A car dealership is being swamped with negative reviews after offering supermarket vouchers to customers who left them positive reviews on Google.
In a post on Facebook, which has since been deleted, 2 Cheap Cars said they "love good reviews" and offered a $10 Pak'nSave voucher to the first 200 people to leave a five-star review for their local branch and send a screenshot.
But the marketing stunt backfired, as people accused the company of trying to bribe people.
"Exploiting Google Reviews! $10 voucher for 5 star rating? That itself shows what kind of business it is!" one reviewer posted on the page for the Penrose branch, leaving a one-star rating.
"Any business who bribes it's [sic] customers to give you a good rating is a bad company well deserving of a one star rating," another wrote, accompanied by another one-star rating.
Despite the negativity, a number of reviewers appear to have joined in for the sake of a $10 voucher.
It's impossible to tell how many of the five-star reviews on each page are now legitimate; however, a large number have been left within the past week - around the time the Facebook post was shared. Older reviews tend to be between two and three stars.
It's not the first time 2 Cheap Cars has faced negative publicity. One of its adverts featuring a Japanese man repeatedly saying "ah so", so it sounded like "asshole", was the most complained-about advert of 2016, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ad, which was eventually pulled, received 27 complaints.
Newshub.
