Apple needs to change the way ratings work

[joeallenpro]

I have a free app on the store that's only just launched. So at the moment its flying up and down the charts (I've managed to hit the top 200 for FREE iPad Apps )

Today I looked and out of nowhere it had over 700 1-star ratings.

This is almost certainly a deliberate attack, because firstly that's a very big percentage of my users to be leaving ratings. Secondly, they are ONLY 1 star ratings, there no 2-star, no 3-star, a couple of 4-star (genuine) and a few 5-star (genuine).

700 ratings is more than Apple's current version of their "Remote" app which has been on the store for years and is certainly more popular.

The paid version of the app (which has nearly identical functionality and quality) has no 1-star reviews (because they'd have the buy the app to leave a rating/review).

It's just the same when you see an app that's been online for less than 1 day with 2000 5-star ratings and reviews.

What is going on?
Who is doing it?
Why hasn't Apple done anything about it?

I have contacted iTunes through iTunes Connect about this but I'm doubtful they'll do anything.

Anybody else had the same problem?

[ilmman]

seems normal to me.. all my apps get a huge number of 1 star reviews with all of em comming in a day ( i can get 4000 negative reviews) if someoene paid like 10k for someone to do that to me a few times.. then bleh.. but i think its normal. People are more incited to review when they are pissed off for some reason and happy reviewers hardly review me.. or maybe my app just sucks..

[Promo Dispenser]

Are they only ratings or also reviews?
If reviews, are they one word spam reviews or are tehy really meant to be reviews?

I can't imagine why somebody would pay somebody to give other devs bad ratings instead of giving himself good ratings. Very contraproductive.

I would contact apple about this even if they will do jack.

[merlin]

Originally Posted by Promo Dispenser

I can't imagine why somebody would pay somebody to give other devs bad ratings instead of giving himself good ratings. Very contraproductive.

It's not that hard to do. With free apps you don't need a cc to download them, so a good script + TOR and you can have a 1000 negative reviews within a day for a cost of one day's work of a good (albeit evil) programmer.

It also makes sense - if someone was to give himself 5-stars, Apple would quickly find the guilty and ban him. If instead that person just gives 1-star reviews to his competition, he's much harder to track.

But I agree.. Apple should do something about it. It's scary how badly they treat developers (& ignore complaints)...

@JoeAllen - I think the only thing for you to do is to rerelease the app. You might also do some investigation by yourself & find a perpetrator. Once you're sure that this is the person (for example - the only app from your competitors which wasn't hit), do the same to him. Fire with fire.