Is It Legal to Require a 5 Star Review I Exchange for Free Product
"Isn't this illegal?" I establish myself typing one Tuesday nighttime at ane:xv AM.
I was chatting with Lien Xi, an Amazon seller from Guangzhou, Communist china, I'd met several minutes before in a private Facebook group. She'd courted me with an offer: If I gave her phone charger a v-star review, she would refund the purchase via PayPal and send me a $10 "commission."
"No," she responded, with a smiley confront emoji. "Yous volition love."
I looked up her product on Amazon: It was ane of the highest-ranked iPhone chargers, touting iii,971 5-star reviews and a trusted "Amazon'south Choice" label.
How did this happen?
This question sent me hurtling through Amazon's massive fake-review economy — a journey that included private Facebook bazaars, thousands of fraudulent sellers from Tianjin to Tennessee, and an encounter with a morally righteous bodybuilder who is trying to deadlift a broken system.
Trust in the stars
At a time when faith in our government, media, and even the very foundations of American democracy are at an all-fourth dimension depression, 65% of us trust online reviews.
Some 82% of American adults check production reviews before making a purchase — merely the fashion we evaluate these reviews and determine the trustworthiness of a product is alarmingly simplistic: Research shows that nosotros're more swayed by a simple star rating than what reviewers actually write.
With e-commerce, we can't run into products in person before we buy them. Our leading indicator of quality — and our guiding lite of trust — are the stars.
Amazon understands this and capitalizes on it accordingly.
"The way Amazon presents reviews to you is a form of hypnosis," says Saoud Khalifah, who runs the simulated review detection site, Fakespot. "They put a glowing 5-star review correct in your face. They program you to trust these stars."
And there are a lot of stars in the Bezos milky way: Co-ordinate to ane e-commerce metrics house, Amazon hosts ane.8m vendors and sellers who hawk nearly 600m items that generate ~9.6m new production reviews every month.
Amazon likes to retrieve of its marketplace equally a merchant meritocracy where the best products go the best reviews by virtue of quality and honest consumer feedback.
But the vast size of the platform, coupled with a ferocious competition amid sellers to get higher product rankings, has spawned a problem: A proliferation of faux reviews.
Fake reviews have been an issue for Amazon since its inception, just the problem appears to take intensified in 2015, when Amazon.com began to court Chinese sellers.
The decision has led to a flood of new products — a 33% increment, by some accounts — sold by hundreds of thousands of new sellers. Rooted in manufacturing hubs like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, they use Amazon's fulfillment program, FBA, to send large shipments of electronic goods directly to Amazon warehouses in the United states of america.
Fahim Naim, an ex-Amazon manager who now runs an e-commerce consulting business firm, says that many private characterization products were already coming directly from Prc; the move, he posits, was made to directly "empower [Chinese sellers] and eliminate middlemen and then that pricing could be even sharper."
But the ensuing rush to the market has spawned thousands of indistinguishable goods (chargers, cables, batteries, etc.). And it has prompted sellers to game the system.
"It's a lot harder to sell on Amazon than it was ii or 3 years ago," adds Naim. "A lot of sellers are trying to observe shortcuts."
Steve Lee, a Los Angeles-based vendor, is among them: "You lot have to play the game to sell at present," he says. "And that game is cheating and breaking the law."
The game
Ane solar day in 2015, a bodybuilding enthusiast named Tommy Noonan was perusing testosterone boosters on Amazon and noticed something strange.
"This production had 580 reviews and every single one was 5-stars," he recalls. "People would write things similar, 'I haven't tried this product…BUT,' and then leave a glowing review."
Noonan was no newb to fake reviews: Years before, afterwards paying $60 for a conditioning supplement that gave him the runs, he'd founded supplementreviews.com, a site that became a hub for non-biased sports diet ratings.
The Amazon testosterone sent him down a rabbit hole; he began to observe phony-looking reviews on nearly every product he saw. So, he taught himself how to lawmaking and built a tool (based on 12 tests, explained here) that could be used to gauge the authenticity of whatever Amazon product'southward reviews.
To date, his site, ReviewMeta, has analyzed 203 million Amazon reviews and found 11.three% (22.8m) of them to be untrustworthy. (A like site, Fakespot, places this effigy at around thirty%).
Amazon has stated that "less than 1%" of its reviews are ingenuine, and has cautioned against taking these sites' information at confront value.
Noonan is the first to acknowledge that this sample and his website are non definitive, but recent tests he'due south run point to an undeniable surge in fraudulent review behavior.
A recent ReviewMeta analysis determined that in March of 2019 lonely, Amazon was hit with a flurry of more than 2 million unverified reviews (that is, reviews that can't be confirmed every bit purchases made through Amazon) — 99.6% of which were 5 stars.
"They're almost all for these off-make, cheap electronic products: Telephone chargers, headphones, cables," says Noonan. "Generic things that are super cheap to manufacture, have good margins, and become a ton of searches."
Though the inner workings of Amazon's product-ranking algorithm are unknown, items with 5-star ratings and lots of reviews tend to float to the top.
In a spot check run prior to the publishing of this article, I confirmed Noonan'due south findings: x of the 22 beginning-page results on Amazon for "iPhone charger" were products with thousands of v-star reviews, all unverified and posted within a few days of each other.
Under federal police, the practice of exchanging gratuitous products or payments for favorable reviews without disclosure (a practice called incentivized reviews) is illegal.
"Endorsements are required to be truthful," Mary Engel, Associate Director of the Federal Trade Committee's Segmentation of Advertising Practices, told me. "If a reviewer has received something of value in commutation for their stance, they need to conspicuously disclose that in the review."
Amazon belatedly banned incentivized reviews on its platform in 2016, as part of a well-intentioned effort to maintain trust. Earlier this yr, the FTC also made headlines by prosecuting a first-of-its-kind example challenging undisclosed paid product reviews.
But Amazon's movement has sparked a counter-attack: Sellers have continued to rig reviews, but exercise then more furtively, resulting in even less transparency for prospective shoppers.
They've migrated to secretive enclaves, where they entice reviewers with a complimentary assortment of slipshod objects and a couple of bucks.
That's where my journey began.
The fake review economy
The fake Amazon review economy is a thriving market place, ripe with hush-hush forums, "How To Game The Rankings!" tutorials, and websites with names similar (at present-defunct) "amazonverifiedreviews.com."
But the favored hunting grounds for sellers on the prowl is Amazon's young man tech behemoth, Facebook.
In a contempo two-calendar week period, I identified more than 150 private Facebook groups where sellers openly exchange free products (and, in many cases, commissions) for v-star reviews, sans disclosures.
A sampling of 20 groups I analyzed [which I've posted publicly here] collectively have more than 200,000 members. These groups seem to be in the midst of an online Gold Rush: Most are less than a yr onetime, and in the past thirty days have attracted more than 50,000 new users.
Honesty and "no scamming" are touted every bit grouping rules — but a look under the hood reveals a potpourri of foul play.
I gained access to 4 of these groups, posing as an interested reviewer.
Within minutes, I was barraged with a flurry of individual messages from vendors hawking a tour de force of tacky capitalism: Water flossers, supplements, dog grooming tools, fanny packs, screen protectors, pillows, seat belt cushions, light-upwards headphones, watches, torso hair removers, and an encyclopedic array of cell telephone cables.
Here's how the process mostly works:
- A seller posts an item to the word board with a message like, "Complimentary. refund + $v committee for 5 STAR. PM for details."
- An interested buyer sends the seller a private message.
- The seller directs the buyer to the product on Amazon using keywords.
- The buyer purchases the product and leaves a five-star review.
- The seller sends the buyer a refund via PayPal, plus a commission (usually in the form of a $v-10 souvenir bill of fare).
"U want free?" 1 seller messaged me one forenoon. "Which 1 u want?" The seller, listed under the name Lee Ann, threw open up his digital trenchcoat and exposed me to a vast selection of cycling wear. "Men or women?"
"Men," I wrote.
"Need review, refund later review," he responded. "x dollars commission."
He instructed me to search for the keywords "cycling shorts men" on the Amazon mobile app, gave me the commencement ii letters of the make name (XG), and said it was the 80th effect. On the tertiary page, I constitute the shorts: 32 5-star reviews — all unverified.
"Must be five-star review, no disclosure" he instructed. I asked if he had whatsoever tips on how to craft my prose. "More than messages and put photo of y'all wearing the shorts."
These sellers promise that taking a loss in the brusque-term will pay off once their products have a sizeable number of reviews and a favorable position in Amazon's rankings.
"It'due south part of a promotion…it's a long-term process," Kash Corp, a seller of hot pink women's leggings, told me. The visitor offered me a $half-dozen committee to mail a pre-written review. Information technology didn't thing, they added, that I'm a man.
When confronted in individual messages, sellers openly admitted that what they are doing is mendacious and illegal, just position it equally a necessary evil.
"Hear me out," writes a seller named Mikaela. "We are doing this [to] assistance our item brand sales. We are competing with thousands of screen protectors out there."
The bulk of sellers' personal profiles (though likely burner or alias accounts) place them in industrial Chinese cities, at the epicenter of Amazon's recent listings growth. The goods they sell are fungible: At i point, I was in communication with iv sellers all offering indistinguishable cables, downwards to the pattern on the nylon braiding.
But buyers seem eager to partake in these transactions.
"It's prissy to try out costless things, that'south how I look at it," said Zach Miller, a former Piggly Wiggly cashier (and frequent 5-star dispenser) from Elm, Texas.
Virtually reviewers stick to 3 or fewer positive reviews per week to avert suspicion from Amazon. By exercising circumspection, some users have been able to make a consistent side income from the commissions.
"Make sure your reviews don't sound overly fake and make sure you review other items likewise, not just from Chinese sellers," cautioned Araceli Morales, who has left 112 5-star reviews for Amazon sellers through Facebook listings. "Never write 'dearest.'"
One stay-calm mom from Kentucky told me she makes $200-300 per month leaving positive reviews for things like sleep masks, low-cal bulbs, and AV cables.
"Do yous actually like the products?" I asked.
"I don't know," she wrote. "I never employ them."
The charger from hell
Late one Tuesday night, I found myself backroom dealing with Lien Xi, an apparent power-seller from Guangzhou, China.
Her telephone charger, she claimed, was of the "highest quality" — and it could be mine for gratis. I'd pay $13.99 on Amazon for the iii-pack bundle and send her a copy of the confirmation; she'd refund me, then give me another $x after the review.
On Amazon, the product was the #3 event for "iPhone Charger", boasting well-nigh 4,000 5-star reviews. It had been knighted with an "Amazon's Selection" characterization and qualified for Prime shipping.
I bought it.
Two days later, a blue packet arrived in the mail. The cables were a tangled bouquet of polyethylene and plasticisers. I unsheathed one, popped it into my telephone, and — snap!
The second cable fared no better: Plugged in, it sent my phone into a spastic freakout and fabricated information technology hot to the touch (likely, I later found out, a voltage irregularity that can permanently harm electronic devices).
I was hesitant to see what the tertiary cable had in store, but for the sake of scientific discipline I popped it in. Miraculously, it appeared to role.
It's sad to imagine how many shoppers spotted this $13.99 charger pack on Amazon's kickoff-page results and fell for the thousands of positive reviews and the algorithmically-generated endorsement from a platform that people trust more than religion.
And it's hard to reason how such a product, peddled by a canaille troupe of e-commerce scammers, managed to game one of the globe's premier technology companies.
Some accept suggested that Amazon, a for-profit company, has an incentive to permit this beliefs: The cutting it takes from sellers and vendors varies, but e-commerce experts say the median is around 15% — and studies accept shown that big volumes of reviews translate to more sales.
"They're going to highlight items with lots of good reviews that push button sales and go them a commission," says Fakespot'south Khalifa. "Even if some of the reviews are fake."
In response to our investigation, a Facebook spokesperson said that groups promoting fake Amazon reviews violate their policies and are frequently taken downwards. [As of publication, the 20 groups we identified were however active.]
Amazon did non respond to our request for comment. Only days after The Hustle sent emails to the company, thousands of the fraudulent reviews were taken off the site.
Amongst them were the 3,971 5-star reviews for the charger I purchased. The product now has 11 reviews and holds a rating of 2.5 stars.
To its credit, Amazon has sued more than than ane,000 third-political party imitation review sites to date and is quick to act when links to fraudulent products come to light. But every bit Noonan puts information technology, "Their way of handling it is reactive, not proagile."
"Amazon is a $900B visitor with thousands of brilliant engineers," he says. "I majored in construction direction. It seems similar they should be able to figure this i out."
UPDATE: An Amazon spokesperson reached out with the following annotate: "Amazon invests pregnant resource to protect the integrity of reviews in our shop because nosotros know customers value the insights and experiences shared by boyfriend shoppers. Even one inauthentic review is one besides many… Our team investigates doubtable reviews, works with social media sites to stop inauthentic reviews at the source, pursues legal action to stop offenders from planning reviews abuse, and feeds new information into our automated systems so it continues to better and become more than effective in catching abuse." The spokesperson likewise added that Amazon calculates a product'due south star ratings based on a machine-learned model that takes into account factors including the age of a rating, whether the ratings are from verified purchasers, and other factors that establish reviewer authenticity.
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Source: https://thehustle.co/amazon-fake-reviews/
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