Yes, I'm back. Here are some tips regarding a topic I've been concerned about for quite a while now:
Don’t Let Fake Reviews Trick You
There used to be a time
when product reviews and product comparison sites served a really useful
purpose in helping us make decisions about what to buy. Unfortunately, it’s no
longer that simple. More and more fake reviews are appearing on the Internet,
making it tough for consumers to tell genuine opinions from fake and paid-for
reviews.
Two recent examples:
When former presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton published a biographical account of her campaign,
almost overnight there were 500 reviews of the book on Amazon, half of them
praising it and the other half criticizing it.
To be genuine would have required these so-called reviewers to read the
book overnight and then compose their review. Clearly, these writers had a political
axe to grind, one way or the other. Informed opinion went out the window!
In a quite different
field and for totally different commercial reasons, a company that sold
trampolines was recently caught out using what the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) called “misleading review websites and deceptive endorsements.”
The firm claimed its
product had been named Trampoline of the Year by “Trampoline Safety of
America.” This endorsement came complete with a logo for this supposed safety
organization and a link to a statement that they weren’t paid for product
reviews. Another supposed organization —
the Bureau of Trampoline Review, which claimed to be an independent research
outfit — also named products from the same company as being among the best. The only problem: the trampoline seller was
behind both organizations. They were also allegedly responsible for supportive
blog comments from someone calling themselves “Trampoline Mom.”
“Favorable buzz can give
a product a bounce, but advertisers can take a legal tumble by creating fake
review sites, using misleading third-party endorsements or seals, or touting
their products on independent sites without disclosing that the recommendation
came from someone connected to the company,” the FTC warned. But this is more than a problem about
trampoline safety or politically motivated book reviews.
The fact is individuals
and organizations have become adept at misleading the public using fake or
dubious reviews or comparisons. Healthy
skepticism is the key to avoiding this pitfall.
Here are 7 actions you can
take.
1. When reading star-scoring review sites like Amazon and other
retailers, don’t take much notice if there are only a couple of reviews. Even
if they’re genuine, they fail to give you a balanced view of the product you’re
considering.
2. When there are plenty of reviews, focus your attention on the
mid-range scores (3 stars in Amazon’s case). Fake reviewers tend to score 5 or
1, depending on their viewpoint, whereas 3-star scorers usually don’t have an
axe to grind.
3. If you’re searching for the “best” of a particular product,
especially software, using that particular word — say “best photo editing
software” — be extremely cautious. You
can generally trust comparisons by truly independent sources such as well-known
publications — say a camera magazine in the example we’ve just given. But comparison sites that label themselves as
“best” this or that often are either paid to rate certain products highly or
they get paid a commission for sales they generate.
4. Once you have a particular product brand or two in mind, look
for reviews from several different sources. Again, select those that come from
respected publications or well-known independent review sites.
5. Don’t be taken in by logos and apparent endorsements. It’s easy
and perfectly legitimate to set up an organization with an independent-sounding
name. In the trampoline case mentioned,
the two organizations they apparently invented actually had their own websites
that seemed to imply they were genuine. Where
the trampoline firm fell down was in not disclosing their relationship with the
sites and making misleading claims about their membership and integrity. Logos mean little these days and many
scammers sprinkle them liberally on their websites.
6. There are several websites that actually check on and publicize
fake reviews. Check them out.
We can’t vouch for its accuracy but these include Fakespot.com, which claims to have
analyzed more than 700 million Amazon reviews and 20,000 TripAdvisor reviews,
among others.
It only works for a few
big sites, like Amazon and Yelp, but you simply paste in the address line of
the product from your browser, click “Analyze” and wait for a few seconds.
In the case of the
Clinton book, which had more than 1,400 Amazon reviews at the time of writing,
the analysis returned a result of 96.1% low quality reviews. By comparison, we checked out a random brand
of trampoline with 878 reviews and the Fakespot result was 80% high quality
reviews.
7. Finally, if you are buying on the basis of reviews you’ve read,
check out the returns policy of the retailer. If they let you return the
product within a reasonable period, say 30 days, no questions asked, then you
might be able to take a chance, fake review or not.
Source: scambusters.org #778
