sitejabber

sitejabber.com: A Biased Review Site

~ yopa live ~ 1 Kommentar

Visit my website about sitejabber: sitejaber.iNFO

How I discovered that sitejabber coveres up fraud

The review site sitejabber.com ought to provide an independent and unbiased view on online businesses. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

By investigating internet love scam, I also looked at reviews on sitejabber.com and wrote critical reviews on sitejabber.com myself. This way I found out how sitejabber covers up fraud.

Have you ever thought about why ratings on the review site sitejabber.com are so high? Myself, I feel most motivated to write a review after I have gotten really disappointed by a service or purchaise. In cases when everything goes well, we usually think little about writing a review. Therefore critical reviews should be overrepresented on a review site. However, at sitejabber, we see just the opposite. If you open sitejabber.com just five-star reviews show up:

Screenshot from my browser, when opening sitejabber.com on December 5th 2021.

sitejabber is a commercial company. sitejabber earns money through cooperations with business websites which benefit from positive reviews on sitejabber. Obviously, this makes sitejabber biased. Critical reviews with low ratings just interfere with sitejabber’s business model. And this is where the bias starts. If you read sitejabber’s slogan carefully to the end, the last word reveals what they care about:

Screenshot of sitejabber’s link on social media platform Viber.

Critical reviews secretly disappear

I wondered why at sitejabber I could not find critical reviews about websites with obviously shady businesses practices. I put my own critical reviews on sitejabber and thought others could read my reviews. When I told others, to look for my critical reviews on sitejabber.com, they could not find them. I tried to contact sitejabber several times, but never got any response, except from automated messages. In contrast to Trustpilot, never ever, someone from sitejabber responded to me.

Probably, when the reviewed website’s manager contacts sitejabber and complains about a critical review, this critical review will be hidden from the public. It is the first level of bias at sitejabber: Prompt response to business complaints but no response to critical customers. This is my repeated experience.

By taking offline critical reviews sitejabber obviously helps fraudulent business practices to remain undiscovered. However, it is worse: The author is not even been notified.

sitejabber covers up their own censorship

As soon as you have logged in at sitejabber.com, all your reviews are visible for you. Also, your reviews counts for the overall rating of businesses. However, for another visitor, your reviews might be suppressed. sitejabber may even show different ratings to others than to you.

If you write a review on sitejabber, you will be informed by email, when sitejabber receives your review. When your review goes online, sitejabber sends you another email. These steps are standard procedures and such notifications are not very interesting for the author. In contrast, if sitejabber takes your review offline, sitejabber will not tell you. sitejabber even creates a different version of their website for you. This different version makes you believe that all reviews are visible on sitejabber.

Not enough that sitejabber covers up critical reviews. sitejabber even hides this censorship systematicaly to the authors of critical reviews. This is not a random mistake in the system. I consider this fraudulent deception.

Example

This example shows how sitejabber suppresses my critical review on 1matching.com. The two screenshots testify how sitejabber shows different results about 1matching:

sitejabber’s page on 1matching.com for my account
Full size screenshot as pdf fileDownload
sitejabber’s page on 1matching.com for others
Full size screenshot as pdf fileDownload

In this example, sitejabber calculates a rating of 3.5 stars for me. To others, sitejabber shows a clean five-star rating. Also, my review on 1matching.com is not visible for others. The following snippets show the differences:

For me:

For others:

Find out yourself

You do not need to believe me. You can find out yourself. Write a critical review on sitejabber and see what will happen. Contact sitejabber and find out how they respond.

And please let others know, what you find out. You can write a comment or send me an email. Please include a screenshot if possible.

Ironic reality

While writing this article, this morning, I logged into sitejabber and the first review sitejabber showed me was about sitejabber’s competitor ebay:

This page showed up when logged into sitejabber on December 5th 2021. The headline of Sally’s review on ebay reads: „Ebay is no longer safe. Ebay now allows sellers to have feedback removed on request“

Today, sitejabber teaches me how competitor ebay removes critical reviews. The difference between sitejabber and ebay is the following: On ebay, Sally can see that her review has been removed. sitejabber goes one step further and tricks you into believing that they appreciate your critical view.

Reviews on sitejabber

Lies don’t travel far. Today, I opened sitejabber.com and searched for „sitejabber.com“. Yes, at sitejabber.com you can find reviews on sitejabber itself. I looked for the one-star reviews and found a lot of them telling exactly the story I am telling here.

Full size screenshot as pdf fileDownload

You can see these reviews yourself on sitejabber.

You can also find these reviews archived on archive.org (captured 2021-12-05).

Examined: Best-Matchmaking at sitejabber.com

~ yopa live ~ 3 Kommentare

Two weeks ago, I looked at Best-Matchmaking’s reviews on Trustpilot. No I take a closer look at another review site: www.sitejabber.com.

First, I myself signed up and created my account and then went through the review procedure of sitejabber. The review procedure is more detailed than on Trustpilot. The presentation of the reviews, though, is more confusing on sitejabber. Alltogether there are 9 reviews of Best-Matchmaking on sitejabber.
Update (2021-03-17): Almost two month passed. However, my review is not yet online visible for other visitors of sitejabber.
Update (2021-11-01): In September 2021, 3 new reviews on Best-Matchmaking has appeared on sitejabber. All of them are 5 star reviews. My critical review has been online for about one day only after I had rewritten it and posted it again with a new account. I have tried to contact sitejabber several times. They do not response but automated. For me it became obvious that sitejabber is biased. They actually relay on positive reviews as they work with business partnerships. This is how they earn money. Probabbly, Kate complained about my review and later fabricated new reviews in her favour. Look at the Q&A tab rather than at the Reviews tab on sitejabber. Q&A seems to be below the radar for sitejabber’s / Best-Matchmaking’s interferences.

Taking away my own review and the fabricated one of Rudy Rodriguez, which I have examined yesterday already, there are 7 more reviews to look at.

The two newest reviews are written in German language:

Both reviews are identical with the two German-reading reviews on Trustpilot. Just one headline has changed a bit. On my examination on the Trustpilot reviews I have shown how the wording strongly indicates a non-native writer which among others makes these reviews implausible. Here we see both using an animal image on the profile. Just the same as Rudy Rodriguez’s dubious profile on sitejabber.
Besides the suspicious wording Detlef S. rates „Shipping“ and „Returns“ on his review. Shipping and returns are categories which does not apply to dating and relationship. It all looks like a clumsy and sloppy fabrication.

The following review is by Jarett S. He is enthusiastic. He has been on the site for 3 to 4 months:

Jarrett is obviously in the state of online dating. When I was online dating before leaving to meet a woman in person, at this time I also was very satisfied with Best-Matchmaking’s service. They respond very fast if you have a problem with the site, which actually has a lot of technical flaws. The manipulative interventions I did not yet recognise at that time. I just woke up when I wanted to meet a woman in person. Jarrett is not yet there. Therefore Jarrett’s review does not contradict my fraud accusation.
Update (2021-03-18): I contacted Jarrett S. He is real. Since his review, he went further on. He experienced similar issues as me. He organised his journey himself as I did. The agency asked him to pay commission and he bargained and got the woman’s contact info for 650 EUR. However, he is not as disappointed as me. His idea is to take the good (gorgeous women) with the bad (the agencies). It really surprised me. He believes the women to date are the ones who trick the men, not the agency. I doubt that. I think they somehow do it both. And even if Jarrett was right, an agency like Best-Matchmaking, that claims just having seriously marriage minded women on their page, such an agency should be somehow responsible for such trickery of their (female) clients. After all, Jarrett has not yet found his spouse. And he has not given up.
For me this is an example how well this so called soft scam works. There are real women behind the profiles, but the agency has no intention to match you to become a couple but tries to keep you uncertain as long as possible. This way they get most money out of you. The agency also does not check the women for their intention to marry a foreigner or other content on their profiles for being realistic.
In an industry where other agencies might never give you the chance to meet a woman on their site (so called hard scam), a website like Best-Matchmaking.com that let you actually meet somebody might look sober and relatively honest. I think, Best-Matchmaking’s fraud is just more sufisticated.

The following two reviews are again two names we find on Trustpilot as well:

Holly’s review on sitejabber is quite different to the one on Trustpilot placed just one day before, where he talks about his family. Anyway, both reviews indicate using Best-Matchmaking’s matchmaking service. Therefore they have not use the bogus online dating trap I fell into. Here I explain how the scam works. More about Holly and Amjad at my examination of Trustpilot’s reviews.

After Rudy Rodriguez’s review, the next review again uses an animal as profile image:

James review is the first positive review of Best-Matchmaking’s online dating and visiting the Ukraine on sitejabber where I cannot find clear signs for fraud. The animal profile picture might be a coincidence. It is possible he went on the tour met the ladies and still has not discovered being betried by a fake phone number, as I experienced it myself.

The oldest review is the rather negative one of G E., who calls himself Scamhunter (click on his name and you will see):

Scamhunter has written 9 reviews about several dating websites. It looks like he has not really been involved with Best-Matchmaking as a client but just looked at the website. Samhunter’s prophecy has come through: There are a lot of fabricated reviews on sitejabber now. If you look at Best-Matchmaking’s website yourself, you can find contradictions yourself.

Conclusion

On sitejabber, there are 7 reviews besides my one and the one by Scamhunter. All these remaining 7 reviews are positive. But…

3 reviews are obviously fabricated (Detlef, Uwe, Rudy)
2 reviews are of clients of the matchmaking program, which means they did not use the bogus online dating (Holly, Amjad).
1 Jarrett writes the review before he could discover the scam

…only the one single review of James could be a real positive review of Best-Matchmaking’s online dating platform. Even though there are doubts. Anyhow the review is more than two years old. Best-Matchmaking can have changed business practices as indicated on another review on Trustpilot.

Half a year ago, Best-Matchmaking charged per letter on their online dating plattform. Now they have a monthly fee and worn everybody about the fraud of websites that offer per-letter-payment.

Reviews were of crucial help for me to understand Best-Matchmaking’s fraud. Please write your honest and experience based review on sitejabber.