Suggestions for improvements to user review process and flagged reviews

Generally, I think it's reasonable for these reviews to be removed if flagged. Please continue to flag them as you have and I'll make sure they're handled properly. 

I like your suggestions. Suggesting to contact the developer may be a good idea. Some people are too stupid or too lazy to read the instructions.

Since when doesn't Garmin the flagged reviews? So far they have removed every flagged review but I may have been two or three months ago since I last flagged a review.

Currently I have 4 datafields for the Edges in the Garmin IQ store. I recently created a watchface which has been in beta for two months. I would like to release a public version but I'm hesitating because it works just fine for me. I don't want to spend much time on people moaning about their device not being supported or stupid reviews.

I'll forward along your suggestions for ways to preempt some of these less useful forms of feedback.

For what it's worth, we're aware that the current feedback loop isn't ideal for developers and have discussed several ways it needs to be improved. Garmin has nearly 350 app listings on the store, so we face a lot of the same problems—poor reviews with little or no information, feedback asking for certain device(s) to be supported, app problems that are due to firmware issues and not app bugs, etc. My point is, we feel your pain. 

I talked with my team about flagged reviews being neglected, and I'm confident that isn't the case. To be clear, we don't automatically remove any reviews flagged by a developer. We will, however, remove reviews that:

• Are abusive or contain profanity
• Reference a firmware bug and not an app bug (since that's not the app developer's fault)
• Is a device support issue (e.g. I don't know how to configure my activity with this data field)
• Are not relevant to the app or are spam

Developers can also provide a reason for the flag and argue their case for why they feel a review should be removed, particularly if it doesn't already fit into one of the categories I've listed above. We won't always agree, but your comments are all read and considered.

I'll publish this information in the FAQ on this forum for future reference.

Update 2024-06-14: 

If developers believe a review violates Garmin’s Terms of Use (see https://www.garmin.com/en-US/legal/terms-of-use/), they may flag reviews of their own apps they believe are inappropriate and provide a reason explaining why. If the flagged review is in violation, the review will be removed. We also encourage developers to reply to reviews to help address customer concerns and direct them to the Contact Developer link if further assistance is needed.

The "contact the developer" needs to be more prominent. People post reviews to get support, which is bad because some things are easy to fix and developers are probably interested in helping people.

Maybe, Garmin should pop-up a note saying (something like):

"Many IQ apps are written by independent developers. They are intended to run on many different devices and it's not usually practical to test an app on every actual device. If you have an issue or problem with an IQ app, we suggest to contact the developer before writing a review to give the developer to address the problem first".

It could be in the past, a few devs were flagging everything that was the least bit critical of an app, which to me, is kind of bogus.   While I don't have 350 apps like Garmin, I do have about 50, so I've been through a number of reviews, and not everyone likes everything.

I know for me, I'll not always flag things I could, as I think it helps with others that look to do a review.  Things like where contact developer should be used, or where someone fails to read even the first sentence of the description.

I got about three of the "failure to read" reviews over the span of a few days for one of my apps and pointed to the description, and then got a 5 star: 

"As someone who owns a personal weather station (and can read) this is amazing. Exactly what I was looking for."

"(and can read)" :)

dpawlyk said:

The "contact the developer" needs to be more prominent

I think that was suggested from the very first day the "contact developer" link appeared.  Have it on the same level as "download", or do a popup when you click to do a review stating "If you'd like to report a bug, contact the developer" (with the link), or something.

The other thing is when using "contact developer", an email address should be required, as when you get a email and there's no way to answer the question/respond it's frustrating and can lead to bad reviews.

Brandon, check the reviews of this app: 

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/09d07e22-4bdf-41be-9e96-dac7458b1967

Barely all bad reviews displayed at this moment mention "app can't be uninstalled". I have flagged all of them, but none has been removed. Could you please check that?

Besides the reviews, we also get many emails, which is quite annoying. In this specific case (i.e., uninstalling a watch face), I think something more has to be done (e.g. forcing the change to another watch face - like when a watch face crashes - and then uninstalling it. This would be very transparent for the user). Please add it to the discussion you're having internally.

The users don't learn they have to do it because they normally just install another watch face when they want to change. At certain point, they don't have more free slots, and a clear message is shown (something like "you must remove some apps"). However, in our case, it's a trial app. So users want to get rid of it when they don't want to buy. But it isn't clear how they have to proceed. They can't guess that they first have to change to another watch face, and the instructions are very unclear ("unable to uninstall").

r.485 I don't see any pending flagged app reviews for any of your apps at the moment. It's possible some you had flagged were mis-handled. Please re-flag any you believe deserve to be considered.

We do have some fixes planned to address the problem users have when attempting to uninstall active watch faces. These are fixes that are done in firmware, so they'll take some time to percolate out (once they're released). I'm not able to be more specific about the time frame, unfortunately, because I don't have that info available to me. 

Brandon.ConnectIQ , I have reflagged many reviews on 12/31, and they weren't removed. As I mentioned in another recent post ( forums.garmin.com/.../connect-iq-store-flags-for-reviews-being-neglected ), I'm guessing there's a problem with the flagging system itself. Could you please check that? Kind regards and Happy New Year!