[JoeTheWanderer]

It all started as a coincidence - I was installing a payment app on my Android phone and was recommended the GoMechanic Spares app for some strange reason.

The first 3 reviews (shown by default when you view the app) were all scathing 1-star reviews. I got curious and clicked on 'See all reviews' for some fun reading.

Long story short, I found many reviews that seemed fake on both Google Play Store and the iOS App Store for GoMechanic and GoMechanic Spares app. It looked like an attempt was being made to get a good overall rating for the app.

What convinced me that there is an attempt to artificially boost the app's ratings?

1. Exact same reviews posted by people with completely different names. There is no variation at all.
2. For the GoMechanic Spares app, on the Google Play store there are a huge number of 5-star reviews posted on April 27, 2021. If you look at the previous days there are hardly two to three 5-star reviews per day on an average.

Here are some of the "common reviews" on the Google Play store along with links to the exact review.

During the last few hours, either Google has taken down some of these fake reviews or the reviewers themselves have deleted their reviews.

A few hours ago, I counted 47 5-star reviews for the GoMechanic Spares app posted on 27th April. This has now reduced to 39. Some of the links below may not work - the screenshots are however attached in the posts that follow

From my Creta the AC was giving away foul smell and I needed a replacement of the AC parts. I ordered the spares from the GoMechanic Spares which I got at an affordable price and got it replaced by my mechanic

Review 1
Review 2

This review shares the first few words with the above reviews i.e. their Creta AC was "giving away foul smell" but goes on to say that the person ordered AC spare parts for their "Tata car". So this person has the world's only 'Tata Creta'!
Review 3

I ordered a new washer motor for Fiat from the GoMechanic Spares. I received my orders in the said time. They are doing a really good job

Review 1
Review 2

There was some fluid leakage in my car so my mechanic told he needed a new Cylinder head gasket. I purchased it from the GoMechanic Spares and got it fixed. the product was of the original brand.

Review 1
Review 2

The gearbox of my car was not functioning properly. I bought a new one from the GoMechanic Spares. must say they are selling genuine quality products

Review 1
Review 2

What is the purpose of sharing this?

First off, I have nothing against the company - I have never availed any of their services (never had the need) so this is absolutely not 'revenge' of any sort. I am only sharing this because I think it is important that as consumers we are aware of this unethical behaviour.

Rather than focusing on the right way to get 5-star reviews (understanding customer pain points, fixing their processes, hiring competent team members and so on) it appears that they are fooling the public by boosting their ratings artificially.

I realise that apart from the forum members a lot of other people also read TeamBHP. Please do not take this thread as a reason to post fake 1-star reviews on their apps. Only post an honest review if you have availed of their services.

[JoeTheWanderer]

Store: Google Play Store

App Name: GoMechanic Spares

Link to Reviews: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...llReviews=true

This person ordered spare parts for their 'Tata Creta'


Creta AC



Washer motor for Fiat



Cylinder Head Gasket



Gearbox

[JoeTheWanderer]

Store: Apple App Store

App Name: GoMechanic - Car Service

Link to reviews: https://apps.apple.com/in/app/gomech...ee-all/reviews

"Impressing work" in Lucknow



Oil leakage emergency




Regular customer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA30h861MJQ

[GTO]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to Shifting Gears. Thanks for sharing! Great detective work .

It really sucks, but there is an entire fake review economy out there. It's a full-fledged industry with proper companies + staff + offices, websites, systems & payments. Here is an excellent read on the subject:

Amazon's fake review problem

One morning in late January, Jake picked up the box on his desk, tore through the packing tape, unearthed the iPhone case inside, snapped a picture, and uploaded it to an Amazon review he’d been writing. The review included a sentence about the case’s sleek design and cool, clear volume buttons. He finished off the blurb with a glowing title (“The perfect case!!”) and rated the product a perfect five stars. Click. Submitted.

Jake never tried the case. He doesn’t even have an iPhone.

Jake then copied the link to his review and pasted it into an invite-only Slack channel for paid Amazon reviewers. A day later, he received a notification from PayPal, alerting him to a new credit in his account: a $10 refund for the phone case he’ll never use, along with $3 for his trouble — potentially more, if he can resell the iPhone case.

And another one if you are interested in the topic.

Similarly, there are providers for Google, Facebook, the Apple Store, PlayStore etc.

You need hands-on, strict moderation to curb fake reviews on your platform. That is possible on Team-BHP because of our relatively limited size & number of daily posts, but not on massive platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. which depend more on software & algorithms to weed out fakes than humans. Even their moderators aren't up to the task. I can read a car review and instantly know whether it is genuine or fake. But these sites have moderators with limited skills who have to one minute check reviews of books, then restaurants, spas etc. The required expertise is lacking, and good luck checking out 1,000,000 reviews a day.

Bottomline = stick to trustworthy review sources online, although they are difficult to find. Forget cars or tyres, even if I have to buy an air-con / laptop / face mask in India, I refer to our Shifting Gears forum. Reddit (USA) has good user reviews for products & software sold internationally.

[Axe77]

The online world with its quick, widespread ability to disseminate information has created a jumla culture in every area of our existence, from corporate to political to social and what not. And this is a global curse, not limited to India.

Where feasible, best to rely on personal feedback and purchase goods or services from slightly bigger companies, well rated resellers etc where the chances of getting something poor quality are minimised and if that should happen there is a proper platform for recourse.

[Prowler]

Fake reviews are the logical progression in the lines of social network marketing. There are thousands of people in sites like fiverr who will create Facebook likes = 300 likes for $5. Search Engines in their algorithm to rank sites took a cue from Social Network- albeit one of the factors in 200 in the case of Google.
An associate who worked in a Media Promotion company told me how they orchestrated a campaign to create an awareness for newly released tamil movies in social media. The artificially created campaign will become viral and at many times created a positive image for the movie. Each of their staff will have about 50 Facebook/Twitter accounts and from their office they can create a surge - a few years ago.
Facebook and Twitter locked down many such accounts later on. One popular actor had millions of fans created within a short time by such spurious accounts.

Google Playstore has AI enabled algorithm to weed out fake reviews - we gather. But a few will slip past their review.
Google's local guides are reviewers who sometimes get paid for writing reviews. These are arm chair reviewers who never even visit the local businesses they are writing about. There are some genuine people who take pains to write usable reviews, but they are rare.
Amazon's review is tilted towards the Amazon business and most of the time they let slip spurious reviews as long as the reviewers praise the Amazon platform.

[CliffHanger]

I agree. I took their service for a power window regulator repair. They used refurbished / duplicate spare which started making noise within few days and eventually gave up within couple of weeks.

Their workshops are set up with least investments so that they can wind up quickly after scamming people, looks like.

[haisaikat]

Their Facebook Ads are at a different level but in unison to the impression posted here. The ads inadvertently end up showing good looking females in attractive outfits getting stuck on the road or narrating their satisfaction story with Go Mechanic. The idea behind the ads seem to be clear to generate more traffic to their pages. I believe some real world usage reviews from BHPians are required.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6cboWIWC6k

https://www.facebook.com/gomechanic....50750199232991

[Sankar]

I don't get why you need an intermediary in servicing your own vehicles? One one side we have people vouching for doing things on their own including handling RTO stuff and on the other we have apps like these!

Most, if not all, workshops have vehicle pick-up and drop services which they either do it for free or charge a fee for. So if you can't take it to the workshop they can pick it up if you have prior appointment. What's the advantage here?

Following up with the work done on the vehicle, either you speak with the SA or you speak with the intermediary. What is being saved here?

Or is it that they offer a better rate? How is it even possible unless its burning VC funding or reducing the quality of the work? I wish this doesn't become the new normal in vehicle servicing.

Fake reviews are everywhere on all online ecom sites, aggregator sites, social media and search engines. Some can be difficult to spot but dumb ones like these are easier to catch.

[JoeTheWanderer]

Originally Posted by GTO

You need hands-on, strict moderation to curb fake reviews on your platform. That is possible on Team-BHP because of our relatively limited size & number of daily posts, but not on massive platforms like Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. which depend more on software & algorithms to weed out fakes than humans.

Thank you for moving the thread.

I somehow have a hard time believing that tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple - that have a huge amount of AI/ML resources available to them - can't tackle the menace of fake reviews to a reasonable degree of success.

I'm just speculating here but I think they don't really want to. If they took down most of the fake reviews perhaps we'd only be left with a handful of apps with 4+ star ratings?

All these good 5-star ratings not only help the company who's product/app gets the rating but also the platform like Google Play store and Amazon (who get a commission on every sale made using their platforms).

These "reviews" assure common folks like me that the product/service I'm paying for is awesome.

Originally Posted by CliffHanger

I agree. I took their service for a power window regulator repair. They used refurbished / duplicate spare which started making noise within few days and eventually gave up within couple of weeks.

Their workshops are set up with least investments so that they can wind up quickly after scamming people, looks like.

While I feel sad for the experience you had, I'm glad it was only a power window regulator - not a critical part.

What if someone gets a critical part repaired from them - such as a brake - and that part fails while driving? This was one of the reasons I decided to start this thread.

It seems to me like the company is interested in improving their ratings not by working on their flaws, but by hiding them using makeup.

Originally Posted by Sankar

I don't get why you need an intermediary in servicing your own vehicles? One one side we have people vouching for doing things on their own including handling RTO stuff and on the other we have apps like these!
...
Or is it that they offer a better rate? How is it even possible unless its burning VC funding or reducing the quality of the work? I wish this doesn't become the new normal in vehicle servicing.

The size of the Indian market being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if more such services come up. I feel that if you can make your product/service look nice and pretty there are plenty of people who'll pay for it if you sell it hard enough.

I don't know about burning VC money but going through some of the 1 star reviews, it certainly seems that reducing the quality of work is one way to be competitive.

Originally Posted by haisaikat

I believe some real world usage reviews from BHPians are required.

Agreed, I hope people who've used of their service do share their feedback - both good and bad.

[gkveda]

You can call me old school student, I cannot accept anything that I don't sense with all my sense organs before purchasing. i.e.,

Eyes to see and observe product, it's functioning, and also observe the vendors body language,
Ears to listen to vendor and his genuineness in his words,
Mouth to converse and negotiate the price,
Nose to smell - useful for few products
Hands to touch and feel the gauge and gain some tacit knowledge and finally
Analyse all the inputs through brain.

In spite of all the above, there is still a chance of getting cheated and buying a lemon. This being the case, In any online purchase, none of the above sense organs are put to use. So, i really wonder how can anyone feel comfortable to go ahead with purchase, whatever may be the review comments say.

Now, coming to online review comments, it is a known fact that, even when we go to shop and do offline purchase, there will be few brokers who will have no business to come and recommend the product to us, but still they will come and give free advice and recommendations.

Above is the condition for offline traditional purchase method where we can be 1000 times more alert. On contrary, while online purchase,

1. There is no direct involvement of ourselves (I mean sense organs, analysis through brain etc)
2. We don't even know who the reviewers are
3. Have they really purchased and used?
4. Are they really unbiased while giving the comments

Only thing we know for sure during online purchase is, we are paying money for the product or service without any knowledge about it.

How can anyone trust and proceed with purchase based on online comments ?

[Altocumulus]

While there are Fake Positive reviews, similarly there are Fake Negative reviews as well. There are competitors who will employ people for doing the same. You will find quite a few negative reviews which are blatantly fake.

[jeygani]

I used their service once, but not based on their app reviews. Checked in google first the garage and reviews.

There was a torn axle boot and was leaking grease in my Honda City. This I found out during my routine cleaning. The boot was torn recently and not much dust would have gone into it as I frequently clean the car myself.
I knew already, Honda ASS will not just replace the boot but just to confirm I enquired with Whitefield Honda, Bangalore and Sundaram Honda, Coimbatore and their replies made me to search for nearby independent garage.

Then I booked a service on the go mechanic app. I went there and stayed with the car whole time.
Told the mechanic the problem, he said will replace the boot with new grease.

They had to go to spares shop, probably at JC road, to get the boot. Getting the spare was time consuming as the guy who went to get that boot did not get the correct one at once or twice and had to go again finally with the mechanic to get the right one.

Finally the boot was replaced and all good. Then there was a minor leakage from transmission oil drain which I noticed the next day morning, immediately took it to same mechanic and drain plug was tightened. No questions asked. Not sure why this was miss from his end.
He has the skill but with careless attitude.

It is the individual mechanic who works on the car that matters and I am yet to find a good mechanic where I can leave my car with peace of mind. It is difficult for me to leave car behind with some mechanic or at Authorized Service Centre where I cannot be there to see the car while the mechanic works on.

These online reviews we cannot trust when it comes to car service. Just go to that particular garage, enquire, then give the car there for service.

[KK_HakunaMatata]

After reading this thread, just went through some of the recent reviews on GoMechanic Spares App and it is quite obvious that most of them are fake reviews, all 5 stars and lot of reviews Yesterday i.e. 29-04-2021, don't miss the standard wordings "from the GoMechanic Spares" in all the reviews without any variation in the case of alphabets, which is generally not at all possible in genuine reviews.

And reviews from Ricky Ponting, Isac Newton and all names

KK

Edit - Somehow, this looks so unreal -

[Drive Head]

Last week, when my 12V Air compressor failed after 5 years, I was looking for a new one, and that is when I too encountered the fake or scammed reviews scene.

Let the pictures below explain a bit for you.

The below pic shows a 2,712 5* ratings/ reviews, which to a novice will be a sure shot sign to buy the product, that too with such a low price.

But going through the actual reviews of the product, in the second image, throws a different picture altogether. Almost all the reviews are of different product, which is of a funky looking silvery shiny wheel caps.





So, unless you do a full scrutiny of a product from different websites, go through the reviews properly, scan through the Q&A section, no one should trust only the front fascia of the product.

By the way, I had exactly the same product but bought offline, at slightly higher rate than the mentioned above. It lasted me for more than 5 years for my XUV 500 and bailed me out from many tricky situations.