Reputation & Ethics
👉 Getting reviews is hard and shortcuts seem easy. Are they worth it? Only if you want to cheat your future customers out of valuable information.
Let’s face it: asking for reviews can feel awkward. It’s uncomfortable, inconsistent, and too often… ignored. You pour your heart into serving customers, and when it’s time to ask for feedback, they vanish faster than cookies at an office meeting.
So some business owners, frustrated and desperate, look for “alternative methods” to boost their review count. Unfortunately, many of those “alternatives” cross the line from clever to questionable — and some straight into cheating. And while Google says it enforces its policies, follow-through can be uneven. Yelp tends to be stricter, but still imperfect.
At Rave Review Guru, we’re not trying to be the Review Police. We exist to make gathering authentic reviews so easy, natural, and rewarding that cheating simply isn’t necessary.
Any inauthentic or false review cheats consumers out of the most valuable resource they have: honest insight from real experiences.
This is where things get messy. When the pressure is on, some businesses resort to manipulative tactics — subtle or otherwise — to get reviews. They guilt, corner, or cajole customers into compliance. Maybe they call it “encouragement,” but to the customer it feels like an obligation.
Even worse, many hire automated systems that blast impersonal review requests through emails and texts. The timing is off. The tone is robotic. The message lands when the customer barely remembers the purchase.
The result? Request fatigue. Deleted messages. Missed opportunities.
Automation can be useful, but it’s not magic. Most third-party systems do the bare minimum — send a few messages, check a box, and claim success. But genuine reviews come from connection, not convenience. The right moment, the right wording, and the right emotional context matter far more than volume.
Here’s where things start to get weird. Some vendors try to “enhance” automation by pushing review requests back into the hands of staff. They’ll tell employees to take the customer’s phone, scan a QR code or tap an NFC tag, hand the phone back, and politely “suggest” a review right then and there.
Besides violating personal space and common sense, this approach turns a moment of satisfaction into one of awkwardness. To sweeten the deal, these vendors sometimes suggest incentivizing staff — rewarding the team member who annoys the most customers.
If someone did that to me, my words would be far from a glowing recommendation.
This is the digital equivalent of steroids. You can pay for “5-star” reviews written by strangers who’ve never set foot in your business. These often come from sweatshop-style operations using fake accounts, recycled wording, and throwaway profiles. Sure, your star average might climb for a moment — until platforms catch on, or real customers notice something fishy. The crash can be brutal.
“Leave me a five-star review and I’ll give you a freebie.” Sometimes the owner even stands there, watching as the customer types — a modern-day hostage situation. It’s not just unethical — it’s often against platform policies (and in some places, illegal). Most of all, it destroys trust faster than a one-star review ever could.
We can’t stop cheaters, nor do we want to waste time ratting them out. That’s not our mission. Our mission is to make honesty easy — to help good businesses get the reviews they deserve without resorting to tactics that corrode trust.
Authentic reviews don’t just build credibility; they form the foundation of your reputation. They attract better customers, create loyalty, and give others the confidence to choose you.
When you earn a review, you earn something far more valuable than stars — you earn belief.
Cheating for reviews is like counterfeiting currency. You might fool a few people in the short term, but the entire marketplace suffers — and eventually, so does your business.
The surest way to stand out is to stand tall. Ask the right way, at the right time, with genuine gratitude — and let real customers speak for you. When your reputation is real, it doesn’t need padding. It shines on its own.