verify those who leave comments
I understand free speech but do you understand when you cannot police who is placing comments that you are providing a platform for anyone to lie, whether or not they are actually residents or disgruntled friends and/or employees or even a resident who was evicted because they didn't pay their rent. They do not have to state who they are or be verified in any way. At least the BBB allows both side to give their story before they post anything. We had a resident call us once who said there was a foul odor in their apartment. When we went to check it out, we had to run back to the office to get the camera because we knew no one would ever believe the condition of the unit. There was so much rotten food exposed in the apartment we almost threw up. This resident again contacted the BBB, to complain that we did nothing about the odor, all this after we told the resident they needed to clean their apartment before we could effectively find the problem. That was when we took a second set of pictures to show dates the first set was taken and how nothing had changed when the second set of pictures was taken. We sent all the pictures to the BBB and they called us in disbelief that this resident complained that we refused to solve the bad odor problem in their apartment. And it is specifically people like this who write horrible complaints and lies about you on these type of websites. I am not asking for this to be censored but there must be something that can be done to control misuse of your site.
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JD commented
It appears that this site does not have the skill or concern to make sure their site reflects a balance.
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Anonymous commented
We haven't heard any more feedback on this, so we're closing it out. We aren't aware of any ratings sites who offer a verification service. For example, a review of an apartment posted on Yahoo, Yelp, or ApartmentRatings.com would not be verified on any of those sites. The idea of creating a BBB-style preview/verification system sounds like an interesting idea we may pursue at a later time.
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Thanks for the feedback- just to clarify, was your suggestion that we create a process for actually verifying comments? Or were you saying the site should mimic the BBB and give apartments a work-out process with renters. Interested in thoughts how that would work... When would a negative review go live? The BBB charges members to participate-- would apts pay for this kind of service?