We have discussed the phenomenon of fake reviews on Amazon several times on our site, sharing various, simple but efficient methods for spotting them with our readers .
Well, we cannot but deal with this problem again today especially when considering the following facts. Amazon has spent many years on a global mission to crackdown fake-review sellers who offer refunds and compensation in exchange for 5-star reviews on their products. Amazon has recently announced that it has banned more than 3000 accounts connected to more than 600 brands from its platform. The motivation: for having sold products in direct violation of the e-commerce giant’s policies on review abuse.
Unfortunately, the practice of incentivizing fake reviews through different kinds of improper conduct is certainly not new. Nor is it a particularly limited phenomenon. So much so, that anyone who has ever purchased on the marketplace (especially non-Western brand products) has probably at least once been offered a coupon or a refund in exchange for writing a 5-star review on a purchased item.
It is quite obvious you don’t need to be an expert on how Amazon’s mechanisms work, to realize that positive reviews on a purchased product contribute to its scaling the ranks. Higher ranking makes a product seem better than its competitors in the eyes of Amazon, and therefore, is more likely to be proposed to new customers.
After many difficult years spent in contrasting these inappropriate kinds of behaviour, Jeff Bezos’ company has finally seemed to tackle the problem in a serious manner. It is strongly endeavouring to find and thoroughly ban the products and the sellers that have perpetrated this bad conduct. Amazon’s main interest is to make the purchasing experience of its customers as transparent as possible. This also includes safeguarding them against the risk of engaging with vendors whose trustworthiness is only apparent.
We strongly hope the situation will become more and more encouraging in the coming months. In the meantime, we’d like to give our readers a few tips to help them distinguish between authentic reviews and fake ones. Follow them to better distinguish the vendors who are truly reliable from those who are not:
- Check verified purchases, meaning reviews left by consumers who have actually bought the product on the platform;
- Check out the reliability of the reviews though other online tools such as Fakespot and Review Meta. All you have to do is paste the link of the Amazon product and you’ll get a summary assessment of the ratings left by the reviewers;
- Check the reviews on other sites, seeing that sellers who generally resort to fake review techniques use them almost exclusively on Amazon, failing to consider that feedbacks are also given on other platforms
- Check the most recent reviews. Whoever makes use of fake reviews usually concentrates them at the beginning of the sales cycle of a product. The more recent reviews are the ones left on the latest version of the product which may have been updated several times since it was first sold.