Slashdot Mirror
Carbonite Stacks the Deck With 5-Star Reviews
The Narrative Fallacy writes "In the aftermath of disclosures that Belkin employees paid users for good reviews on Amazon, David Pogue reports in the NYTimes that Carbonite has gone one better with 5-star reviews of its online backup services written by its own employees. Pogue recounts how Bruce Goldensteinberg signed up for the backup service, and all went well until his computer crashed and he was unable to restore it from the online backup while Carbonite customer support kept him on hold for over an hour. Frustrated, Goldensteinberg started reading Carbonite reviews on Amazon and a few of them seemed suspicious. 'They were created around the same date — October 31, 2006 — all given 5 stars, and the reviewers all came from around the Boston, MA area, where Carbonite is located,' including a review by Swami Kumaresan that read more like a testimonial. 'It turned out that Swami Kumaresan is the Vice President of Marketing for Carbonite. His review gives no indication that he is employed by the company.' Another review posted by Jonathan F. Freidin extols Carbonite without mentioning Freidin's position as Senior Software Engineer at Carbonite. 'It doesn't matter to me that Carbonite's fraudulent reviews are a couple of years old,' writes Pogue. 'These people are gaming the system, deceiving the public to enrich themselves. They should be deeply ashamed.'"
No, prosecuted. That is conflict of interest.
"Conflict of Interest" is not a criminal offense. You might have a civil case for fraud, but I doubt seriously if any criminal charges would ever be filed, let alone upheld in a court.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I looked up Carbonite on the Better Business Bureau. They are BBB accredited with a B+ rating.... Maybe the BBB should be rethinking their scales?
http://reports-boston.bbb.org/Boston/Public/Reports/RR/Report.aspx?i=17194
The reviews are clearly labeled "user" reviews, as you mention, not CEO reviews and not employee reviews.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The stupid thing is, it doesn't even need faked reviews - Carbonite is genuinely good. it's got me out of a scrape several times and the ability to go back to older versions of documents is great too. Ermm.. this is starting to sound like I'm being facetious but really, it is good.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
They're endorsed by and advertise with Rush Limbaugh, so of course they're corrupt. I wouldn't trust these people with a ham sandwich, let alone my data.
RAID is not a backup solution.
Repeat 4 times and do 50 hail marys.
Commercial speech has been found to be subject to restrictions. Commercial speech not clearly labeled as such is at best deceptive advertising and at worst flat out fraud.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Wrong. In fact the phrase came from a case having nothing to do with shouting, theaters, or fire. The common usage of the phrase is exactly as Justice Holmes used it originally.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace