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Amazon Sues To Block Fake Reviews
An anonymous reader writes Amazon has filed suit against operators of sites that offer Amazon sellers the ability to purchase fake 4 and 5 star customer reviews. The suit is the first of its kind and was filed in King County Superior Court against a California man, Jay Gentile, identified in Amazon's filings as the operator of buyazonreviews.com. The site also targets unidentified "John Does" who operate similar sites: buyreviewsnow.com, bayreviews.net, and buyamazonreviews.com. From the article: "The site buyazonreviews.com, which the suit claims is run by Gentile, didn't respond to a request for comment. But Mark Collins, the owner of buyamazonreviews.com, denied Amazon's claims. In an email interview, Collins said the site simply offers to help Amazon's third-party sellers get reviews. 'We are not selling fake reviews. however we do provide Unbiased and Honest reviews on all the products,' Collins wrote. 'And this is not illegal at all.'"
If these guys are so adamant that there is nothing wrong with paid reviews, ask them if they'd be willing to disclose in their reviews that they are paid.
If I were Amazon, I'd include a check box "I am not being paid or compensated for this review"... at least then they'd have reason to delete any from paid reviewers.
The "this is super and excellent" reviews don't tell me much. I look at the bad reviews. Usually you can get an idea if a product is any good by the type of bad review. If there are many good reviews, but one or two saying "delivered late", "wrong product", or "damaged in transit", then I figure that this can happen occasionally but can be sorted out if it does. Some reviews will be bad because of different use-cases ... if most people give high rating for sound quality on a radio but one or two say "distorts at high volume" then you'll probably be OK if you listen at reasonable volumes. Someone once gave a washer/dryer a 2 start review because it took over three hours for a complete wash/dry cycle. For us that didn't matter - we run it a few times a week and just set it going until it ends. Someone might complain about "complicated controls" on an SLR camera or "lack of flexibility" on a point and shoot ... again it might not matter to you.
On the other hand if a lot of people complain about the general quality of an item, or lack of functionality that you would actually use then that's a good reason to stay away from one.
Note that it'snot cheaper to buy a bulk 10 (1 for 24.95) vs 5 (1 for 24.90). Strange...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Yes, I agree because no one that has ever clicked a check box anywhere has ever lied before.
Doesn't matter if they lie or not for it to be useful. Reason is that it forces them to either A) disclose that they have been paid or B) violate the terms of service.
The IRS uses this exact same tactic on your 1040 form. Look at line 21 of the current 1040 Form and you'll see "Other Income List Type and Amount". This applies whether or not the income is legally obtained. So this is where someone dealing in illegal drugs would be required to disclose their income. If they do not disclose their (illegal) income then they have committed tax fraud. This is how Al Capone was busted - not for the actual crimes but for tax evasion on those crimes.
Amazon believes so strongly that buying non-fake reviews does not harm the reputation of Amazon that they setup an in-house service to help sellers buy non-fake reviews http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki... [wikipedia.org]. If tortious interference is occurring here, you've got the directionality wrong.
After reading the wikipedia, there is a different between the Amazon Vine and those 3rd party reviewing site if the 3rd party site review is to pay for good/bad review. The product owners pay Amazon so that their product would be enlisted for reviewers, not pay reviewers for good/bad review. The criticism is that the process is not transparent enough which could let to unqualified reviews (from unqualified reviewers but are still not a fake review).