@tobebuilds The discount is being used as bait to force merchants into chat just so support can ask for reviews.
Using a price perk to lure merchants into a conversation where you ask for a review is still manipulation. The merchant gets a discount and may feel obligated to leave a positive rating. That makes the entire funnel incentivized.
1.) Offer a discount button for no reason.
2.) Automatically apply said discount, without a conversation with a human.
3.) Ask for a review.
Absolutely against the terms of the app store & partner agreement.
I could understand that fraud activities always innovate faster than the governance/regulations. However, it is really disappointing that “Report Partner” page of Shopify does nothing for those reported cases at least.
I have been reporting one Shopify Partner since April but nothing happened to them and they keep farming the fake reviews now even for their new apps.
Imagine a partner that has Low Stock Counter and Comparison & Spec Tables apps:
1- Those apps started getting a huge influx of reviews since March, so interestingly, at the same time.
2- Huge overlap of the reviews. I do not mean 50% overlap, it is way over 95% Again so interesting, right? Many people need low stock and a comparison table apps at the same time!
3- Interestingly, majority of the stores gave reviews for only those two apps.
4- It is impossible to visit any store because all the store names are national brands or no visibility on google like Cathay Pacific.
5- They all decided to write the reviews in the same format. No surprise, right?
This is definitely just a discount-for-a-review deal. They have simply reversed the order to make it appear more legitimate. I’ve submitted a report to Shopify.
@David_Arbias I found that the app you reported (https://apps.shopify.com/coll-sort-push-down-sold-out-1) is now giving a 404 on the app store.
Any idea if they’ve been punished or something?
I think they just unpublished the app, even though they were doing that I remember they had less than 10 reviews.
I haven’t heard anything yet either. My installs have taken a bit of a hit too. Hopefully they sort it soon.
I’m unmarking this as solved.
The promised review updates mostly seem to have resulted in genuine reviews being deleted, as far as I can tell from what people have sent me and discussed on here. Meanwhile, the obvious fake/incentivised review abusers don’t seem to have had any reviews touched.
Clearly, something has gone pretty wrong here. Can we get some sort of update?@Paige-Shopify, @Luke
I don’t work for Shopify FYI.
Whoops haha! Sorry for shooting the messenger. 
Watched a competitor’s review count drop by 70% this week. Their ranking for “low stock” didn’t move. That’s the part worth noticing.
Even when Shopify strips reviews, the app keeps the installs, the ranking position, and the genuine reviews it collected while the count was inflated. The cleanup is cosmetic. The compounding already happened.
Detection is slow and the correction is partial, so the math still favors whoever games it.
Even when Shopify strips reviews, the app keeps the installs, the ranking position, and the genuine reviews it collected while the count was inflated. The cleanup is cosmetic. The compounding already happened.
This is the new normal. Newer apps get better keyword ranking and appearance in autocomplete. Its been going on for months:
Yeah this feels like a problem that’ll never go away without a dedicated “tiger team”. I think if Shopify wants to address this, they’ll likely need to expand their Review API to include a review link generator. It should become required when doing review asks. Which means needing to add attribution data to reviews (natural reviews from the app listing, vs ask surfaces/interactions).
Part of the API’s expected input will be the ID of the interaction, or even the body of the interaction. Letting them audit review asks easily (with AI even) without needing to “secret shopper” their own platform.
