| Product: |
mouthshut.com |
| Date: |
24/09/08 (167 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: not much
Disadvantages: plenty
These are my experiences with an Indian consumer feedback site mouthshut.com. Its operations are shady. It does'nt have a proper privacy policy. In fact it don't respect your privacy or care about your freedom at all. The only way to contact other members is through their internal messaging which they call M2M. You send a message today and it will reach the receiver tomorrow after the mouthshut team and probably it's CEO goes through it. If they don't like your message they simply delete it. Member logins are disabled and entire user profiles deleted without any prior notice.These don't seem to be isolated incidents they are the norm at mouthshut. The site rejects anything but your actual photo for your profile: though there are many exceptions, especially for those in the good books of the CEO.
The CEO, Mr. Faisal Farooqui used to appear in every member's trust list by default. When I complained to him, he tried to lie his way out. And when I posted a review on mouthshut.com itself regarding this, they simply deleted my profile, reviews, comments and all, without even informing me. Web communities do censor certain users to rein in the rogue or abusive elements, but what Mouthshut does is really a shame ! Mouthshut doesn't provide for one member to expose his/her email-id to another trusted member; unlike in popular sites like orkut. Therefore once your login gets disabled or profile deleted, there is no way of contacting other mouthshut users. One can try creating dummy IDs on Mouthshut but his/her M2M messages or complaints to others won't get through, they will be censored. Sending M2Ms to the CEO won't help either, after all he is the main crook. This is how Mouthshut has managed to hide their fraud for so long. They also have smart team of proxies who blog in their defense all over the web; so complaints and protests on the internet get buried under the weight of counter-comments.
Several users have found their profiles zapped after they wrote critical or negative reviews about some products. Obviously mouthshut gets paid by manufacturers/service providers to keep negative reviews on their respective products or services under check. This is a fraud perpetuated against unsuspecting visitors who use their reviews to make a 'mis-informed' purchase. Then there are many fake reviews on mouthshut which are misleading. They spam everywhere and promise to pay on writing reviews based on the points earned. The payment is never made and if you complain repeatedly, your login is disabled. That way mouthshut gets to keep your reviews without paying you a cent. Faisal Farooqui, the CEO has a bunch of sycophants around him who suck up to his ego and dance to his tunes . Most of them are made star writers and they enjoy the privilege to flame anybody with impunity. Overall a substandard site which is a poor but locally successful copy of dooyoo.com. Most of their highly rated reviews are clearly below standard especially some of the recent star writer ones. The so called highly rated technical reviews are at best laughable !
I have no choice but to give a one star rating as dooyoo doesn't allow me to assign a zero star rating !
***
Find more about this on my personal blog
www.mouthshut-com-fraud-cheat.blogspot.com/ where I have given more details about the mouthshut's unethical censoring/deleting critical or negative reviews and deleting user profiles along with supporting links. Blogs form the backbone of the web community and have a greater reach across the internet. None of the critical or insightful mouthshut reviews on dooyoo seem registered with search engines like google or yahoo; a keyword search of 'mouthshut' on google simply doesn't bring up the truth.
Summary: A smart thug is running the show at mouthshut. The content is simply unreliable.
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Last comments:
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- 25/09/08 Many a times consumers have a grudge against the manufacturer; maybe due to poor service or low quality of the product. Such a consumer sees sites like mouthshut a place to vent out their frustration and anger on a product or vendor. Sites such as mouthshut provide an outlet for the same. It may also happen (rarely) that you are very with something you bought and want to share it with the world.
Then there are some who have purched a product especially cars or bikes and go to any lengths to justify their purchase. Most probablty they are trying hard to resell their problem atomombiles ant writing a glowing review may help to create a positive impression on their prospective clients. Especially if it has a user community built around it like mouthshut people tend to take sides for or against the writer and write their own (often unhelpful reviews) on the product.
Then there are manufacturers/service providers and sales people who write very positive reviews to promote their products or services. Some of the flowery reviews on mouthshut may be just that.
There are also automated content generation softwares that generate content for you; given some initial content as the input. You just have to tweak it here and there to make it look hand written. Some websites have a dedicated team to do so and will use a hundred different fake user ids to churn out thousands of fake reviews.
Finally there are those who fall prey to spam and write reviews hoping to get paid. By the time you realise that you are cheated, it is too late.
I had penned 5 reviews on mouthshut ; none of them for money. |
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- 24/09/08 I've always wondered why anybody would like to write on a site that doesn't pay. |
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