What do you think about Yelp, Google reviews, and other online business reviews?

[dark+matters]

What do you think about online reviews of businesses? What will happen with these sorts of sites in the future?

My own thoughts:

Spoiler

Yellow mentioned how some people with cluster B personality disorders will basically manipulate and harass their way through many businesses and never get caught, stopped, or called out on their destructive, chronic behaviors. I worked at terrible customer service jobs to pay the bills for about a decade starting in high school, and this is true in a way that can only be experienced after working in customer service. It's a little different in California. But in my hometown, it was undeniable. This reminder has got me revising an opinion I wrote down not too long ago.

Online reviewing can be great in really dire circumstances, but it also further fuels the kind of people, like these, who consistently exploit the vulnerability of a customer servant. I really hope for the day that customer service jobs will be eliminated. I don't see why we have them. At that point, the online reviewing sites could become interesting historical documents. I don't know what they would say about us.

 

[Jennywocky]

I will do a general skim of reviews of a restaurant, but I only give credibility to a review if I see nuance expressed in the opinion. One big issue is motivation: You have to be motivated to leave a comment, since if you're neutral you just won't bother. So you're going to get someone who really liked the service or someone who really hated it, and usually people are motivated more by the latter, unfortunately.

(It's a similar situation when it comes to reading the Comments section under news article. The majority of it is just trash and/or bickering.)

So I don't know how these kinds of review sites will fare in the future. All I really look for online is (1) the location of the business, (2) a list of their services/products/menu, and (3) overall sense of their quality, by skimming the comments and trying to sort out the unrealistic good and bad ones.

 

[_whispers_]

I don't read them. As a part of my last job I had to create a lot of fake reviews praising different business. Also I've been told plenty of stories where competitor companies would leave bad reviews for each other.