It is against Amazon's rules for third-party sellers to pay or motivate people with free products or cash compensation (Photo: AFP)Premium
Sort by most recent reviews, check if older reviews were for completely different products and search for red flags such as 'gift' or 'free'
Anywhere reviews exist-for apps, restaurants, products-manipulation exists, too. Amazon, as the nation's largest online retailer, is the likeliest place you'll find it. The majority of its products come from its Marketplace program, where millions of third-party sellers compete to peddle everything from USB cables to lawn furniture. Fake reviews can help sellers get an edge and make more money, hence those cheap "five-star" no-name products that you buy then wish you hadn't.
"We want Amazon customers to shop with confidence knowing that the reviews they see are authentic and trustworthy. That's why we take reviews abuse seriously and aim to prevent fake reviews from ever appearing in our store," an Amazon spokeswoman said in a statement following publication of this column. She said the company receives more than 30 million reviews a week, and that more than 12,000 Amazon employees work to prevent fraud and abuse, including fake reviews. "We have stopped hundreds of millions of suspected fake reviews before they were seen by a customer," she added.
When you're on an Amazon listing, look for a small link with the number of ratings, right underneath the product's title. This link is a shortcut to the bottom of the page showing a summary of customer reviews.
• Sort by most recent. Under Sort By, change the dropdown from "Top reviews" to "Most recent." This often offers a better mix of reviews and can surface recent shipping or quality control issues.
• Be suspicious of positive photo and video reviews. Images can be a helpful way to understand a product's size or features, but paid-review operations often require reviewers to include media. That is why a simple bath mat can end up with minutes-long video reviews, hyperbolically praising its plushness or color.
• Look at global reviews. Now that Amazon includes international reviews with its U.S. product listings, some sellers merge reviews of different products from other countries to inflate ratings. On the product's main listing page, scroll down to "Top reviews from other countries" to see international ratings.
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