AsstModerator
FPA Forums and Reviews Admin
- Messages
- 5,748
What happens if a company is caught leaving client reviews or forums posts for itself?
The FPA considers "self-reviewing" to be a very serious offense. This practice is illegal in the US and many other countries. It is unethical everywhere. NOTE: This also applies to company employees pretending to be independent clients attacking competitors.
It doesn’t matter if an employee is also a client or not. Does any company want a competitor with more employees get itself a higher rating by having “employee/clients” leaving 5 star reviews? To leave a “client” review and not disclose this relationship is a violation of ethics as well as US Federal Trade Commission Regulations. Many other countries have similar regulations.
"But the client was visiting the office" is also a common excuse. I've seen that excuse over 100 times. I've never once seen a review like this mention anything about visiting the company's office. Do you want your competitors to be able to submit hundreds of 5 star reviews for themselves while claiming their clients were visiting the office? Can anyone trust the security of client data at your company if guests are allowed onto the corporate network?
If a company’s owners or employees are willing to tell lies or skip required disclosures about working for the company in the Forex Peace Army’s reviews or forums, how can the FPA or clients trust anything said by anyone at a company which allows employees to do this?
"The reviewer is really a client and one of us submitted the review" is also a poor excuse. Companies can easily manufacture fake proof that clients exist. Do you want your biggest competitors to be able to submit hundreds of fake 5 star reviews for themselves? Reviewers need to submit their own reviews.
The minimum penalty is each review of this sort will have comments added and will be set to Zero Stars. and have comments added informing readers where the review really came from. Forums accounts caught doing this will be permanently banned, reported to Spam-O-Matic and StopForumsSpam. Notes will be added to the account's posts and profiles so everyone can see what the company's employees tried to get away with.
The same penalty will be applied to any reviews or forums posts the FPA finds out were submitted by freelancers paid by the company. Be aware that the FPA will not take this level of action without real evidence linking your company to the offending reviews or posts. If you feel a mistake has been made, the CEO or owner of your company needs to fill out the contact form at the bottom of this page.
Some companies have begun paying their own clients to leave reviews. The FPA considers "compensated reviews" to be no better than paid freelancers or paid employees leaving reviews. Any reviews found to have been submitted in exchange for any compensation will be set to zero stars.
The FPA may also add warning notes to review pages of companies found to be engaged in this sort of behavior. These warnings may range from noting that an incident occurred up to a firm recommendation warning traders against doing business with the offending company because of the dishonest and unethical behavior of its employees. Typically, these notes will be left on permanent public display.
If the CEO or owner of the company is willing to communicate directly with the FPA, it may be possible to eventually reduce or eliminate the warnings. The FPA will only discuss this issue with the CEO or owner. Experience has shown that talking to anyone else about an issue like this has a much smaller chance of real policies being implemented to prevent the problem being repeated.
If you are the CEO or owner, please use the special Contact Us form on this page. If you are not, then ask the CEO or owner to fill in the form. This conversation will only take place by email, never by phone. If your CEO isn’t willing to put it in writing, that shows how little the CEO really cares about unethical (and generally illegal) actions of employees in forums and reviews. Or, it shows how the CEO doesn’t want to have a written record of what is said. No matter what the reason, all disputes of issues of content in the FPA’s forums and reviews will only be handled by email, never by phone.
Related Questions
Thinking of threatening to sue the FPA to hide the fact that you or one of your employees was caught abusing the FPA’s forums or reviews? CLICK HERE to find out why that’s a very bad idea.
Other Company Representative questions? CLICK HERE
Other Reviews Questions? CLICK HERE
Other Forums Questions? CLICK HERE
The FPA considers "self-reviewing" to be a very serious offense. This practice is illegal in the US and many other countries. It is unethical everywhere. NOTE: This also applies to company employees pretending to be independent clients attacking competitors.
It doesn’t matter if an employee is also a client or not. Does any company want a competitor with more employees get itself a higher rating by having “employee/clients” leaving 5 star reviews? To leave a “client” review and not disclose this relationship is a violation of ethics as well as US Federal Trade Commission Regulations. Many other countries have similar regulations.
"But the client was visiting the office" is also a common excuse. I've seen that excuse over 100 times. I've never once seen a review like this mention anything about visiting the company's office. Do you want your competitors to be able to submit hundreds of 5 star reviews for themselves while claiming their clients were visiting the office? Can anyone trust the security of client data at your company if guests are allowed onto the corporate network?
If a company’s owners or employees are willing to tell lies or skip required disclosures about working for the company in the Forex Peace Army’s reviews or forums, how can the FPA or clients trust anything said by anyone at a company which allows employees to do this?
"The reviewer is really a client and one of us submitted the review" is also a poor excuse. Companies can easily manufacture fake proof that clients exist. Do you want your biggest competitors to be able to submit hundreds of fake 5 star reviews for themselves? Reviewers need to submit their own reviews.
The minimum penalty is each review of this sort will have comments added and will be set to Zero Stars. and have comments added informing readers where the review really came from. Forums accounts caught doing this will be permanently banned, reported to Spam-O-Matic and StopForumsSpam. Notes will be added to the account's posts and profiles so everyone can see what the company's employees tried to get away with.
The same penalty will be applied to any reviews or forums posts the FPA finds out were submitted by freelancers paid by the company. Be aware that the FPA will not take this level of action without real evidence linking your company to the offending reviews or posts. If you feel a mistake has been made, the CEO or owner of your company needs to fill out the contact form at the bottom of this page.
Some companies have begun paying their own clients to leave reviews. The FPA considers "compensated reviews" to be no better than paid freelancers or paid employees leaving reviews. Any reviews found to have been submitted in exchange for any compensation will be set to zero stars.
The FPA may also add warning notes to review pages of companies found to be engaged in this sort of behavior. These warnings may range from noting that an incident occurred up to a firm recommendation warning traders against doing business with the offending company because of the dishonest and unethical behavior of its employees. Typically, these notes will be left on permanent public display.
If the CEO or owner of the company is willing to communicate directly with the FPA, it may be possible to eventually reduce or eliminate the warnings. The FPA will only discuss this issue with the CEO or owner. Experience has shown that talking to anyone else about an issue like this has a much smaller chance of real policies being implemented to prevent the problem being repeated.
If you are the CEO or owner, please use the special Contact Us form on this page. If you are not, then ask the CEO or owner to fill in the form. This conversation will only take place by email, never by phone. If your CEO isn’t willing to put it in writing, that shows how little the CEO really cares about unethical (and generally illegal) actions of employees in forums and reviews. Or, it shows how the CEO doesn’t want to have a written record of what is said. No matter what the reason, all disputes of issues of content in the FPA’s forums and reviews will only be handled by email, never by phone.
Related Questions
Thinking of threatening to sue the FPA to hide the fact that you or one of your employees was caught abusing the FPA’s forums or reviews? CLICK HERE to find out why that’s a very bad idea.
Other Company Representative questions? CLICK HERE
Other Reviews Questions? CLICK HERE
Other Forums Questions? CLICK HERE
If there's someone above you in the company who can fire you, do NOT fill out this form.
The contact form below is ONLY to be filled out by the company's president, CEO, or owner.
The use of this form by ANY other employee of the company will result in the minimum time to remove these unethical reviews being increased by at least 1 month.
The contact form below is ONLY to be filled out by the company's president, CEO, or owner.
The use of this form by ANY other employee of the company will result in the minimum time to remove these unethical reviews being increased by at least 1 month.
The contact form above is ONLY to be filled out by the company's CEO, president, or owner.
The use of this form by ANY other employee of the company will result in the minimum time to remove these unethical reviews being increased by at least 1 month.
The use of this form by ANY other employee of the company will result in the minimum time to remove these unethical reviews being increased by at least 1 month.