He said Facebook had previously deleted a similar group he ran that had almost 200,000 members at the time. One common technique is for a seller to offer free or discounted products in exchange for positive reviews. In reality, however, it is difficult to do so.” Gasser sees no problem in matching up sellers who need reviews with reviewers who want discounts, describing it, in an email, as a “a win-win situation.” Gasser said the only problem with what his group is facilitating is “if the reviews do not represent the true opinion of the reviewer. This sort of undisclosed incentivized reviewing was banned from Amazon in 2016 but is still widely facilitated by groups on Facebook with names like “ Amazon Review Club” and “ Amazon Free Products.”ĭavid Gasser runs the Amazon Review Club group, which currently has 1,500 members. A 2020 survey of 2,000 Amazon shoppers conducted by e-commerce strategy firm Tinuiti found that the number of reviews was the most important factor for shoppers, after price and shipping, when making a purchase.īecause reviews are so important, there’s a cottage industry to quickly get those first reviews written for a new product listing. Reviews are the oil that keeps the gears of the Amazon machine turning. Recognizing shady product reviews isn’t always possible, but understanding how Amazon works helps-so here’s a little primer on Amazon’s ecosystem and some tips for spotting those fakes. Review hijacking is just one of many ways unscrupulous sellers get around Amazon’s safeguards in order to make their products look trustworthy. We have robust proactive and reactive systems in place to protect our store and our customers.” Graham also noted that the company uses a combination of machine learning tools and human investigators to analyze millions of reviews per week, with a goal of stopping fake reviews before they are published. “In 2019, we invested over $500 million and have more than 8,000 employees protecting our store from fraud and abuse. In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Patrick Graham said customer trust is a top priority. An investigation by The Markup found nearly 100 banned items that had slipped past Amazon security, revealing flaws in how Amazon polices its platform for fraud and abuse. There have been reports of everything from counterfeit goods to recalled products to expired food found for sale on the platform. Trust is key for online marketplaces, but recently Amazon, which has generally enjoyed a high level of trust, suffered a number of conspicuous stumbles. Unscrupulous sellers have found a number of ways to take existing reviews and attach them to a new, unrelated product, betting that most shoppers will just give the page a glance and not notice that the five stars and glowing text are actually for a taco holder instead of a phone adapter.īecause it turns out moving fast and breaking things broke some super important things. Jones had likely stumbled across something called “review hijacking”-a way that sellers can effectively steal reviews from older products in order to catapult their listing to the top of search results. “You do sometimes see reviews for slightly different items appear on a listing, but this was definitely a new one for me.” “The taco holder got great reviews, but there wasn’t much for my phone adapter,” said Jones by email. She was reading through the reviews for one she was considering buying, when suddenly she started noticing mentions of what a great taco holder the product was. Rebecca Jones, of London, recently pulled up .uk to search for a phone adapter.
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