User submission

86.1K

Person Reveals How Amazon Sellers Scam People Using False Positive Reviews, Shows How To Avoid It

Amazon is useful but sometimes difficult to navigate – there is just too much choice and you can spend hours agonizing over the best product for your needs. That’s where product reviews come in. It can be tempting to trust the general public and go for whatever has the best Amazon reviews because hundreds of satisfied customers can’t be wrong, can they?

Well, it turns out that it’s not as simple as that. Predictably, some unscrupulous sellers have found a way around the system, and are artificially pushing up the overall review score of their products to levels much higher than they deserve.

“So yesterday I was looking to restock on some iPhone cables. As you can see, these look like a great deal! 6 of them for $16 (price obscured in the screenshot, but that’s what it is), and an average rating of 4.7 stars! Score! Out of sheer habit, I scrolled down to the reviews…”

Person Reveals How Amazon Sellers Scam People Using False Positive Reviews, Shows How To Avoid It

“Wait, what? Clearly, these reviews are for the Kung Fu Panda movie and not for the iPhone charging cables. Growing suspicious, I sorted by “Most recent” and saw reviews about the actual charging cables… they weren’t good.”

Person Reveals How Amazon Sellers Scam People Using False Positive Reviews, Shows How To Avoid It

“It turns out that out of the 857 listings, only 11 were for the charging cables, and the average of those was 2.5 stars. Being the ‘picky customer’ that I am, I contacted Amazon support and told them about the fake reviews. After a day, I got the following response:”

Person Reveals How Amazon Sellers Scam People Using False Positive Reviews, Shows How To Avoid It

“All good, right? Well here’s the plot twist: All of the screenshots in this post were taken AFTER I received the above email. In fact, the listing full of fake Amazon reviews is probably still up as you’re reading this: https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Certified-Braided-Charging-Compatible/dp/B07R9LJ9RY What have I learned?

1. Amazon sellers can ‘re-purpose’ a listing with lots of good reviews to sell cheap junk to unsuspecting customers.

2. If you want to report a listing, apparently you can write to listings-report(at)amazon․com

3. But, EVEN AFTER REPORTING the issue to Amazon, the “appropriate action” for these Internet scams they take is…. to do nothing?

4. From this day forward I will now always sort by “Most Recent” to try and protect myself against this fraud.

Good to know, right? It always pays to look a little deeper when spending your hard-earned money, to ensure that sellers truly deserve it.

Here’s what people had to say about the scam

Person Reveals How Amazon Sellers Scam People Using False Positive Reviews, Shows How To Avoid It

The reviews have since been updated by Amazon

Person Reveals How Amazon Sellers Scam People Using False Positive Reviews, Shows How To Avoid It

What do you think? Do you always run Amazon reviews checker before buying? Do you put a lot of trust in them? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!

86Kviews

This lazy panda forgot to write something about itself.

Read less »

This lazy panda forgot to write something about itself.

Read less »

James is a Bored Panda reporter who graduated with a BA in Peace And Conflict Studies and an MA in African Affairs. Before Bored Panda, he was an English teacher and also travelled a lot, doing odd jobs from beer-slinging to brickie's labourer and freelance journalism along the way. James loves covering stories about social and environmental issues and prefers to highlight the positive things that unite us, rather than petty internet squabbles about fictional characters. James is the grumpy, contradictory one who thinks that Bored Panda, due to its large audience, has a social responsibility to inspire and inform its readers with interesting issues and entertaining, well-researched stories. Let's do our bit to make our little corner of the internet a smarter, more truthful and less angry place!

Read less »

What do you think ?

POST

SykesDaMan 5 years ago

I enjoyed reading this article and all the art was creative. I would love to see more in the future! Thanks a lot BP! :D

48points

SykesDaMan 5 years ago

For those who don't get the joke : It's a "re-purposed" comment.

19points

Load More Replies...

Joe Blowe 5 years ago

You can use the website fakespot.com to verify the authenticity of the reviews. There is also reviewmeta.com You insert the product link and it will tell you the rating of the item and how many reviews are authentic, how many are fake and how many have been removed

29points

Mewton’s Third Paw 5 years ago

Wow, great tip!

5points

Load More Replies...

Transat 5 years ago

excellent site, just tested it on my latest purchase

3points

Adam T S 5 years ago

I use fakespot all the time, especially with a generic product has hundreds of 5-star reviews. If the product seems too good to be true, it usually is, or we probably would have heard about it by now.

3points