Reading Testimonials Critically
I made a rather disheartening discovery lately that a fellow local psychic has been copying and pasting reviews of another psychic and using them as her own. Not only is that bad for her, as it happened to also be plagiarized text from a copyrighted source, but it is bad for clients who are fooled into believing a lie about a service they want to buy and it reflects very poorly on the rest of us. Just last month, somebody posted a comment to the reviews that clients directly post onto my web-site, writing: "These are clearly all fake." At the time, I was tickled about it. I laughed, told my husband and friends, and was actually quite flattered that the reviews on my web-site appeared, at least to one person, to be too good to be true! However, I am now sobered by the knowledge that the comment was a symptom of a larger problem, not only in my industry, but for a wide range of service providers. So, today's lesson is how you can read and think critically when viewing reviews, ratings and testimonials!
- Note the context! If you're looking at a cartoon advertisement with some character saying "this service is helpful," it's perfectly ethical if that testimonial took some literary license. A person who looked identical to that character didn't have to say those exact words in that exact situation for that statement to not be misleading or false. Likewise, it is perfectly ethical to edit on-line testimonials for brevity or spelling and punctuation errors. Understand that this might be the case. Take all reviews provided by a seller with a grain of salt, especially if he or she has the power to omit negative reviews.
- Do some detective work! Are all the reviews posted by the same person, indicating that ratings might have been padded by a friend? Are there inconsistencies in statements such as number of years of experience or even accuracy rate? Be very wary of a person's accuracy stated as a number. Everyone has good days and bad days at work. Notice if the same language style is used over and over again. If the ratings are typed on-line, copy and paste them into Google in quotations to see if they are posted elsewhere on the Internet. If the people who posted them elsewhere don't seem to have the same identity, go ahead and shoot them each an email and draw attention to it. It is one thing to take some literary license with edited reviews and quite another to steal the reviews earned by another!
- Follow up with references! Go ahead and ask for references that you can call or write. It is one thing to read an anonymous review on a page, and quite another to talk directly with a person about his or her experience, and the strengths and weaknesses of the service provider. Experienced and legitimate readers will not be insulted by this process and will gladly take this as an opportunity to showcase their past successes! No news is not good news in this case, and a service provider that doesn't yet have anyone willing to brag about them may be somebody you should worry about! Note that you may have to ask the service provider for references. It is not a red flag if he or she does not post her clients' contact information everywhere, but there should be at least three people who have given their permission to be contacted.
If you ever feel that false advertising misled you, see
10 Actions For Unsatisfied Clients & Fraud Victims