Fishy review situation - WWTKD?

charcoalandblush

I'm looking for hair and makeup people for my wedding. I found someone that I thought would be perfect. Her prices are reasonable (makeup is in line with other artists I've contacted, hair is slightly less) and I really like the photos I've seen on her website. I contacted her via Thumbtack and she responded right away with a quote and a detailed price list, etc.

Here's my hangup - her online reviews seem fishy to me. I checked TK first, 35 5-star reviews. Great. Then went to Yelp. She has NO reviews that are "recommended." She does have 32 5-star reviews that are "not recommended" (Yelp has an algorithm that decides when a review is spam/advertising/the vendor themself/etc.). Each of those reviews is by someone who has only left one review. Same on Wedding Wire - 52 5-star reviews, all but one are by reviewers with only one post. It seems weird to me that so many people would log on to Yelp or Wedding Wire and only leave ONE review... especially for a hair and makeup artist.

This just seems really strange to me. What would you do? Would you bother to keep considering her as an option? Or move on? Am I over-analyzing this?

novella1186

I kind of want to give her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she's just trying to get her business off the ground and got too overzealous with the fake positive reviews. Maybe she still does good work. How long has she been in the industry?

But also I really hate dishonesty. Hate it. And this would definitely rub me the wrong way. I would look into other options, if possible. If you really like this person's work, you could always do a trial just to test her out, but also keep your guard up. It always worries me that they needed to write a bunch of fake good reviews to compensate for bad work. 

charcoalandblush

novella1186 said:

I kind of want to give her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she's just trying to get her business off the ground and got too overzealous with the fake positive reviews. Maybe she still does good work. How long has she been in the industry?

But also I really hate dishonesty. Hate it. And this would definitely rub me the wrong way. I would look into other options, if possible. If you really like this person's work, you could always do a trial just to test her out, but also keep your guard up. It always worries me that they needed to write a bunch of fake good reviews to compensate for bad work. 

Yup. This is exactly how I feel. I'm leaning towards looking for someone else. One of my girls wants to get her hair done but has a very low (in my opinion, somewhat unreasonable) budget, so I was excited to find someone who was under that, but now I'm really hesitant.

ETA: Her website says she's been working in the industry for over 8 years. The reviews start in April of 2013 though, so just under 2 years ago.

novella1186

charcoalandblush said:

novella1186 said:

I kind of want to give her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she's just trying to get her business off the ground and got too overzealous with the fake positive reviews. Maybe she still does good work. How long has she been in the industry?

But also I really hate dishonesty. Hate it. And this would definitely rub me the wrong way. I would look into other options, if possible. If you really like this person's work, you could always do a trial just to test her out, but also keep your guard up. It always worries me that they needed to write a bunch of fake good reviews to compensate for bad work. 

Yup. This is exactly how I feel. I'm leaning towards looking for someone else. One of my girls wants to get her hair done but has a very low (in my opinion, somewhat unreasonable) budget, so I was excited to find someone who was under that, but now I'm really hesitant.

ETA: Her website says she's been working in the industry for over 8 years. The reviews start in April of 2013 though, so just under 2 years ago.

That's another red flag to me. After 8 years, she should have the experience to have lots of good reviews without needing fake ones... And the fact that they only go back 2 years kind of makes me wonder if she had to "re-brand" herself and start fresh after too many bad reviews or something. 

If you don't mind, PM me the link (or her name, whatever); I'm curious to check this out because I got scammed by someone (not in this industry) and when I went to leave a review I saw that they had written positive reviews themselves. It was super obvious by the vocab used, sentence structure, and syntax as well as how she used/misused punctuation that she had written them herself. 

charcoalandblush

novella1186 said:

charcoalandblush said:

novella1186 said:

I kind of want to give her the benefit of the doubt, that maybe she's just trying to get her business off the ground and got too overzealous with the fake positive reviews. Maybe she still does good work. How long has she been in the industry?

But also I really hate dishonesty. Hate it. And this would definitely rub me the wrong way. I would look into other options, if possible. If you really like this person's work, you could always do a trial just to test her out, but also keep your guard up. It always worries me that they needed to write a bunch of fake good reviews to compensate for bad work. 

Yup. This is exactly how I feel. I'm leaning towards looking for someone else. One of my girls wants to get her hair done but has a very low (in my opinion, somewhat unreasonable) budget, so I was excited to find someone who was under that, but now I'm really hesitant.

ETA: Her website says she's been working in the industry for over 8 years. The reviews start in April of 2013 though, so just under 2 years ago.

That's another red flag to me. After 8 years, she should have the experience to have lots of good reviews without needing fake ones... And the fact that they only go back 2 years kind of makes me wonder if she had to "re-brand" herself and start fresh after too many bad reviews or something. 

If you don't mind, PM me the link (or her name, whatever); I'm curious to check this out because I got scammed by someone (not in this industry) and when I went to leave a review I saw that they had written positive reviews themselves. It was super obvious by the vocab used, sentence structure, and syntax as well as how she used/misused punctuation that she had written them herself. 

Done.

Thanks for your advice! I think I am just going to forget about her and keep looking.