TL;DR: Apartment complex tries to fake their way out of a 1.8-star rating, steals residents’ names to write fake reviews, gets caught by the actual residents, and exposes themselves with a ChatGPT copy-paste error.
So, Brio Apartments has been sitting at a dismal 1.8 stars on Google Maps, and management apparently decided they’d had enough. Instead of, you know, actually fixing the issues, they launched the most incompetent fake review campaign I have ever seen to drag their score up to a 2.2.
Here is a breakdown of their desperate attempt to look like a functioning apartment complex:
- The Bot Ring: Suddenly, 10+ brand-new 5-star reviews popped up out of nowhere. It’s incredibly obvious—they were all posted around the exact same time, and every single “reviewer” has exactly one review on their brand-new account.
- The Circle-Jerk: To make the reviews look legitimate, they used these 10+ burner accounts to like each other’s reviews. So, every fake review magically has around 15 thumbs up in such short period.
- The Identity Theft: Here is where it gets unhinged. They actually faked the identities by using the real names of current residents. Some of the names they used belong to my actual friends. One of my friends was so furious they went and left their own 1-star review confronting management for stealing their name (see screenshot).
- The ChatGPT Fail: The absolute cherry on top is that whoever was copy-pasting these fake reviews got lazy. In one of the 5-star reviews, they literally forgot to delete the ChatGPT prompt/rephrasing indicator before hitting submit. It’s sitting right there on Google Maps for the world to see (see screenshot).
I’ve attached screenshots below. Has anyone else dealt with a management company pulling something like this? I know UDR is notorious and Brio is famous for their low Google Map ratings, but the sheer audacity to use residents’ names is mind-blowing.
Turns out the Reddit’s filter doesn’t allow me to post too many screenshots — but you could always go to Google Maps review to find them 🙂
