Hey Dude, Where’s My Review?

[AsstModerator]

Hey Dude, Where’s My Review?

NOVEMBER 2023 UPDATE - BIG CHANGES ARE BEGINNING

Some of you have already noticed that a handful of sites are only showing 1 page of reviews or else have a "Show More Reviews" option to show 1 or 2 more sets of reviews. Very few people ever click to see the 2nd page of reviews. Even fewer ever go to the 3rd page. Those 1-3 page review pages were part of an experiment to try different layouts.

Many reviews are only "I really like this company very much. You should try them." or "I hate this company very much. You should avoid them." Those reviews lack useful content and are not very helpful to readers. Under current rules, a review with that text would be deleted, but many reviews are just barely over the line and get approved. Under the new system, all approved reviews add or subtract from the overall rating, but not all reviews will be displayed.

What will be displayed? First, if a site has enough reviews containing helpful content, the reviews list will start with Helpful Reviews. Whether or not there is a block of Helpful Reviews, there will be a block for Recent Reviews. Under the new system, reviews with very little content can be approved, but won't be displayed. Reviews with very little content can be approved, but won't be displayed. Approved reviews that would require significant edits before display will probably not be displayed. The Helpful Reviews block will generally have higher standards than the Recent Reviews block. Like approval, display selections for both Recent and Helpful will be done by humans with assistance from automatic filters.

I really like about this new system. As a review page gets more reviews that are well-written and informative, the standards for review display on that page can slowly increase. Another benefit to this change is that by not showing 100% of newly approved reviews, it becomes much harder for review spammers to figure out ways around the filters. Once this system is set up on enough pages, I'll be removing the contact form from this page. Only a few legitimate reviewers have used it. A large percentage of those didn't read the whole page before filling out the form. All the others who wrote in look like paid review spammers trying to find exact instructions to get their fake reviews approved.

As of now, once a page has been modified this way, the FPA Review Moderation Team will no longer be answering questions about reviews not displayed. Reviewers should read this entire page to learn more about why their non-displayed review may have been either approved and not displayed or rejected. Those reviewers may then try to write a more informative review or correct any of the issues mentioned below that can lead to automatic rejection.

I hope to provide more information soon. My moderators and I have thousands of review pages to configure for the new settings. Each of those needs Helpful and Recent reviews to be selected. This will be a long process, but we will focus on pages that get the most new reviews and that are viewed the most.

I hope that by sometime in January, any page not yet set up that gets a new review will be configured immediately. By picking a time frame, I've probably just condemned myself and the whole review moderation team to get too bogged down to get even halfway to that point by January.

------------

First, the FPA does want honest reviews from real people. Many dishonest companies work very hard to manipulate their ratings. When I first took over the reviews, everything was manually done by humans. Later, as more filters to catch fakes were implemented, automatic systems were added. A review rejection is not a personal attack on you. If you carefully read the items below, you will learn how to avoid most rejections and also how to improve your review's chances of going on display.

Be patient. The review moderation queue can get backed up. Every time you post a review, there’s a note about reviews taking from 5-10 business days (2 business weeks) to be processed. The time spent answering this same question over and over again every day from people who don't wait for reviews to be processed adds at least 1 day to the moderation process. Once the new Helpful Reviews and Recent Reviews system is implemented on a review page, the FPA will cease discussing individual missing reviews on that page in order to make it harder for companies to try to manipulate the review system. Once again, if you take the time to read the information below, you will be able to avoid most automatic rejections and to have a better chance of having your review go on display.

Please don’t give incorrect information about your location. You don’t have to give your city or region, but if you give false information about what country you are in, your review will probably be deleted. The bulk of reviews with fake countries are fake reviews. There’s an idiot in Latvia who spent more than 6 months leaving hundreds of fake reviews claiming to be from all over the world. He thought he could rearrange the top rated brokers. He failed. If you are traveling outside your home country, select the country you are currently in from the country dropdown box and write “(home country), currently visiting” in the location box if you feel the need to say where you are originally from. The FPA’s reviews don’t require you to give your real name, so your privacy is protected. Relate to this, if you use any method to hide your real IP, the FPA can't tell what country your review is from. If you have an issue with a company that’s threatened you and are worried that they can identify you just from the country you live in, then please use the contact form HERE to send a message to the FPA.

Is your review really a review? “I need contact info for the company or a reviewer.” Or “Hello person who left a review long ago, how’s it going?” aren’t reviews. People go to the reviews to read about experiences dealing with companies. If your review is mostly "Some other reviewer is completely wrong!", that's not a review. If you want to talk about the best settings or chat with other users, please do that in the Financial Companies Comparisons and Discussions folder of the FPA's forums. "Has anyone else used this company?" won’t make users come to the review page and share their experiences. If you want to ask the FPA at large if anyone has used a company or product, the Financial Companies Comparisons and Discussions folder is the place to post.

Is your review a Waiter Review? "John Honcho answered all my questions. 5 Stars!" isn't helpful. This might as well say "My waiter answered all my questions so I'm rating the restaurant as 5 stars." You need to try to broker (or the food) before leaving the review if you want it to be approved. You can read more about Waiter Reviews HERE.

About bonuses. "Wow! My account number is 123456 and I got a no deposit bonus!" and similar will not be approved. Would you give a bank a good review because they gave you some free money before you actually used their services? If you are aware of any broker offering bonuses or other incentives in exchange for leaving reviews, use the form on this page to report the program immediately. Please make sure to include enough information so that the FPA can verify the accusation.

About demo usage. Demo performance can be very different from live performance. I've never seen a case of live performance being better than demo. I have seen many cases of demo performance being better than live. Demo performance can not be used to support a positive recommendation of broker or trading-related item.

Did you write your review? The amount of generic promotional review text written by AIs has reached the point that the FPA is checking reviews for AI-generated text. You may use an AI to give you ideas, but the review text needs to be written by a human.

Do you have a conflict of interest? IBs, other affiliates, or anyone having any financial relationship with a company other than as a client are no longer permitted to leave reviews for companies they are affiliated with or for competitors of those companies.

Our readers are worldwide. This website has chosen English as its primary language. Bilingual reviews are very welcome, as long as one of the languages is English. Reviews containing no English don't serve the majority of our readers and limit the ability of our moderators to check the content. The FPA does permit forums postings to come in a variety of languages, but the reviews are supposed to be available to as many of our regular readers as possible.

Regarding profanity. The FPA had been editing profanity to things like f*** or s***. Later, creative euphemisms were added to try to discourage the use profanity. There is a problem. Some reviews have large amounts of profanity, and editing those reviews takes up time needed for other tasks. Because of this, I am giving the FPA Review Moderation Team a large amount of discretion. Any review containing profanity or offensive language may be edited however the moderator sees fit or may be marked to never display or can be deleted at that moderator's discretion. If you don't want to risk your review getting dumped by a busy moderator and to have a chance to go on display, please write your review in a civilized fashion.

Please do not include emoji in your review. A good review should explain how the reviewer feels as well as why. A bunch of smiling faces, frowning faces, or other emoji don't explain anything. Emoji can also gain additional meanings over time, making the original meaning of the review harder to understand. If there is enough text, the FPA has been deleting emoji. Otherwise, the reviews have been deleted.

If you leave a followup review, use the same account and location you used in the first review. If you are leaving a follow-up to an older review you left as a guest, make sure to mention the name and date on your original review. Don’t try submitting multiple reviews under different names. It doesn't matter whether the company is offering a perfect product or is a terrible scammer. It doesn't matter if you disagree with other reviewers. The rule is very simple. One trader gets one vote. NO exceptions! Submitting a second review under the same name lets you provide more information or change the rating if you want to. If you get caught cheating by using two or more names, the best that you can hope for is to have all of your reviews deleted. The FPA is always working to improve detection of those who try to cheat.

If you left a review, it hasn’t shown up in 10 business days, and this page doesn’t explain why, AND the page doesn't have a block for Helpful Reviews, use the Missing Review Inquiry Form at the bottom of this post. READ THE PAGE BEFORE USING THE CONTACT FORM! BILL WROTE IT TO ANSWER QUESTIONS! Someone here will check on your review. If you give a valid email address, someone will get back to you.


Related Questions

Are you a company representative checking on missing reviews? If so, CLICK HERE.

Are you wondering why the FPA moderates reviews? CLICK HERE to learn why the FPA takes time and effort do this

Want to know what happens if a company employee gets caught leaving fake reviews? CLICK HERE to find out.

Other Review Questions? CLICK HERE


Please note that the form below is exclusively for reviewers, not for company representatives. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO READ ALL THE INFORMATION ON THIS PAGE BEFORE USING THE CONTACT FORM!

Missing Review Inquiry Form

Your name Required

Your email address Required

Name of reviewed company Required

Approximate date of review Required

Name of reviewer Required

Additional information Required

Verification Required

Submit

Please note that the form above is exclusively for reviewers, not for company representatives.

Note: As of October 12, 2022, review approval time has been extended from 5 business days to 10 business days.

 

[AsstModerator]

The Missing Review Inquiry Form above is for the use of reviewers only.

FPA policy is only to investigate missing reviews at the request of the person who submitted the review. If you are a company representative and a client tells you a review was not approved, do not fill out the form above or contact the FPA about the review. Instead, tell every client who says a review was not approved within 10 business days to carefully read the post above and to fill out the form if necessary.

I keep telling company representatives that reviewers are the only ones who can ask the FPA to check on a missing review. There is even a link in the post above for Company Representatives who want to know about missing reviews. It clearly explains that only the reviewer is entitled to ask. The primary reason for this is that I and my staff have wasted far too much time hunting for reviews which were never submitted. A secondary reason is that many of the emails I get demanding investigations of missing reviews are from companies which have been showing patterns linked to fake reviews. I am certain that at least some of them would like for me to write them a guidebook on exactly how to get their fake reviews past the FPA's review moderation process.

It is really very simple. If there was a real review by a real client that went missing, having the reviewer fill out the form makes checking many times faster than dealing looking for an unspecified number of missing reviews supposedly left on unspecified dates. Saying "We had a few clients who said they left reviews which were not approved. Go find them or else I know the FPA conspiring against my company." almost always ends up being a search showing either no reviews submitted or only a small number which were not approved within standard guidelines. Reviewers do not always give their real names. Reviewers should have some idea what name was on the review and some idea of when it was submitted. With the information provided by the reviewer, there have even been cases where the "missing" review turned out to have been submitted on the wrong company's review page. Every reviewer who fills out the form gets an answer.

An additional reason is the privacy of reviewers. In some cases, the response the FPA would need to send to the reviewer includes information about the reviewer's IP addresses or other information that cannot be shared with third parties.

Several months ago a broker representative who had been told many times to send any client who submitted a review which was not approved within the specified time to this page. Instead, the representative sent a list of 8 client names with the account number of each client. Usually, I've got less information to work with than this. The broker employee insisted that all eight had left a review and included the account number in the review.

Only 2 people on the list of 8 could be connected to rejected reviews. Both had written in. The first person mentioned he had left a review for the broker and was given the reason for the rejection and old to resubmit. He never replied and never resubmitted a new review. The second person wrote to the FPA - and claimed to have submitted a review for a product completely unrelated to forex or any other form of financial product. The FPA wrote back and never heard from that alleged client again. The broker had already been getting some very suspicious reviews. I consider this to be strong evidence that the broker was hiring people who are paid to leave fake reviews.

None of the other 6 names or account numbers could be tied to any review ever submitted to the FPA. No one else had reported a missing review left for that broker. I asked the broker's representative repeatedly to contact all 8 of the clients, but I never heard back from the 2 who did write in once or never got anything from any of the other 6. I also explained to the representative that if you ask a group of clients to leave reviews and 20 agree, chances are that less than half will actually submit the review. If the clients are harassed about leaving reviews, the number who really submit a review goes down and the number who falsely claim to have submitted one goes up. I then had to waste large amounts of time carefully and repeatedly explaining that no matter how many aggressive and accusatory emails he and other employees of his company sent me, it is impossible to approve reviews which were Never submitted.

And now, another company which had already been told to send anyone who had a review not show up within the specified time to this page. There were a few reviews which didn't get accepted. Had the people who submitted them read this page, they would know why. If they did not understand, they could have used the form above to ask. None did.


As of today, any company continuing to ask me or my Review Moderators to violate established FPA procedure to hunt down missing reviews will be given a choice...

1. They can follow established procedure like all other companies. The procedure is to send the client to this thread with instructions to read the first post and to fill out the form if the first post does not explain the issue.

or

2. I will personally check their reviews without waiting for the clients to write in. If I find no missing reviews or that all rejections were within standard FPA guidelines, I will post the name of the company, the name of the company employee making the request, and the result of my time being wasted in this thread. In some cases, a message about the claimed issue and a link to the post about the useless search will be placed on the company's review page.