By Carl Laron on January 27, 2012 in
The issue of fake user reviews is nothing new. We blogged about it back in 2009 after a Wall Street Journal article exposed the practice by certain companies of having employees post favorable write ups to user-review sites, such as Amazon.com. Now, The New York Times has shed some light on something new, yet still the same: offering real customers financial incentives to write positive reviews -- in this case getting their product for free. Does this latest black eye for user-written reviews mean that it's time to start ignoring them? Follow us after the jump for our take.
Write a review, get a refund
The nuts-and-bolts of the deal were these: VIP Deals, an Amazon Marketplace seller, offered a Vipertek leather case for the Amazon Kindle for $10 plus shipping. When buyers received their case, it also came with a letter, shown at The Atlantic, offering to refund their order cost in exchange for writing a review at Amazon.com. While a positive review was never an explicit condition for getting a refund, 5-star reviews were certainly asked for, and most buyers complied. As of last week, 310 of 335 reviews for the case were 5-stars, and most of the rest offered a 4-star rating, The New York Times reports. In addition, the merchant itself had garnered a very high rating of 4.9 based on the feedback from nearly 5,000 customers.
The goal of this limited-time offer, as explained by TGDaily.com, was pretty simple: Pay for user reviews so that the company could build up a positive reputation off of which it could capitalize later on. As far as plans go, this one wasn't so hot. It was a violation of Amazon.com rules that bar this kind of behavior, and might run afoul of FTC rules involving product promotion. In any event, once informed, Amazon.com took down the reviews, and then the product page. Amazon.com had no comment as to why it hadn't noticed some of the complaints about the offer that customers had posted to the site itself.
The fall out, the reality
The pundits were quick to pounce, of course. "Now there's even more reason to distrust online reviews," writes Brad Tuttle at Time. "Why you should stop trusting online user reviews (if you haven't already)," adds VentureBeat.com's Sean Ludwig -- driving the point home even more via a graphic that implies that those that use online reviews are "suckers."
Are they right? Nope. Not even close.
Here at ConsumerSearch we look at thousands and thousands of consumer-written and professional reviews each year as part of our process to find the best products in the categories we cover and can say confidently that the vast majority are honest and straightforward. When we do run across some review shenanigans, they are pretty easy to spot.
Unfettered raves from fanboys and paid endorsers as well as unrelenting attacks from those with an axe to grind against the company or a competitor stick out like a sore thumb. Be wary of overwhelmingly positive reviews; remember that if it seems too good to be true, it probably isn't. Also look out for sites whose opinion stands in stark contrast to the consensus formed by other reviewers -- both users and professionals. That's why it's important to check several sites, not just one, for reviews when making buying decisions (or, if you'll forgive the shameless plug, read ConsumerSearch because we do a lot of that legwork for you).
That doesn't mean that it doesn't pay to be suspicious about online reviews. But following the advice here and in our earlier blog post can make spotting less-than-forthright opinions a simple matter.