Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2021. It describes the situation in late 2021, and Amazon’s policies, enforcement and legal action on fake reviews have changed since. Posting paid or fake reviews breaks Amazon’s rules and is unlawful in many markets, including under the US Federal Trade Commission’s 2024 rule on fake reviews. The article describes how the scheme worked; it is not a recommendation.
A common and sensible habit for any shopper is to read customer reviews before buying, to make sure the product does what it promises.
Online reviews of products and services promised to be an impartial, organic way of checking a product before buying it. Until the system began to be corrupted by the buying of fake reviews, a problem that has already become an epidemic for the giant Amazon, one it needs to solve along with a few others.
Few shoppers would risk buying a product rated just 2.5 stars out of 5. We’d automatically assume it doesn’t live up to users’ expectations.
In the same way, if there are no reviews for the product we want to buy, we’d look at it with suspicion, and a high percentage of shoppers would opt for a similar product that already has reviews. And if those reviews are 5 stars, so much the better for making the decision to buy.
Far too many cognitive biases interfere in purchasing decisions. Add the need to beat the neural networks and algorithms of shopping platforms, and companies have to look for every possible technique to appear at the top when someone searches for their products.
That has led some companies to resort to buying fake reviews in order to sell their product. The problem is that, in many cases, it’s not only the algorithm that gets fooled, but the shoppers themselves.
The problem of fake reviews on Amazon
If you’ve ever ordered a 4.8-star product with hundreds of positive reviews and hardly any negative ones, only to find when it arrived that it was complete junk, you’ve been a victim of fake reviews. And with your purchase, you helped the product climb the rankings and so increase its sales even further.
How do people make money from fake Amazon reviews?
There are websites and Facebook groups that are constantly looking for people to take part in fake reviews. In other cases, they directly contact users who have left reviews on other Amazon products.
We recently spoke to someone who has been earning extra income from fake reviews for years. The way it works is simple.
This person contacts, or is contacted by, the company in question. They’re asked to buy the product on Amazon, leave a positive comment and give it a 5-star rating.
Once that’s done, they send an email with a screenshot of, or a link to, their Amazon review.
After checking it, the company refunds the amount they paid for the product via PayPal, and the reviewer keeps the product.
The way to make money from this is to then resell the products on Wallapop or other second-hand marketplaces.
In other cases, for more expensive products, the process is to buy it the same way, write the fake review and send it back through other courier services. Other times they give you up to 90% off the product so that you keep it.
And according to this person, sometimes you not only keep the product but are also paid a certain amount extra for making a well-produced video review.
The benefits of bought reviews for the seller
With this practice, the company buying the fake reviews makes an investment that ends up being more useful than advertising. On the one hand, it secures a rating close to 5 stars for its product, which increases the chances that shoppers will end up buying it.
On the other, it artificially boosts the product’s sales, which pushes it up Amazon’s best-seller rankings and so increases its visibility on the platform. Combined with its “fake 5-star rating”, that makes it even more likely that shoppers will buy it.
Unfortunately, even with a good product and an ethical approach, many companies facing competitors who buy fake reviews to push ahead of other products feel forced to resort to the same practices just to stay in the game.
The damage done by fake reviews
While it’s an opportunity for some people to earn extra money, the truth is that, overall, the damage being done to the platform is terrible. And even more painful for shoppers, who can no longer trust the reviews they find anywhere.
I’ve run into this problem myself: finding a product that looked promising, reading all the wonderful things the reviews said about it, and then, after receiving it and trying it, asking myself, “Who could possibly like this useless junk?”
If a review is very negative, it could be someone paid by the competition, or simply someone with an exaggerated, unreasonable grievance. But it could also be the most genuine and useful opinion of the product.
If, on the other hand, the review is very positive, you’ll be left wondering whether it’s real or paid for.
Either way, discontent among Amazon shoppers is growing to levels never seen before, because fake reviews come on top of another problem.
AliExpress products sold on Amazon at higher prices
The lack of quality checks on products sold on Amazon is also becoming a serious problem for the company, because it breaks with customers’ previous experience of the platform.
Amazon used to stand out for offering higher-quality products than other platforms, and reputable suppliers. Right now we can find many products that are exactly the same as those sold on AliExpress, only at higher prices.
In other words, we can see products selling for €30 on Amazon that are exactly the same item we could buy on AliExpress for just €11.
With the arrival of dropshipping and dropshippers on the platform, Amazon’s problem has only grown, and the lack of quality control is becoming obvious.
Many companies’ business consists of working with a manufacturer in China to sell its products on Amazon at a mark-up: in other words, cheap, low-quality AliExpress goods at the price of a quality Amazon product.
On top of all this, the platform is starting to slip in one of its strengths, with some sellers on the platform causing problems when it comes to returning a product and getting a refund.
These are several problems that are beginning to damage Amazon’s reputation and reliability as a company.
We understand it isn’t easy to police the whole parallel business that has formed inside the platform, but the company will have to do something.
Some time ago it penalised some suppliers after catching them buying fake reviews, but unfortunately the problem has already spread right through the platform.
See also: The real reason most prices end in 99
Featured image: Matthew Paul Argall, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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