Craft Spirits Exchange takes fraudulent reviews very seriously. As a new online community with the goal of helping our members discover and learn about great new spirits – we make every effort to ensure our reviews are true consumer reviews based on a tasting experience.
What Is Considered Fraud?
Reviews should only be written by CSX members that have had a tasting experience that they want to share with the community. The following actions may be considered fraudulent:
1. Attempts by a brand owner or paid representative/ambassador to boost his/her own brand´s reputation by:
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Writing a review for his/her own product
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Asking friends or relatives to write positive reviews
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Copying comment cards and submitting them as reviews
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Pressuring CSX member to remove a negative review
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Hiring an optimization company, third party marketing organization, or anyone to submit false reviews
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Impersonating a competitor or a guest in any way
2. Attempts by a brand owner or paid/ representative/ambassador to damage his/her competitors by submitting a negative review. Bottom line: Any attempt to mislead, influence or impersonate members is considered fraudulent and will be subject to penalty.
How Do You Detect Fraud?
CSX monitors all reviews and investigates all suspicious activity. We also employ a “Community Watch” approach to fraud detection and encourage our members to “Flag As Inappropriate” any reviews they feel are fraudulent in nature. CSX investigates all flagged reviews and reserves the right to delete reviews if determined to be fraudulent or inappropriate based on our terms of service.
What will happen if a Brand is found to have fraudulent reviews?
If we determine that there are fraudulent reviews submitted by a brand owner or a paid representative/ambassador, there are several potential consequences:
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The brand may be immediately expelled or removed from consideration for the CSX Brand Partner program including all benefits, promotional activities and services.
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The brand´s products may be removed from saleable inventory and or removed altogether from the CSX website.
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A large red penalty notice, explaining that the brand´s reviews are suspicious may appear on the brand´s product pages.
If you find a brand to be fraudulent, why not remove them from the site altogether?
This is exactly what some brands want. We think the penalty notice is a better punishment, and provides more information to consumers so they can make informed purchasing decisions.