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Dec 3, 2015
How are the "Verified" Reviews Verified?
Are All Reviews Verified?
Actually no. In the past we used to accept both verified and not verified reviews (we compensated for submitting verified reviews with a $20 Amazon giftcard; we did not compensate for submitting non-verified reviews). However, we changed our policy for GMAT Course and Admissions Consulting reviews to accept ONLY verified reviews. There are still some types of reviews we do not verify, such as Test Center Reviews and a few others. However, you can distinguish the verified review easily as it is highlighted by the orange band, such as this one:Are non-verified reviews fake?
I doubt it. I strongly doubt that any of the GMAT Club partners would waste their time falsifying the reviews and trying to fake their reputation; however, speculating about this part is probably useless and instead, I would suggest that you rely as much as possible on the Verified portion of reviews. As to why people submit un-verified reviews - it is pretty simple. Admissions consultants and course providers often reach out to their customers (more than once sometimes) to provide reviews about their experience and often folks feel obliged enough to submit a review but don't feel like verifying it (since they probably did not put much effort into it to start with). In some cases privacy is an issue and people create brand new accounts to post a review.Have you ever Audited Reviews?
As a matter of fact we have. We have gone through a number of extra steps to audit as many as 80 reviews this year and requested proof of identities, payments, and doing business with the provider. They ended up being genuine even though we have had a lot of suspicions about the reviews in question being otherwise.Dec 4, 2015
Apr 24, 2017
Updated on: Dec 26, 2019
mcelroytutoring wrote:Of course some of the reviews are fake. There is too much money in the field of GMAT prep for there not to be some dishonest actors. More generally speaking, we human beings have a tendency to be dishonest. Combine that with the anonymity of the online experience, and you get a ton of misinformation.
I would also venture that most of the reviews are real, but a lot of the reviews do seem awfully suspicious, like they were written by the companies themselves. That's why I ask my students to review my services on Yelp--verified reviews are Yelp's specialty. In fact, Yelp goes further than that, since I've had a ton of actual student reviews filtered by the system!
Of course, even on Yelp there are fake positive reviews, as well as fake negative reviews written by envious competitors. It's a rough world out there.
I would say that GMATClub's / Google's policy is "when it doubt, post the review" and Yelp's policy is "when in doubt, filter the review." That doesn't mean that one approach is necessarily better than the other. I do like the freedom of an open forum such as GMATClub, where very little is censored and all voices are allowed to be heard, but we must always remember to think critically about people's motivations, and to understand that you can't always trust what you read on the internet. :wink:
Sep 6, 2017
bb wrote:mcelroytutoring wrote:Of course some of the reviews are fake. There is too much money in the field of GMAT prep for there not to be some dishonest actors. More generally speaking, we human beings have a tendency to be dishonest. Combine that with the anonymity of the online experience, and you get a ton of misinformation.
I would also venture that most of the reviews are real, but a lot of the reviews do seem awfully suspicious, like they were written by the companies themselves. That's why I ask my students to review my services on Yelp--verified reviews are Yelp's specialty. In fact, Yelp goes further than that, since I've had a ton of actual student reviews filtered by the system!
Of course, even on Yelp there are fake positive reviews, as well as fake negative reviews written by envious competitors. It's a rough world out there.
I would say that GMATClub's / Google's policy is "when it doubt, post the review" and Yelp's policy is "when in doubt, filter the review." That doesn't mean that one approach is necessarily better than the other. I do like the freedom of an open forum such as GMATClub, where very little is censored and all voices are allowed to be heard, but we must always remember to think critically about people's motivations, and to understand that you can't always trust what you read on the internet. :wink:
The main question I have is - what prompted you to post this? Saying that chances are, some reviews are fake is equivalent of saying chances are there are aliens in the universe and we should all wear tin foil hats. As to the bragging you do on Yelp, they have some shady practices and the fact that you are not even aware of them, throws even more doubt on the purpose of your post.
P.S. While there are no absolutes, it is much easier and cheaper to fake a review on Yelp than on GMAT Club.
Sep 6, 2017
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