I’m a huge Amazon customer. I probably don’t spend as much as some people do, but, of all my shopping, I spend at least half of my money on there. My love for Amazon got so intense I had to cancel Amazon Prime.
When shopping on Amazon, I almost always buy products based on the reviews. To me, a product with at least a 4.5 out of 5 is almost definitely a great product based on my experience. If reviews are this good, I’ll almost always buy the product without any further research.
If it’s a 3.5 or a 4.0 out of 5, I’ll consider buying, but only after reading some of the reviews to see why people aren’t giving 5′s. Below that, I probably won’t buy it at all and will seek alternatives instead.
I often shop exclusively on Amazon, so I won’t bother researching on other sites. Probably dumb on my part, but I just like the convenience. Now, I’m even more wary of that strategy.
Fake Reviews?
A few times I’ve felt like I’ve noticed sketchy stuff going on in the reviews. For example, some books seem to rack up 5-star reviews within a few hours of being released. “How can that be?” I had to think to myself. So I decided to do some investigating.
A Google search for the phrase “fake Amazon reviews” turns up about 38,000 results. Here are some of my findings:
- This WSJ article is about reviews posted by a DeLonghi employee on her company’s own products. Turns out that she had posted not one but two 5-star ratings on separate espresso makers on Amazon. She and DeLonghi may not have been explicitly breaking Amazon’s rules, but, at the very least, it doesn’t say much for the legitimacy of the reviews found on there.
- In this article from the New York Times, a freelance writer reveals she was paid $10 per review on Amazon. While she wasn’t required to give 5-stars, she was instructed to turn down assignments if she couldn’t give it that many. This article also points out that it’s not limited to Amazon but extends to sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and CitySearch, too.
- Here’s another post on Engadget that alleges that a sales rep. for Belkin was also involved in trying to find people to write reviews for as little as $0.65 each.
- The Consumerist is onto it, too.
Just to see how easy it was myself, I searched for “Amazon review” on Fiverr and got about 280 offers for positive Amazon ratings in exchange for just $5.
I didn’t come across any hard data on how positive ratings affect sales, but various sources said simply that products with higher volumes of positive reviews tend to sell more. That’s no surprise to me.
Lesson Learned
Amazon is trying to cut down on the fake reviews, but I have to imagine they’ve got an uphill battle on their hands. There’s seemingly not much on their site to automatically filter out fake reviewers. While I imagine they do catch some, it seems easy to still slide through their system.
I’ll probably still judge products on Amazon based on the ratings, but I guess I’ll have to be more careful and skeptical than before.
I guess all that’s left to say is the classic phrase: Buyer beware!
Do you buy based on reviews at Amazon? Were you aware of fake ones?
$ $ $ $
photo from freelancer:com
About the author
- More at
