General rule of thumb for all reviews is to ignore the star ratings, read the most helpful negative reviews. Think critically about them. See if there are themes or if they’re being unreasonable.
The number of folks who can meet that bar are very, very low.
One I did get to stick was the car dealership that tried to scam me into ~$1k in unneeded fluid changes, where I posted the exact times, amounts, and a photo of the written quote (with quote #) they gave me after I demanded it in writing - in the middle of their public showroom where they couldn’t try to avoid it.
It’s a jungle out there, and yes the review sites are a problem too.
the police are also not very helpful either in many cases. I had someone at Bestbuy steal a VERY expensive TV from me (I ordered it for pickup, but when I got there a few hours later it had ‘already been picked up’ - and definitely not by me), and got clear self serving bullshit from the store manager, including ‘we’ll call the police, you don’t need to do it’ - which they didn’t - and went home.
When I called the police later, they required me to drive there (the store was an hour away), and wait for awhile before they’d even dispatch anyone to even take a report, let alone do anything. So figure several hours, just to get a report in.
This was solid felony territory too.
I couldn’t charge back on the card without a police report during a specific time window (30 days). Filing it after that might have resulted in some action, but I wouldn’t likely get my money back.
I suspect it was the store manager, and I wasn’t the first one. But I had no real evidence, just a pattern of shifty behavior and lies.
They’d conveniently avoided having cameras in the areas to document what actually happened, and my pickup code had been used to pick it up, so definitely an inside job. I had video evidence I was at home when the supposed pickup happened, but that was it.
So the thief won.
Hard to not get greedy though at some point.
In hindsight/next time, I’d just call the police right then and there the moment I heard them say someone else picked it up. Listening to them after that or letting them give me the run around just wore me out and let me be convinced that I wasn’t somehow having a felony committed against me right there.
Also, not letting the personal issue escalate to where it was that bad would have let me do that much, much easier. But that is much easier said than done.
Lessons learned!
Consider the proportion of GD's revenue from employer premium subscriptions vs from jobseekers (job listings, profile views). When there's lots of hiring, the jobseeker-related revenue will prevent the worst excesses. But in a downturn, there's less disincentive to not live off charging employers premium for reputation-washing.
[It's not easy running a for-profit technical jobs board, let alone doing it ethically and delivering growth; StackOverflow Jobs was sadly killed off in 2022. One of SO Jobs's innovations (other than almost zero on-site advertising) was it allowed you directly interact with the hiring mgrs, so you'd skip days/weeks of non-technical preliminary interviews.]
Like the Amazon reviews talking about a bicycle when the produce someone is looking at is a random usb stick.
And if a competitor targeted someone, the Glassdoor reviews should be subpeonable, and there is a legal framework for extracting compensation in that case. Takes a lot of time and effort though.
https://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-r...
Besides, Uber’s attack on Lyft there was direct. The idea that someone would poison Glassdoor reviews if a competitor in the hopes of making it harder to hire good people who looked at Glassdoor, in the hopes that not having those particular people would weaken the competitor in the long run… it’s risible.
Aside, I think your post highlights why commenting on the internet is so painful. All I‘ve done is highlight a factual anecdote w/ attribution, without speaking negatively of anyone, and you saw it necessary to denigrate my intelligence.
I think your point about Glassdoor reviews vs. rideshare cancellations works fine without the accompanying commentary.