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Do you trust online reviews? Now that Amazon is suing more than 1,000 people who allegedly offered to write glowing product reviews for cash, you might reasonably be concerned.
Turns out, deceptive reviews are commonplace online—and so are doubts about them. The research organization Mintel found that 57 percent of surveyed consumers are suspicious of companies or products that only have positive online reviews. And 49 percent believe companies probably give incentives for online reviews.
Fortunately, there are a few good techniques that can help you tell truth from fiction.
The article lists several ways to tell the difference. What are yours?
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(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday October 22 2015, @01:10PM
A while back (say 5 years) I had my girlfriend at the time post a review on Amazon. Since then the review had become somewhat popular. Few months back I began receiving emails asking me to post a review for product that would be provided to me free of charge. Clearly some sort of a scam where I get a free (possibly reimbursed so I am a verified purchaser) product and proceed to say nice things about it. It's really scummy how whenever humans try to come up with a honest and useful tool, someone comes along and tries to make money from it and fuck the whole thing up.
What makes the whole thing so egregious is the fact that Amazon is so full of stuff that it's impossible to pick quality product out of the pile as is. And when shitty products make it thanks to shenanigans like these, soon enough all products will be shitty. Just few days ago I had a discussion with co-workers where I told them I only read the negative reviews. I figured if I can live with the product having red the worst thing about it, I think it's not that bad. I have long learned I cannot trust anything nice said on the Internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:13PM
Or there's websites with only fake reviews. Like Angie's List, totally fake reviews.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:26PM
> I have long learned I cannot trust anything nice said on the Internet.
Quite a few years ago Amazon effed up and revealed the true names of reviewers for a day or so. Turned out that lots of authors were leaving 1-star reviews for competing books. Since then, Amazon has started rejecting any book reviews by known authors, positive or negative. But that doesn't apply to other merchandise.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:30PM
Quite a few years ago Amazon effed up and revealed the true names of reviewers for a day or so. Turned out that lots of authors were leaving 1-star reviews for competing books.
I'm not sure if it was a bad thing :)
But yes you do bring up a good point. If they can't make themselves look good, they can always make the competition look bad. I know that my system is only a small hack, soon to be obliterated by fake negative reviews. But for now it works for me. In the future we will have to only go by word of mouth from people we know. Which will mean the death of new products, and death of marketing in general (I HOPE!).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:18PM
. Turned out that lots of authors were leaving 1-star reviews for competing books.
Spawning what later was to be known as the Spamming of the Hugos by the Sad and Rapid Puppies.