[JK-PhD]

Let me preface this by saying I am not making any accusations.

I noticed that my one star rating for an App is gone. I rated the App about a week ago and my and other bad ratings are now missing. Has anyone ever noticed their bad rating go missing in BB App World?

[saudadeii]

Are you sure it's gone or has it just moved down the list? Are you looking at it on a PC or on your PB?

[dugggggg]

Let me preface this by saying I am not making any accusations.

I noticed that my one star rating for an App is gone. I rated the App about a week ago and my and other bad ratings are now missing. Has anyone ever noticed their bad rating go missing in BB App World?

Yes, apparently app developers can delete any review by themselves, without any approval or oversight by RIM. This can make an app look way better than it is. I blew five bucks on a supposed five-star app which truly deserved the one-star rating I gave it.

To add insult to injury, my long, specific review was deleted after just a couple of days.

[yllus]

Yes, apparently app developers can delete any review by themselves, without any approval or oversight by RIM. This can make an app look way better than it is. I blew five bucks on a supposed five-star app which truly deserved the one-star rag I gave it. To add insult to injury, my long, specific review was promptly deleted.

That is not accurate, but you're close enough - an app developer can open a ticket to have a review denied, and RIM appears to always approve such tickets without inquiring into the matter.

[saudadeii]

Does it just delete the comments, or does the star rating "adjust" up once the low one is deleted. Sounds like it adjusts.

I too have installed some highly rated, albeit free, apps. Some were so bad I wondered who could ever like this. I did rate them poorly, but don't typically revisit it later to check.

[BuzzStarField]

Let me preface this by saying I am not making any accusations.

I noticed that my one star rating for an App is gone. I rated the App about a week ago and my and other bad ratings are now missing. Has anyone ever noticed their bad rating go missing in BB App World?

FACT 1: A vendor can ask RIM to remove a review if it is "inappropriate"

FACT 2: Some reviewers habitually leave blatantly false comments or leave comments that more appropriately should have been communicated via the support email address. For example, RIM (without being requested) denied the following spurious claim against my app : Title: "not worth it." Text: "bugs galore. using undocumented api is silly. point to view, and compass do not work."

FACT 3: One or two vendors appear to habitually remove bad reviews and may also add spurious positive reviews. There has been much discussion in this forum about these evil practices and I don't see a need to start a new thread on this topic. Suffice to say that reputable developers would just as soon see RIM take a much harder line on the culprits.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF:
There are tell-tale signs that consumers should be aware of. Typically, apps in this category have very few reviews and those that exist are quite old. If you see such an app in the top-selling list, you need to look for other apps by the same author. If there appears to be a pattern of deception, do a search in this forum - make your decision to buy (or not) only after you see what other CB members think.

WHAT YOU CAN DO IF YOU HAVE BEEN BURNED:
Send an email to [email protected], attaching your receipts and detailing your complaint. Politely but firmly ask for a refund. The more people who do this, the more likely is RIM to take some action to address this obvious problem

[dugggggg]

I always delay reviewing an app until several months later---to give the dev a reasonable chance to fix obvious problems. In my case, I emailed several times before I submitted the review, and never got a reply.

The cost of the app is a major consideration. A free or nearly free app can provide excellent value, even when buggy. On the other hand, the higher the cost, the more the expectation of quality.

I also read (elsewhere on this forum) that unless you complain to that email address within one hour of purchasing an app, no refund will be issued. Nevertheless, I just now sent a polite request for refund to RIM. I'll report back any response.

[Morten]

Any app with less than 10 "ratings" should not have a star rating at all.. it just does not make any sense. It sometimes looks as if the developer can add reviews him/her self, or get friends/family to purchase and rate. As others has pointed out, too many apps have 5 star ratings, which only deserve 0 or less.

Another annoying issue with review/ratings - is that many PB apps show the phone version of the review.. That just does not make any sense at all. The phone and tablet version of an app are usually different, and hense should get different reviews and ratings.
This also goes for the info page about the app... Many PB apps show the info page for the phone - mentioning only phone models and no Playbook... How can this be approved by RIM?

There are way to many flaws with AppWorld and its systems to cover here, but RIM should not only listen to devs and customers, but also start implementing some changes to make the experience a good one for all parts.

[jamesharmeling]

I have certainly learned to do my own research before buying an app and for me, I usually only leave positive reviews.....seeing as how I like to chalk things up as "learned my lesson". I have never really believed the ratings completely anyway. How hard would it be to get 10 friends to write a review?
Having said all that, there certainly should be a process to remove reviews/ratings. Just reading some of them I sometimes get a headache rolling my eyes over and over.

[peter9477]

I'll report here on why I deleted a few reviews, in case that helps. Certainly many developers will instantly delete any negative review, and I believe that's a problem. If nothing else, it means people won't trust the high rating on apps like Battery Guru.

If the review is merely reporting on an apparent problem which should have been communicated through an email to the support address, and especially if I have no idea what they're talking about or am confident the problem does not really exist, the review gets deleted. Samples:

Half star review: "it does what it is meant to but, it sometimes stops my playbook coming out of standby and i have it restart, please update"

My answer: I guarantee Battery Guru is not responsible for doing that. By the way, this user intelligently did email me, and I responded with instructions on how to properly swipe across the screen to wake the tablet from standby. I never heard back so I'm fairly sure it was just a new PlayBook owner. I denied the review since unfortunately users have no ability to change them, as I'm sure this one would have.

Half-star review: "Doesn't collect battery data on my Playbook, or keep the device awake. De-installed."

Again, I guarantee it does collect data, and does keep the device awake when the Keep Awake feature is used per the instructions. Sorry, but no contact through email about unlikely problems means your review gets turfed.

2.5 stars: "how to view the export report of cvs file?"

Self-explanatory why that one got removed?

Half star: "useless app....save your money and purchase something that is actually useful."

No reasonable person would call this app useless, especially when it does exactly what the detailed description said when you bought it. Didn't sound like a legitimate complaint, so denied.

4.5 stars: "solid buy if u have a need for a clock. only gripe is the app is lacking additional clock faces,great otherwise."

Heh... would have loved to leave it in, but the wrong app got reviewed I guess.

Half star: "really disapointed by this app, i wanna a refund for this crap."

Well, again, disappointed? How? It does what the description says. Since I cannot see who leaves reviews or contact them in any way: denied. Even that one I left around for 3 days as I pondered if it was real, or just someone p*ssed off at me for something I said here.

Here's the only one that's at all negative that I've left so far: 2.5 stars: "Does not give a great deal of detailed information. Miles behind similar apps on the phone. "

Is it obvious why that one survived? Seems legitimate to me, and the rating matches the words. I can even go and look at those apps and add similar features to my app to improve it. Fair enough.

[nievz]

peter,
judging by your post, it seems devs have full control wether reviews get posted or not? "denied", "rejected", you didn't mention anything about tickets to RIM for appeal. though, I think you were fair in your judgement about the reviews you posted.

[FF22]

Damn, Peter, where is MY CLOCK???? I want my Battery Clock - now!

I can see why reviews can be removed but maybe it is too easy. And, I agree, folks should be able to edit their reviews but I'd guess that would take too much horsepower for appworld. But then, how long would their bad review stick around until they did or did not re-review?

[peter9477]

nievz, see yllus' post above as he's correct in what he says: http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...7/#post7202347

I've even seen some official documentation in a stray place which says something like "the request will be reviewed and approved if deemed appropriate" but it's pretty clear at the moment that it's a rubber stamp in most or all cases, in spite of them clearly involving a human as it may take days for the denial to be granted.

I have no idea whether it's even possible to have a deny-request rejected, and given what we've seen with Skylab (who's actually been featured by RIM a number of times, remarkably), I can't imagine under what conditions that could ever happen right now.

F2, there are numerous improvements possible here, and for a company with the resources of RIM they should not be infeasible.

For example, everyone who leaves a review is technically reachable through their BBID email. App World could allow a vendor to contact a reviewer (without knowing who it was) and either point out an error in their review, or that an update exists, or offer to assist with their technical problem and, later, the user could edit the review to fix it.

[KermEd]

I only keep negative reviews if they are accurate. Edit: I'd feel bad but, really, I have to maximize the tools I'm given

-----------------
Example of Inaccurate Review:
Description says at the top: Windows users only.
Review says: 0 stars, OMG it doesnt work on my Mac
Reason: They should ask [email protected] for a refund and read the description next time. If they send me a support ticket, I'd help them get a refund. In fact, it probably says how to get a refund in the help info.
-----------------
Example of accurate review:
Review says: 0 stars, doesnt work in Spanish OS
Result: I keep the review (so others dont have the problem) and update the body text that it may not be working on non-English OS. Once I have that update in the description, I will delete any more repeats because its an old (handled issue). Again, they can get a refund, so not too worried
-----------------

Biggest issue I see: 9 out of 10 users don't realize how easy it is to get a refund for a bad purchase. So when a feature is missing they want, instead of asking they assume they will get no help and give a 0 star review. Sometimes the review is completely blank.

Technical note:
If you (as a user) get too many 'denied reviews' from app developers, your reviews to apps are automatically denied by RIM. So even your positive reviews are denied. And then app guys need to manually "approve" (instead of report) your reviews to allow them.

Its a broken system no matter what. Reviews can't be updated or replied to, so the only solution is to keep or delete them.

Sometimes as well, if I have a bunch of reviews about a missing feature - I will clear them out once the feature has been added. Just so that new buyers aren't judging the app on old functionality. But thats more rare.

[KermEd]

peter,
judging by your post, it seems devs have full control wether reviews get posted or not? "denied", "rejected", you didn't mention anything about tickets to RIM for appeal. though, I think you were fair in your judgement about the reviews you posted.

There is no way to appeal.

Devs "report" the review for denial.
RIM "approves" the denial.
Review is auto-denied (including the score)
Dev can "allow" the review later if they want

Process typically takes 2-3 days. So it does take a while. If your review immediately does not appear, your probably in the blocked list for too many denied reviews by app vendors.

But yes, no way to appeal. I think RIM lets it slide so easily because of the sheer volume of useless negative reviews being posted (and they only have ~450 people working on app reviews at the moment, usually only 250).

[KermEd]

Just to finish my 3 part-post There *is* something you can do. Post your reviews on Crackberry! It can't be underestimated. Anytime I mention one of my apps in appworld - it boosts my free downloads by about 600 that day.

And it gives the developer a place to reply to you openly - and sometimes they might be able to explain why it does what it does, or help come up with new ideas. (My last 20 odd new features to Secure Browser all came from the user forums! and so do the purchases ).

[dugggggg]

Yay, RIM approved my refund request!


Please be advised that all purchases through BlackBerry App World are non-refundable. Based on your dissatisfaction with this app we have processed this refund for you.

We are pleased to inform you that your request for a refund for GPS Maps using Google Maps has been approved.

[peter9477]

Bit of an obscure way to respond though. Is that supposed to be giving them an "out", saying basically "legally we have no obligation to do this but we're being nice this one time, but don't count on it in future"? (Fair enough, if so... I have no problems with that approach. Just seems oddly worded to me.)

[dugggggg]

My guess is that the RIM customer support software generates the response email entirely on its own----resulting in the odd wording. Maybe it went through three levels---denied at first, then thinking about it a bit, then approved.

[RPM_KW]

There are MANY complaints here (Crackerry) about Skylab removing negitive and adding positive reviews. One bad apple spoils the bunch.

Thanks to all the Dev's who have been honest and forthright!

[Chrysalis1156]

I had a game on my pb for months & then the developer didn't sign off properly on an update which borked things up in my downloads & I could never get it to download again so I couldn't use it. I explained it to RIM @ AppWorld & they promptly refunded my money. I think if you have a good case & explain it well, they'll give you the refund. Posted with my fingers crossed, hoping I never have the need again...

[cletis]

...If you (as a user) get too many 'denied reviews' from app developers, your reviews to apps are automatically denied by RIM. So even your positive reviews are denied. And then app guys need to manually "approve" (instead of report) your reviews to allow them...

Hmm. I have posted maybe three reviews in app World; I think 2 negative and 1 positive. I checked back to see if they ever showed up, but they never did. This just gave me the impression that the review system is completely made up. This thread gives me hope that there is some honesty in the system. Perhaps my first review contained a naughty word that got me immediately added to the "deny all" list...

[BBThemes]

its also worth noting that once your review has been submitted you alone can see it, then once you leave that app page, it then `dissapears` for a day or so, kinda like the caceh is catching up with itself. so if your fast to check, it can appear its been removed when its simply not up to date.

and of course, using a PIN or email in the review (and swear words) can get your comment automatically banned. im sure those with phones remember a year ago when PIN`s were on every free app review for `hook ups` n stuff, so that killed that action lol.

but yea i agree with what the other devs have said, if a review is justified, then it stands. maybe it`ll go if the situation is resolved with an update. but you do see a lot of `its useless` and such in reviews, which arent informative or helpful to anyone imo.

[peter9477]

Perhaps my first review contained a naughty word that got me immediately added to the "deny all" list...

FYI, there is definitely some sort of "naughty word" list, which would result in a review getting auto-denied at first instead of auto-approved. I have had one review which showed up in my list already denied, even before I had a chance to look at it.

It actually looked completely benign to me, so I toggled the Deny/Approve button to request that it be approved, and a day later it was visible to users. No real idea what causeD that, but I'm sure something triggered an algorithm somewhere -- maybe too many denied reviews from the same reviewer.

By the way, I suggest that users basically pretend the system works perfectly and without dishonesty on the part of some vendors, and submit both negative and positive reviews, as you feel appropriate, with reasonable and useful comments.


In most cases "totally sucks!" is not useful, though clearly it does apply sometimes. Try writing a proper sentence describing what actually sucks, to increase the chances your review will "stick".

"Totally awesome" is, however, a perfectly acceptable positive review, at least when it's warranted. ;-)

[pkcable]

I have seen my reviews show up, it just takes some time. They don't show up immediately.

I also wanted to personally thank the 3 developers who responded in this thread. You guys are definitely the good guys and as regular CBers you are a credit to our forum! Thanks for the great info guys!


EDIT: Correction 4 developers! One was posting as I was!