I was thinking about several bad reviews. I'd order food from Foodpanda and Grab where I notice some falsified claims. It also reminded me of several false claims like the Robinsons Galleria "snakeman", the fried towel from Jollibee (which I still believe was an act of sabotage), and maybe I could talk about several fake reviews just to get attention. Mistakes do happen (at times) and I remembered someone wrote a review of few mistakes on a restaurant. Meanwhile, I noticed somebody could just deliberately put an insect, picture it, badmouth, the restaurant, and the deed is done. I think the same could be very true for the bad reviews of AXA Philippines at Trustpilot (read here). I really feel like asking if Trustpilot can truly be trusted or not.
I decided to do some research about Trustpilot on Google. It's no surprise that sitejabber has Trustpilot at a very low score. Again, I can't be sure if it's not that easy to take down fake reviews. I decided to read through some of the reviews here. Apparently, it seems that those who wrote those terribly written reviews about AXA Philippines were exaggerating their claims. The Make Use Of website also tackles eight ways to spot fake and useless reviews (read here). I'm not going to discuss all eight but I could raise up those that intrigued me to a certain extent:
- The use of extremely negative emotions. The Make Use Of website writes, "Similarly, a completely negative review doesn't offer you much help either. People flaming a product could be trying to damage the company's reputation because they had a bad experience with it. Someone who genuinely wants to provide a one-star review will focus on the specific issues they had with it instead of writing overarching angry comments."
- Personal stories and details. The Make Us Of website writes this, "Reviews that have clichés like "This product changed my life!" are often fake. Most people don't feel that strongly about random products online, so fakers might feel the need to ham up their review when it's not genuine."
- Excellent or poor grammar might be an indicator. I read the reviews I found on Trustpilot and noticed how poorly written they are. The Make Use Of website writes, "Similarly, a review that's barely legible can be a sign that it's not legitimate. A lot of companies pay people, usually in developing countries where English is not the primary language, to write positive reviews for their products. These outsourced reviews serve to inflate the product's rating."
I was thinking that negative reviews can also be very true. I think some companies might actually be paying people from developing countries to destroy their competition. I was wondering if there are scammers in the Philippines (and I wouldn't be surprised if Mavis Sky, the developer of that evil game Axa Infinity is now involved) in making the bad reviews. I think scammers want more people to withdraw any investment from legitimate companies in order to "invest with them". I guess the Mavis Sky company wants people to be playing Axie Infinity instead of investing in AXA (read here). Yet, all the claims that Axie Infinity players have become broke as a joke are truly real. AXA Philippines has ties with a reputable banks like Metrobank. Meanwhile, where's the registration of Axie Infinity as a legitimate investment?
Right now, I feel these bad reviews aren't necessarily credible. Sometimes, a bad review can just be written with an ill motive. Some people just want attention even if it's negative. I remembered I almost didn't buy certain beverages due to the claim of "food poisoning". I think one of the claims happened because the person drank an expired drink. Another one could easily lie that a rat was cooked but it wasn't a rat. Claims of the use of fetal cells in some products were later debunked. There are so many fake reviews online. I might decide to write a post about that. Though right now, this might be the start of another new blog entry series.
References
Websites
"8 Ways to Spot Fake and Useless Reviews Online" by Ben Stegner (Updated: October 29, 2021)