Show a custom review dialog, if the user gives 4-5 stars send them to the app store for the real review, if not just say "thank you" and close the dialog. Repeat until one day they'll give you a good review.
But now the growth hackers of the world had the brilliant idea to treat bad reviews like "the user isn't ready for a review"
Some app-store marketing guru told the startup I'm contracting with, that this is the way to go, because you're pretty much f*cked if you get reviews below 4.
Basically, once some start gaming the system - the others have to follow or they are dead.
It's similar to how irregular migration or general screwing over of workers works: if some farmers are paying 'under wages' or some factories are 'undercutting' ... then the others stand to lose business and are sucked into the same practices.
It's one thing when a massively successful entity like Amazon does shady stuff, but for most businesses ... it seems to often be kind of a quandary.
Its sad that this is the way things are done but what can you do about it really? You can't fight every battle you need to pick what matters
I'm only half kidding. I once had an issue with a Google product that they only fixed after ranting about it here.
They should prohibit that function call completely and ask users randomly for reviews, maybe when they pause or close the app...
Just seen too many quality apps get relegated to obscurity because of a few 1-star early reviews from people expecting perfection from a free or cheap app. Or needing functionality that just isn't part of the app. I don't have any apps in the store, so this really isn't personal for me.
What I don't understand is why more devs don't use the API for the in-app overlay review versus a weblink that forwards to the app store. Clearly they're tracking the behavior, but not sure what is tracked via that means that can't be done in-app.