Less Than 5 Star Reviews

[harlow]

I honestly only leave a review if I’m going to leave 5 stars and I really like the provider and I want others to support their work.  Like others said sometimes providers might take anything less than 5 stars as a negative even though 4 out of 5 stars is really good. Think of it like Uber ratings. Anything less than a 5 star ride is kinda frowned upon. In reference to hiring if I’m less than satisfied it’s usually not a big enough deal for me to leave a review unless it was a serious issue that other clients should be aware of. Otherwise I usually just make a post here in the forum. 

[+ APPLE1]

8 hours ago, harlow said:

I want others to support their work.

Most importantly, I want others who will appreciate a provider and their work to support them. That is why I think every review with some degree of detail is helpful to providers and clients.

I may leave less than 5 stars and indicate a provider looked really young, barely talked, had an ass hairy as a gorilla, had a manscent I could smell across the room, and spent most of the session engaged in stretching exercises.

Another client could very well read my review and think:

1) I know it's not a scam; and

2) that is EVERYTHING I want in a session. He is the provider for me!

Edited January 27 by APPLE1
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[peter831]

I leave five stars and a comment if the provider has given me an outstanding experience, really making me feel special. If they performed and it was nothing special, then I leave no review. If it was a bad experience, I leave a negative review to warn others. But my experience has been that Rentmen has deleted almost all negative reviews when the provider requests it and without checking with me.

[harlow]

On 1/29/2024 at 2:38 PM, peter831 said:

I leave five stars and a comment if the provider has given me an outstanding experience, really making me feel special. If they performed and it was nothing special, then I leave no review. If it was a bad experience, I leave a negative review to warn others. But my experience has been that Rentmen has deleted almost all negative reviews when the provider requests it and without checking with me.

I agree. Also rentmen seems to just reject any review that’s negative or if you didn’t contact the provider through their website. I find that posting information here on the forum is more beneficial to us as clients. 

[maninsoma]

Many years ago my employer instituted a policy whereby supervisors rarely gave perfect rankings the equivalent of five stars on review websites).  Their rational was that no employee was perfect and there was always something someone could work on.  I personally found the change a bit insulting, having routinely received perfect annual reviews in the past that were now some perfect scores and some four out of five rankings, but I didn't care too much since the reviews had no impact on salary.

Of course the actual text of a review is where the real rating is provided.  Some people will give 4 stars even though they have nothing bad to say.  Some people give 5 stars but then have a few minor complaints in the review.  And sometimes the really bad reviews have more to do with the reviewer than the establishment.  Of course Rentmen hiding the text of reviews from people in the USA who aren't using VPN makes their review system less helpful to casual users who might not realize that there are actually written reviews there.

I've never written a review on Rentmen because I am not a premium member.  My experience on Yelp is that businesses frequently do reach out if I give them a bad or mediocre review.  One restaurant owner wrote me a nasty reply to my review that compared her relatively expensive restaurant with mediocre food to other establishments in the area by twisting my words around and alleging that I always write negative reviews (which isn't true; the majority of my reviews on Yelp are quite positive as I typically only write reviews when something is either very good or very bad).  I blasted back at her that she should focus less on responding to reviews and more on actually learning how to cook.  Another time, some random person wrote me an insulting and threatening message after I posted a negative review of a drag show (it wasn't the business owner, so I assume she just knew someone in the show).  It was so over-the-top that I reported her to Yelp (she was actually threatening to assault me if she ever visited San Francisco and could find me).  So there is a potential downside to writing anything but praise online which does skew the average towards the positive.

I, too, find the feedback provided here a lot more valuable. 

[Guest]

Slightly off topic, not really...  I confess that I have left a handful of negative reviews on Yelp and even filed a couple of complaints with the Better Business Bureau in my day.  For good reasons I promise.  A couple of years ago I had lost my job and decided to pay a professional resume service to help me out.  They made a ton of promises, many that they didn't follow through on.  I left a 4 star review and literally had the owners call and yell at me, telling me how terrible I was as a client and that they would have me blackballed by other professional recruiter services so that I would never get a job.  I had to block them from my LinkedIn.  So I just feel safer sharing my thoughts here. I am grateful for this site. It has saved me more than once.

[arnie]

Since RM only allows premium members to write reviews I don't have that problem.   But I would only write negatively about objective criteria, not if there was not "connection" as long as I felt the guy was "showing up" and not mailing it in.