Scott Stratten, author and founder of the Oakville, Ont.-based firm Unmarketing had an interesting post on his blog this week. In short, he’s discovered that Bell employees were posting five star reviews for the latest version of the MyBell App. After his post went up, the CBC and oddly enough The Globe And Mail which is owned by BCE which owns Bell picked up the story. Here’s what the CBC got from Bell:
Bell Canada agrees it shouldn’t happen. In an email to CBC, Paolo Pasquini, Bell’s director of communications wrote: “The postings were the result of an overzealous effort on the part of our service team to highlight the app. It’s certainly not Bell’s practice to encourage employees to rate our products, and we’re sending a clear message out to the team to that effect.”
Even after admitting wrongdoing, the reviews that Stratten called into question were still prominently featured on the iTunes site, available for any unsuspecting consumer to read.
Bell would not directly confirm if all the people Stratten linked to Bell are indeed the employees who posted positive reviews, but its comments to CBC imply as much. CBC News also reached out to the employees on LinkedIn but, at the time of publication, had not received any responses.
CBC News asked Bell if any staff members had ever before written positive reviews about a company product online without disclosing their affiliation. The company did not respond.
Now I could easily rip Bell to shreds for this, and believe me they deserve to be ripped a new one. But the reality is that this happens all the time. It’s just that companies don’t get caught doing this all that often. Thus it is likely wise if we take product reviews with a grain of salt as you have no clue where they come from.
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This entry was posted on November 27, 2014 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Bell Caught Posting Fake Reviews On iTunes
Scott Stratten, author and founder of the Oakville, Ont.-based firm Unmarketing had an interesting post on his blog this week. In short, he’s discovered that Bell employees were posting five star reviews for the latest version of the MyBell App. After his post went up, the CBC and oddly enough The Globe And Mail which is owned by BCE which owns Bell picked up the story. Here’s what the CBC got from Bell:
Bell Canada agrees it shouldn’t happen. In an email to CBC, Paolo Pasquini, Bell’s director of communications wrote: “The postings were the result of an overzealous effort on the part of our service team to highlight the app. It’s certainly not Bell’s practice to encourage employees to rate our products, and we’re sending a clear message out to the team to that effect.”
Even after admitting wrongdoing, the reviews that Stratten called into question were still prominently featured on the iTunes site, available for any unsuspecting consumer to read.
Bell would not directly confirm if all the people Stratten linked to Bell are indeed the employees who posted positive reviews, but its comments to CBC imply as much. CBC News also reached out to the employees on LinkedIn but, at the time of publication, had not received any responses.
CBC News asked Bell if any staff members had ever before written positive reviews about a company product online without disclosing their affiliation. The company did not respond.
Now I could easily rip Bell to shreds for this, and believe me they deserve to be ripped a new one. But the reality is that this happens all the time. It’s just that companies don’t get caught doing this all that often. Thus it is likely wise if we take product reviews with a grain of salt as you have no clue where they come from.
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This entry was posted on November 27, 2014 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.