📍 A true story from San Jose
Four stops. Four lessons. One tool I wish I had from the start.
The journey that broke my trust in reviews
New city, no connections. Searched Google Maps for apartments, sorted by rating. Found one with 4.5 stars and 200+ reviews. "Great management!" "So quiet!"
Signed a 12-month lease.
💀 Reality
AC broken for 2 weeks in August. Management ghosted me. Packages stolen weekly from the "secure" mailroom.
Okay, lesson learned. Read reviews more carefully next time, right?
Wrong.
Woke up with severe chest pain. Searched "urgent care near me." Picked the 4.7-star clinic — highest rated in the area.
🚨 What happened
3 minutes with a doctor. No tests. "Probably anxiety." Sent home with antacids.
48 hours later I was in the ER with an actual diagnosis. Days of pain I didn't need.
This one scared me. Healthcare decisions based on fake reviews? That's not annoying — that's dangerous.
Important event coming up. Needed to look sharp. Found a 4.8-star barber — "best fade in the city!"
✂️ The result
Uneven sides. Neckline like an EKG reading. "It'll grow out" he said. 🙃
It wasn't bad luck. It was a pattern. And I finally realized: I can't spot fakes with my eyes alone.
The fake reviews looked real. The real reviews were buried. I couldn't tell the difference by reading.
But data doesn't lie. Review spikes. Timing patterns. Unnatural rating distributions. These things are mathematically detectable.
So I built something to detect them.
One click reveals the patterns humans miss. So you don't have to learn these lessons the hard way.
Get FakeReviewRadar — Free