GMAT Club Reviews FAQ : Suggestions - Announcements - Support

GMAT Club Reviews FAQ
From time to time I get questions about GMAT Club Reviews and I wanted to collect all of these into a single place. If you have any, feel free to ask and post them here. Do not be shy.


GMAT Club Reviews Basics:
We take reviews seriously. We have processed over 10,000 reviews and most of these are not verified (more on that below about what products we do not verify reviews for).

Which Reviews do we Verify? All? Some? Random?

• We verify every GMAT Course review as well as well as every Admissions Consultant Review.
• We also verify Business School Reviews
• We do not verify the following types of reviews:
  
  • Test center reviews
  • GMAT Test reviews (mostly as it is impossible to confirm or it is really pointless to verify that a person used GMAT Prep tests for example)
  • We do not verify reviews for loans or guides

How do you verify reviews?
To verify GMAT Course and Admissions Consultant reviews, we employ a 2-stage process.

Stage 1: Proof of purchase - this is done verifying with the course or consultant provider that the reviewer indeed has purchased the product.
Stage 2: Automated GMAT score verification. Using a score report link or mba.com login, users can verify their unique identity using this approach. We do not save login information or any personal details (we do not want the responsibility and there is no value in storing it) but we confirm the GMAT score and save in encrypted format a test-taker unique ID. This prevents people from using the same mba.com login from verifying multiple reviews. This also prevents the person from using online and offline versions of the test to confirm multiple reviews. The ID is shared for both versions of the test.


Can the same person submit multiple reviews?
If someone used a Course and then purchased an Admissions Consulting package, they can submit a review for both of these services. However, one person cannot submit multiple reviews for the same product or service. We limit one reviewer to a single product review. In other words, a person can only submit 1 review per course or product. Keep in mind, that if one used a consultant for a comprehensive consulting package for example and then purchased interview prep, they can submit 1 review for the package and 1 for the interview prep but they can't submit multiple reviews in those categories.


Are there Fake Reviews on GMAT Club?
It is possible to game almost any system to an extent but the goal of the system should be to make gaming it either very difficult/expensive or irrelevant. It is tricky to submit a fake review to GMAT Club. Definitely possible for an instructor to use their own GMAT score to verify their submission but they can only do one review. Because of how the system works, and the limitations in place, it makes submitting fake reviews quite challenging:



• Brute Force - a course provider could register a whole bunch of mba.com accounts for random people who are then paid to take the GMAT. Unlikely to succeed since it would cost $300/person and the scores they would receive would be terrible and recorded/reflected on the reviews. This could happen on a very limited scale but likely hard to repeat over and over since you need competent test-takers and also, getting 100 GMAT tests taken would cost $30,000
  
  
  
• Fake Customers - Paying random test-takers to verify and claim their scores towards reviews. Possible but you would have to be very careful and the word would likely get out if you did not vet someone carefully. It is also a perfect black-mail opportunity for these unethical individuals to turn the table on their "employer". I would say it is unlikely to work on a mass scale of more than 5 reviews.


So GMAT Club Reviews are Perfectly Reflecting the True Reality of Every Service?
Short answer - not exactly. Long Answer: at GMAT Club we try not to reinvent the wheel and use the best practices as much as possible. Unfortunately there are some challenging situations and issues that plague many review systems including ours and I think it is important to be transparent about these so we are all aware of ways not to submit a fake review but perhaps game the rankings system. I know Amazon had a lot questionable reviews and got a bad rep for that. Certain sites boast about how many fake reviews they deleted. We have largely overcome the fake review problem but there are still ways to influence or game the system. Here is the full list I know of:



• Cherry-picking - this is not a fake review strategy but this could be used to game the system. Instead of getting fake customers, you encourage and cherry-pick customers who you ask to post a review. Did you notice when you are using an app, often there is a pop up that says "How would you rate this app?" If you rate it as a "5 out of 5", then you are presented with an option to leave a review. However, if you rate it as 3 or below, you would get a form instead with service recovery questions. This is very prevalent in the AppStore these days. So the product provider basically cherry-picks which customers submit the reviews. The reviews are real but they are not representative of the total customer base since the negative reviews are caught in the service feedback forms.
  
  
• Fear Factor - would you want to write a 1-star review for your doctor or your accountant? Good luck getting a prescription renewed or wondering why your taxes are being audited by the IRS. Similarly, I find many people are uncomfortable submitting a negative review for admissions consultants. I have talked to one South-American candidate who told me about a terrible experience with their local South-American consultant but they refused to share about it publicly because they were fearful of retribution and getting into an argument. I suspect this would be one of the challenges why few post negative reviews of their admissions consultants - there is just too much to lose and not enough to gain.
  
  
• Black Mail - some reviews are written as a blackmail and I have seen a few interesting individuals who tried to use them as such. It makes it a difficult situation but Individuals sometimes post negative reviews and then email the course provider for a refund and offer to remove it. I only had to deal with this situation once and this would be one of those rare events that would have triggered a ban on the user and removal of the review but the test provider refused to provide proof or to deal with this individual so the negative review stayed. These are extremely rare events but still don't do it. I have no patience for this.
  
  
• Influencing Reviews - have you seen a note in the app's update or internal message system "Submit a review to get 50 gems" or something like that? I have not for a while but compensating reviewers would inevitably provide more positive reviews since people are doing it for pay. This should not be allowed since this makes reviews biased but it is hard to catch. We also realized we were guilty of the same pattern until 2 years ago - used to offer people 2 weeks of GMAT Club tests in exchange for a review of GMAT Club tests and then we realized we were guilty of influencing reviews. We stopped offering rewards for GMAT Club Test reviews and thankfully the reviews are still coming. Thank you for that!
  
  
• Service Recovery - what if you wrote a terrible review about the restaurant and the chef reached out to you, personally apologized, offered you to cook a free meal, and treated you like a king next time you came over? Would you keep that negative review? Probably you would feel like a jerk if you did not remove it. The same situation is possible with our system. Once a negative review is posted, a service provider is able to contact the person and try to turn them from being a bad unhappy customer into at least mildly happy one. I don't think it is a way to cheat but just a good business practice that in turn has an impact on reviews. This is esp true for consultants who may have only 10 customers in a year. A happy customer will tell 1 person but an unhappy one will tell 10.
  
  
• Stone-walling - getting so many positive reviews that a negative review would have no impact. I don't think this is unethical or really a system abuse but rather a method to soften the blow from negative customer feedback. Sooner or later someone will be unhappy and so this is yet another option. I see a lot of this being used on Trust Pilot where people are asked to submit a review 5 mins after purchasing a product. How would they know about it? Some products and services have 10,000 one-line reviews that are all happy. Of course they are happy, they have not used the product yet. This one reason we require the GMAT Score to submit a review so people would not be directed to do it right after purchase. However, it is still possible to cherry-pick and over the years, build up a pretty big wall of positive reviews.

Do you Delete negative Reviews?
No, we do not delete negative or positive reviews. You do not have to trust my word on it. I will logically prove to you that it is a dangerous practice that would quickly get GMAT Club in trouble and get out of hand. Think about it. An admissions consultant gets a negative review, and they come and argue - "we pay for advertising on GMAT Club, and we got a negative review, remove it or we cancel our contract" Right, seems a pretty convincing argument, don't you think? It is pretty convincing and let's play it out. Let's say, GMAT Club takes the highly unethical step and deletes the review. 2 things happen immediately: 1. We become a part of a crime that we do not want to get out. Now that consultant has some juicy dirt and they will ask to remove all reviews they wish or get a 100% off discount or they ruin our reputation. I am not even talking about the fallout of the reviewer realizing that we deleted their review and making lots of noise about it on Medium, Quora, WSJ, their group of friends, etc and people who write negative reviews usually care enough about them. However, breaking that ethical barrier puts GMAT Club into a very precarious position where sustaining regular business operations would be very challenging. Once a cheater always a cheater... and most admissions consultants are very honorable and straightforward so no matter how convincing the argument from one unethical individual may be, it is better to lose one advertiser than all. As mentioned, I would consider illegal reviews for deletion. This would include a person plagiarizing another review and copy pasting other's work, someone posting a review for illegal activities such as black-mail. At this point, I can tell you that since 2012 we have deleted exactly zero reviews for these 2 reasons so it is something I would consider as valid reasons to delete a review but I have not had to do it.


If you do not delete negative reviews, where are they?
Good question. There are some and we have made improvements to find them (filter by stars) but there are very very few for Admissions Consultants, as you can see. Which I would attribute in part to them taking their reputation extremely seriously and people not feeling it is worth the fight with someone holding many of the cards in their hands. However, GMAT Club has no motivation or practice deleting any reviews. The only situation when we do delete reviews is when a company goes out of business and leaves GMAT Club but I feel that's pretty different.


How Would You Use Reviews?
I always go and find the negative ones. I want to find what is the worst case scenario and what are people unhappy with. If I am looking for a course, I want to know if it is a personality, local issue, or something easy to fix, or is it is systemic such as bad material, etc. Personally, it is nice to see positive reviews and I use them to gauge the direction and ranking but I don't read them.


Is the company with most reviews the best one?
Is Toyota better than Ferrari?



I think a review is fake - how do I report it?
Please email support using the contact form below. You can also PM me or contact us via social media if that's easier for you. We take all reports seriously.


What Can I do to Help?
Please submit honest reviews. Think about your situation when you were choosing and think about what would make it easier for you to choose and include it in the review. Be frank, be honest, be transparent. Nobody can blame you or black-mail you if you are giving an honest evaluation.



Any other questions, please post them here!
BB
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