Tea At Sea - Fake Users and Reviews
Hey guys, I just happened to notice another tea company making fake accounts to review their own teas again. If you look here, you’ll see: http://steepster.com/teas/tea-at-sea/39420-mountain-organic-indonesian-black-tea
Almost all of the people that reviewed them have 0 followers, 0 following, no profile pictures, and most of them have only reviewed Tea At Sea stuff.
If you see anything like this that you suspect as fake, just contact Jason or the other Steepster creators and they can take a look into it. Jason(at)steepster.com
yep…vaguely remember something else like this gong on with the same company a while back…unless my memory serves me wrong..
Tea At Sea here,
Of Course I rate my own tea. I love it, I think its 100 otherwise I wouldn’t sell it.
As for the other people that reviewed my teas that have no profile picture; these are my friends to whom I gave free tea or free samples asking them to review it on Steepster. Their initial reply was “Steepster? Is that like Napster?”. These ratings are mostly for me to know which teas are the most popular so that I can order them again. There is absolutely no need for me to make up fake users and giving myself higher ratings (I mean; I could do this, but I don’t really see the benefit nor do I have time to waste on this). No one should buy tea based on ratings, My favorite tea in the world is “Twinnings Earl Grey” which has a score of 76 and “Ahmad Tea – Ceylon Tea” which also has a score of 76 while I feel it should be scored 150 at the least.
Tea At Sea has already sold hundreds of teas and sent out thousands of samples yet there is very little feedback from customers on what they like and what they do not. So I created a post here called “Tea At Sea offering Free samples in exchange for reviews”. The purpose of this is to find out which teas I should re-order and which I should discontinue. I would LOVE negative feedback because it will help me change tea suppliers and provide better tea. My friend Jason a.k.a Jason_loves_tea gave my “Ceylon Sencha Green Tea” a rating of 34. His reason was “It sucks, don’t sell this”, we became friends after. And, as soon as my Sencha stock runs out, I will not be re-ordering it.
Well, you seem pretty legit, I did send you my address for a free sample, and if that does come, I will believe you 100%!
I’m not getting involved – just pointing out the obvious. This is just cut and pasted from the admins “Discussion Guidelines (Read Before Participating)” it’s at the top of the discussions page.
9) If you’re a tea company, please do not start new forum topics about your products or promotions. Feel free to post replies where relevant, but anything overly self-promotional will be removed. Also, don’t rate your own teas because of the (obvious) conflict of interest. It’s misleading and everyone will figure it out anyways – you’ll turn away the very customers you’re trying to attract.
I didnt think it was overly promotional, but rather a great deal for people who wanted to try some new tea
Let’s keep in mind that even if it may look like someone is gaming the ratings system, that certainly isn’t proof.
With that said, lala is correct. If you suspect any behavior that would be against our TOS or the essence of our site, please contact me jason(at)steepster.com and I will investigate the situation directly.
I received my samples of Mountain Organic Indonesian Oolong tea and Mountain Organic Indonesian Black tea. I’ve been drinking it all morning and feel the 100 rating wan’t far off the mark. Check my tea ratings for more info. It may have been inappropriate for them to rate their own teas but maybe they didn’t know how else to get their name out there. They are giving free samples so drop them a note and try them out. Anyway, I think it is good quality tea and would order from them again. AND you get a cute little sailboat!
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