Can You Really Trust Review Sites Like TrustPilot

Does the following statement inspire confidence in you “Write a positive review on Facebook, Google and Trustpilot to win one of 392 prizes including trucks, motorcycles, iPhone Pros 13, iPads, iPads minis, laptops and smart phones”. For me, it certainly creates a significant red flag on the credibility of positive reviews that you will read all over the internet.

Soliciting Only Positive Reviews

Considering that the retail price of one of the two top prizes is worth $64,145 – this was no ‘dime store’ effort to skew results in their favor. This is especially troubling because the average yearly earning of a family in the Philippines is $6,231

Digging Deeper

I went back into the actual reviews to determine where the ‘bad reviews’ came from. The end of summer was a really bad time for them ‘review wise’ where they received 15 bad review in a row.

However, the most ‘telling thing’ about the reviews is the distribution of the ratings. There are primarily only really bad or really good reviews.

• The best reviews were given at the beginning and at the end of the time period.
• The worst reviews were given only in the middle period.
• There was only a single 4 star rating at the end.
• All the other ratings were either ‘1 star – the worst’ or ‘5 stars – the best’.

Here are two possible scenarios of what these review could indicate.

1. Everything is legit. They opened with a ‘bang’. Due to staff shortages they had a few ‘hickups’ in summer.
2. Early on when management was starting the business they got people to write ‘glowing’ reviews’. During the summer, some ‘real people’ wrote lousy reviews. Management got involved again solicited only ‘good’ reviews.

Scam Busting Advisors

Scam review sites are a great addition to the consumers arsenal to avoid doing business with miscreants and scum that are ready pounce upon the unwary. But they too have a ‘business mode’ whereby they are attempting to make money in all sorts of ways like advertising revenue, scam alert services and others.

So this is another reminder to stay alert to the people that supposed to be alerting you!

A Better Player Review Resource

I tend to have more faith in sites like Reddit that obviously show a more open and conversational comments and discussions. If somebody were to post an offer soliciting only positive reviews on Reddit, you know that there would be a crescendo of negative feedback where the poster would be shamed and virtually driven off in a hurry.

It’s only natural for people to ask the question “Is this casino legit” before they place their trust and money in an unknown entity. 

Good examples of reliable sources of actual player information would be the subreddits on Bovada and related sister sites like Slots LV, and Cafe Casino. In particular, the Bovada Reddit has more than 10,000 members. They have resoundingly determined that these casino sites are indeed legitimate online casinos.

So, which reviews would you trust more, one-way reviews on sites Trust Pilot or discussions on Reddit?

My Question

I am basically an optimist! But, how much do you trust online reviews?