startup" charges a few thousand dollars a month to generate a "report" that is actually the same document for everyone, with just a find and replace of the client's name. Some suggestions are laughable and clearly shows they didn't even bother visiting their client's website for the assessment service.

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