About 9 years ago, there was a lady who worked as an indy in Connecticut who had 10 reviews on TER and none were less than a "9-Model Material", and she also had 9s across the board on service. I decided to see her and it was a complete waste of money. She was at best a 5 on the TER scale in my book - "plain". Her service was average for the USA SPs and below average for Montreal SPs. It did not compute in my mind. I truly believe she figured out a way to self post those reviews, either herself or through proxies who were given discounts. This is why looking at the posting history of the reviewer is of paramount importance on TER. TER's sole mechanism of regulating shills is to enable you to click on the poster's review history and you have to do it before you make any decisions. If there is no history, then you roll the dice as to the veracity of the reviewer, and that is what I had done for the most part with that Connecticut indy who had straight 9s.
However, if TER is researched carefully, it is a pretty good resource. And I recently did see a lady in NYC who had racked up all 9s and one 7, and she was as good as her reviews. But the reviews were legit and checked out when each poster's review history was cross-checked.
You have to do the same drill in looking at MERB reviews, but crosschecking the review history of the poster is a bit harder on MERB. In MERB's history, many shill reviews were posted and heeded because the average MERB poster does not cross-check the reviewer's history of reviews on MERB. It takes too much time, even for people who think to do it. We have also seen consistently negatively reviewed well established bait and switch agencies get posted about and reviewed, and it was usually done by a new poster who simply had not done the research. There are agencies who have had 10 or more confirmed bait and switch reviews by veteran posters going back to 2005, yet those reviews were ignored and we saw reviews from people who clearly had not bothered to read those reviews, or the bait and switch sticky thread posting warnings about those agencies going back to 2005.
In fact, some B&S agencies were and are MERB advertisers, and many of the tricked posters believed that the fact that they were MERB advertisers also meant that these advertisers had to be credible and above board. This naive thinking is laughable, because the only criteria to advertise on MERB (or anywhere else) is that your money is green. It is unbelievable but many people do believe that anyone who advertises on MERB automatically has the seal of credibility as a "good business" or a good indy. MERB is not the better business bureau, it is a for profit enterprise that makes money from advertising, like any other business.