5 ms·
Glassdoor is extortion-as-a-service. They routinely called up two previous places I worked and offered to remove bad reviews if we paid them, which we declined.
by seibelj 6y ago
Glassdoor is extortion-as-a-service. They routinely called up two previous places I worked and offered to remove bad reviews if we paid them, which we declined. One of the bad reviews eventually became prominently featured. To be honest it wouldn't surprise me if they wrote the review themselves, that's how scummy I feel this company is.
Totally garbage business model, and if anyone reading this works there I hope you re-evaluate your life's purpose - you only get so many years and using them to help Glassdoor seems really terrible. What an ethically bankrupt piece of worthless trash that place is.
- sharadov 6y agoThey are becoming Yelp.
- elwell 6y agoI heard that Yelp lets you pay to have bad reviews sorted towards the bottom. I recently listened to a podcast episode [0], where the CEO claimed that is not true. Would be interested in evidence on either side. [0] - https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/918845338/how-i-built-resilience-jeremy-stoppelman-of-yelp https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/918845338/how-i-built-resilie...
- sharadov 6y agoYelp has class action lawsuits filed against them. Scumbags!
- elwell 6y agoThis? https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/03/yelp-finally-defeats-a-false-advertising-lawsuit-over-its-review-functionality-demetriades-v-yelp.htm https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/03/yelp-finally-d...
- mlrtime 6y agoIt's even worse than that, Yelp has been accused and proven that they write or have written bad reviews themselves.
- mlrtime 6y agoLous Rossmann goes over this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYzK8Nny_Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYzK8Nny_Yo
- raydev 6y agoRossman exploded on Reddit with an Apple device repair rant several years ago, and then leaned super hard into that to keep his views up. Much like Glassdoor, I find it hard to trust him since it’s clear he has a moneymaker. He’s incentivized to accuse the Big Corps of wrongdoing and he never has to back it up.
- strombofulous 6y agoHe owns a apple repair shop and complains about apple all the time. He just happened to go viral on reddit once (actually a few times). He makes most of his money from his repair business, his sitting-in-a-chair videos (that aren't about apple), and his bike videos are just him talking. I don't really agree with a lot of what he says (esp. about NYC) but I don't think he's being biased in this video.
- closetohome 6y agoThis issue is complicated by the fact that there's a thriving ecosystem of marketers and scammers who operate around Yelp, and will call and tell you they work for Yelp and can have negative reviews removed and other things. So people really are getting these calls, it's just that it's a scam.
- cvhashim 6y agoIsn't this just extortion and racketeering with extra steps. "Hey I have this magic problem I created for you, now you have to pay me to fix it or your business will dry up."
- closetohome 6y agoI think you missed that it's third parties offering to perform these services. They target Yelp because it's one of the more prominent review sites, but I've gotten calls from people claiming to be able to manipulate Google reviews as well.
- KerryJones 6y agoI could write a similar story to one about Glassdoor on Yelp -- they banned me from leaving a review because I had professional experience in the same field. Even though I wasn't actively in the field and offered to prove through a number of pieces of documentation, they considered it to be "attacking competitors". Per this, that means they only allow non-professional reviews on their platform. So if one professional sees flaws/someone getting duped, they're helpless to point it out.
- DesiLurker 6y agoSo basically it has become a 'protection' scam.
- bencollier49 6y agoSurely, at least in some countries (hypothetically, IANAL), at that point the act of removing negative reviews for money means that they themselves have editorial status and, consequentially, negative reviews are a form of libel?
- fogetti 6y agoIt seems to me that the bad reviews were published on the site regardless of their offer. So I can't see how is this extortion. Extortion would be along the lines of "we publish some made up bad reviews unless you pay".
- justin66 6y ago> offered to remove bad reviews if we paid them
- fogetti 6y agoYes. You are right. That is not extortion.
- LorenPechtel 6y agoIt's still extortion.
- fogetti 6y agoNope
- cjaybo 6y agoIn my opinion, the important takeaway is that their actions completely undermine the integrity of the service they are claiming to provide. Whatever you'd like to call it, it's scummy behavior and they deserve to lose any market share they've gained by misleading users about their service.
- fogetti 6y agoCalling something extortion which is a legal term and punishable by federal law is different from accusing them undermining integrity of the service. And yeah, it's scummy.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
- j2bax 6y agoI don't know, I mean, their rating is pretty good as an employer... https://www.glassdoor.com/glassdoor https://www.glassdoor.com/glassdoor
- jiveturkey 6y ago4.2 in SF location. So this is very good info. That's the baseline. Below 4.2 => DO NOT CONSIDER. I know on ebay and amazon I do not buy from sellers under 99.6%, as an absolute minimum. It's ok for the system to be gamed, as long as one can understand the rules.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoThe formula for interpreting a rating out of 10 on an Uber service is (rating - 4) * 10. It has to be very bad to dip below 4, so that 4.x is the only thing you really can look at.
- dr_orpheus 6y agoA bit of a tangent, but I feel like I have also created an artificial scale on a rating system myself. I use Untappd to score beers. But it turns out there is a pretty wide variety of beer that I like so most of them end up as 4 +/- 0.5 our of 5. But I'm not the only one. The overall rating system most beers end up in the 3.5 to 4.5 range. Where 4.5 becomes "oh my god, these brewers are doing incredible things with this beer" and 3.5 becomes "ugh, this tastes worse than bud light"
- sharatvir 6y agoAh not far off from the scale used by video game critic site IGN: “This game is trash” - 8/10
- Teknoman117 6y agoI'm not that strict when it comes to things. I sell a few things here and there on eBay, even a 4 star review would easily pull me below 99.6%.
- 6y ago
- jboy55 6y agoThe jobs industry is incredibly scummy. Everyone comes in thinking, 'Wow, I'm going to help people get into a job they'll love!'. You leave because you get tired of pushing Uber jobs on everyone because they have unlimited budget to spend to attract job seekers.