EI Article Series
Immigration Services Fake Reviews By Our Competitors
When looking for immigration services for your PR or Citizenship application, it is natural that you will search for available services on search platforms like google. If you come across a service provider with more than 100 reviews, all of which are five stars, then isn’t it the best and obvious choice?
Many people are influenced to sign up for the services of a specific service provider due to the reviews about the business on social media. After all, if many people have given 5-star ratings, the services must be great?
Beware! In the many cases, the reviews can be fake. The business has given SEO firms a contract to create these reviews. If you explore online platforms like fiverr, upwork and many more like this, you will find services categorized under reputation management. These are actually to create social media reviews.
If you don’t believe this, then read the following points
Here are we presenting to you three logical points to prove the above. Here we explain how to evaluate if the reviews and the high rating you see are real or self-created by the business.
Test 1: Absence of negative reviews
No matter how great the services of a specific company are, they are bound to get some negative reviews. The absence of any negative reviews is a strong indicator that the reviews are self-generated.
Here I have pasted a review summary of the apple I-phone from amazon.com. 33000+ customers review this. You will agree that the apple iPhone is a great product, but as you can see, only 71% of people have given them all 5-star reviews. And their average rating is only 4.3. in comparison to this, how a relatively small immigration firm can get all 5-star ratings?
You need to understand that in any business, there will always be some customers who are unhappy with the services, which will be visible in social media reviews.
Test 2: Length of the review
The length of the review is another indicator. Once the services are performed, the customer usually has the least interest in writing a detailed review for the company. If they are asked to write a review, they will usually give only star ratings and maybe a sentence or two.
If the reviews are self-generated, then you will find that every review is well-written, with long text. Usually followed by thank you note from the business after the review. In all the cases, written English will be exceptionally clear and with no grammar mistakes.
Amazon review statistics reveal that 50% of the reviews are less than one sentence long, 30% of the reviews are less than half a paragraph, and only 20% of reviews will exceed to the length of more than a paragraph.
Test 3: Total number of reviews
If the total number of reviews posted is unreasonably high compared to the size of the business, then this is another indicator that the reviews might be fake.
For example, I present review numbers of well-known company, operating in the business incorporation sector. Its name is Rikvin. Maybe many of you know this company. They have nearly 60 employees on payroll and a few million Singapore Dollars annual turnover. The company is operating since 2000. As you see they have only 42 reviews on their Google profile.
The reality is that only 5-10% of the customers will provide a review, that too only if requested. So if some company has 500 reviews and all are 5 star, then they must have served 10,000 customers, but when you meet them, you notice a very small operation.
Summary
You need to be careful when you rely on business reviews on social media. When it looks too good to be true, often it is. Do not get influenced by these kind of fake reviews.
At Epica Immigration, we don’t engage in any of these kinds of fake review practices.