also she asked for someone that had 100+ post too not some that is new and would be called a shill. i think that is the most important part.
With all due respect, going by a member's number of posts to judge his honesty or whatever else, can be quite misleading. Some can have hundreds of posts and a join date only a few months old. It's easy to post like mad, yet never have written a review or even have never contributed anything solid to this board. I think that no matter how you look at it, if someone knows before and during an appointment, that they are 100% for sure being reviewed, it doesn't necessarily accurately represent the service one might expect when there are no reviews and no discount.
And no matter what any of you say, in addition to the provider obviously making sure she gives the best possible service to get the best possibly advertising, um, review she can get - the fact also remains that someone being offered and accepting a discount in exchange for this review, obviously also goes into the appointment with a completely different perspective than any other appointment where he is not.
There is a reason they call them 'mystery shoppers' and don't tell retail/restaurant/hotel/etc employees who they are until after their service has been reviewed.... because they full well know that anyone who knew they were dealing with a mystery shopper would obviously not give the same level of service any other regular customer can expect.
If you want to review an employee when he's purposely trying to impress, fine, then a review like that works. But since you can probably expect to fit into the everyday customer category, and not the VIP who must be impressed category - then IMHO such a review hold very little value and insight on what you can expect. You may be surprised and received great service, but you can't count on it by relying on such a review.
These exchanges of reviews for discounts, fall dangerously close to plain advertising... only they are passed off as something entirely different. At the very least, this should be included in the review.
For those of you who see no difference between these kinds of reviews and others that are not the result of a discount, I'm wondering if all of the sp's decided to offer this same kind of discount in exchange for an 'honest' review and as a result, most reviews posted were of this kind. Would reviews honestly hold the same credibility you give them now (however much or little that may be, it's different for everyone of course), or would you view them differently, like they were just extensions of the sp's advertising?
I'm curious..
How would you see the whole review thing if all of them were obtained this way?