[android-developers] Re: How do you counter repeated bogus reviews from competitors?

This has happened to us several time.
We never find any *proof* of which competitor is doing it (except if
they push users to another app), but the pattern makes it obvious
that your being targeted.

Some of what we've seen:
- Blatant lies about the features.
- Claims "stealing" from the users.
- Claims of problems and no support (we run a very tight support and
test it daily).
- Simple ones like "it sucks".

Almost every time you get multiple 1 or 2 star ratings in a row and/or
multiple different users with similar bad reviews in a row.

It makes me pretty pissed, but we haven't found a good way to counter
it because you don't have any data you can send to Google in order to
get them to do anything about it.
So far the only thing that I've found effective at all is to reply to
the user politely and with a positive action comment (of course your
comment has 5 stars for your own app).

We find that the best way in the end is to actually attempt to provide
a good product. Implement good support and respond to your users. Fix
problems as soon as possible.

For us, the apps don't bring in enough to make it a full time job, so
we have to dedicate ourselves to the most pressing issue when they
crop up.
Even a really bad bug that slips through can be alleviated by good
support and by actually trying to fix it.

What ever you do, remember that some users really don't like your app.
Sometimes they are eloquent and sometimes they are not. In those cases
you can try and address their issues, but you won't make everyone
happy and its important not to deride your user legitimate users who
have a problem.

One other thing. When your app really has a problem, I find its better
to for you to accept it and let your users know you had a problem but
are (or already have) fixed it. They are more likely to trust your
word then.

- Brill Pappin
Sixgreen Labs Inc.

On Apr 24, 6:55 pm, MB <manoj.bi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am the developer of Android app Gps Ski Maps. We are really
> frustrated with competitor writing bogus review about our app(by
> buying app multiple times under different accounts and repeatedly
> touching the reviews).
>
>  I am wondering how do you deal with this? What steps do you take to
> prevent such abuse of Android Market?
> We expected some bogus reviews, but not at the scale we saw in Android
> Market.
> Our app is available on both Android and Blackberry. The spammy review
> problems has been really a problem only on Android. Blackberry
> reviews( both good and bad:-)) have been mostly genuine as far as I
> can tell.
> The details of our particular case are written here, but I am more
> interested in figuring out the counter steps.
>
>  http://goo.gl/pilTF
>
> Thanks,
>
> --MB
> (Developer. Gps Ski Maps)

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