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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.'"
I ignore reviews on Amazon because the majority of them are already fake. I've purchased items on Amazon only to receive promotional material with them offering coupons and gift cards in exchange for writing a 5-star review.
I do not trust the system at all.
"We are not selling fake reviews. however we do provide Unbiased and Honest reviews on all the products"
Wow, that's priceless. Oh, wait, no, it does have a price. Want to know how this works? From the site itself:
A purchase of your product is not required for us to post a review. If you would like a verified purchase review however we can buy your product first. If the cost is $2.00 or less we will cover the price. If it is more than this you will need to make arrangements with us to reimburse the cost. We are only accepting very limited amounts of verified purchase reviews, please contact us before ordering if you are interested in these.
Price List:
3 Reviews $74.26!
5 Reviews (Reg: $124.50, w/ 20% $99.60!)
10 Reviews (Reg: $249.50, w/ 20% $199.60!)
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200 Reviews (Reg: $4887.50, w/ 30% $3421.60)
I can see why Amazon wants to shut this down. It completely undermines the legitimacy of their user ratings system. Not a big surprise, of course, as just about any system will be gamed if at all possible when there's money involved.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
There are the retarded reviews too:
I just got it! It looks great! - 5 stars.
I haven't finished the book yet, but 5 stars.
Then there are the 5 star reviews by folks who come across as the author's pals or sycophants.
And the ALL TIME champ for shit reviews (1 stars) is Pickety's "Capital in the 21st Century".
Everyone who calls him a Communist obviously didn't read the book because for those of who did - or at least the introduction - would know what he thinks of Communism.
Next Amazon will be suing people for their fantastic reviews of The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee.
Fortunately, the three wolf moon t-shirt's power also indemnifies the wearer of any culpability. Truly the most amazing shirt ever made by man.
Shill!
" every reviewer would state their skillset and experience with similar products"
That's often evident from the reviews. 2-4 star reviews tend to be the most helpful, and there are often good points made in them. Expecting all of them to be useful or applicable to your situation would be like expecting all the /. story comments to be insightful, or to have a MS or Apple thread without trolls and fanbois in the mix. It just ain't gonna happen.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I base my purchases on the RESPONSE to the reviews. Sellers have the ability to respond to any buyer's reviews, manufacturer's appear to have the ability to respond to product reviews (I have recently seen a particular product for solar panels where the producing company was responding to the FAQ and product reviews with corrections), and other product reviewers will often correct misconceptions about the product propagated by users (e.g. the reviews of the Samsung 850 SSD's etc.).
Nobody cares about a product, hotel, travel operator or whatever getting zero bad reviews - it just looks fake and suspicious, in fact. What we care about is how they responded to that.
The most enlightening responses I've seen are from companies with top customer service. And they even respond with comments like "Actually, we have no record of your stay whatsoever, reviewer. Would you care to give us a booking number so we can trace your problem?", etc. for the fake reviews. The responses are much more useful and indicative of good service than the occasional idiot that marks an Amazon product as "1-star" because some third-party seller sent it to the wrong address, etc.
Interesting, how would you prove a review is fake, written with no experience of the product?
Doesn't really matter if it is fake or not if it is paid. If the review is a paid review then it is by definition written with at least a secondary motive and therefore by definition cannot be considered unbiased. Buying reviews arguably harms the reputation of Amazon and could affect their sales and thus would potentially constitute tortious interference with their business.
Does that mean all 5000+ reviews for the Banana Slicer will soon disappear?
If I see a bunch of 1 star reviews saying it breaks after several months of use, I'm going to go onto the next product.
You have to bear in mind that sometimes the 1 star reviews are quite useless/fake. I was looking at a water heater on Amazon recently and there were a lot of one star reviews claiming the product broke and was terrible but most of the reviews were actually for a different and older version of the product which was no longer in production. I've also seen 1 star reviews that were clearly designed to astroturf the product.
Point is, presume any review has ulterior motives unless you have evidence to think otherwise.
Obligatory xkcd
Another xkcd
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.
As a customer I can suspect, but not prove much. Amazon can very easily correlate reviews, users and the IP addresses behind them and act accordingly. They are just probably going first to the attorney for those actions do not backfire on them.
One problem with that is people tend to overestimate their skillset and experience, so telling who actually has a useful background and who does not, well, it just is not possible. Anyone who thinks it is probably needs to reevaluate their own skillset and experience because they are overestimating it.
"Unbiased" and "Honest" are capitalized. That's cruise control for credible.
You can't explain that.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Only allow reviews from people who have a logged purchase for the product, one review per purchase. That won't completely stop fake reviews ("Want to make easy money? Let us pay you to write reviews for products you buy!") but it will cut off 99.742% of them.
One thing I look at is fix-it boards. For example, I was recently looking for a washer-dryer. A certain company had a *LOT* of people asking on fix-it boards how to replace the element on the dryer, and noting that it died fairly early on or repeatedly.
Try googling
"[product] how to replace" or "[product] how to fix" and see what people are commonly asking about. Maybe it's a simple thing and even if it breaks now and then you don't care, but it gives you an idea of what commonly breaks down. Note that this may be due to the part being fragile/defective, a common part that needs replacement in that type of item, or a lot of people being dumb able handling that particular part, so some filtering on your part would be needed.
Send payment and if I have mod points I'll apply them to your posts (or to those on the other side of whatever flamewar you're in) in a totally unbiased way of course:
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Buy 14, get one free !
Nullius in verba