Abstract:
“My store hasn’t even opened yet, and there are already a bunch of fake and slanderous negative reviews about people who have already eaten there.” A few days ago, Han Lu, a car blogger with more than 9 million fans on Sina Weibo, posted that his newly opened skewers shop “Quanye Kebabs” has not officially opened for business, but on the three platforms of Meituan, Amap, and Dianping, there have been many negative reviews claiming to have visited the store. The topic then fermented and became a hot search topic.
According to the screenshot posted by Han Lu, before his store received any customers and the menu was not on the shelves, multiple anonymous accounts had given the lowest rating of 0.5 points on the three major platforms. The content was serious: someone claimed that "the skewers were served before they were even cooked. "The service attitude is so bad, if you don't know how to do business, don't do it." Some people said, "The taste is bad, the price is very expensive, and the clerk's service is also bad, don't come." Others made up details such as queuing for an hour or two, and the ingredients were not fresh. Some reviews even included pictures.
Judging from Han Lu’s post, the target is not an anonymous user, but the platform mechanism itself. He said bluntly: "The real economy is not easy to deal with. In order to create lively comments, the platform has removed the threshold for real reviews. Anyone can arbitrarily make fake real reviews to smear merchants. There is no review mechanism. There is no need to upload any evidence of eating here. The cost of falsification and smearing is 0. This is really unfair and damaging to merchants."
He further said that he had already felt the industry's malicious operations and unfriendly platform rules before he even started to engage in physical catering. He really felt for the catering people who had been working in the industry for so many years. It was not easy for everyone. In the comment area of his Weibo, a colleague left a message saying "this is just the tip of the iceberg" and received high praise.
After the incident fermented, the Amap customer service team sent a private message to Han Lu in response: "After verification, the store has not yet opened. A large number of comments on the page are false and abnormal comments, and the review has been completed and processed."
But this reply did not resolve Han Lu’s core doubts. He immediately asked two points: first, the platform could not have known this obvious loophole that could be arbitrarily discredited before the store was opened, so why did it keep it? Second, what should the merchant do if it encounters malicious negative reviews again after it officially opens.
On October 3, Amap further responded to the media that its location reviews revolved around specific locations, and a large number of reviews were related to users' actual navigation, arrival and other behaviors. The platform will use this to verify whether users have actually navigated to the store. Reviews that have been verified to actually visit the store will be weighted, reviews that have not navigated to the store will be downgraded, and location ratings will only be included in reviews that have been verified for authenticity. For comments suspected of being false, fabricated or maliciously attacked, users and relevant entities can submit complaints and reports, and the platform will review them in accordance with the law and downgrade or delete them.
As of press time, Meituan and Dianping have not publicly responded to this matter. However, a query by Observer.com found that all negative reviews on the relevant platforms involved in Hanlu’s screenshots have been cleared.
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