Pulling the plug on the lucrative business of fake product reviews

A few years ago, I was looking online for a pair of bluetooth headphones. I didn’t want anything pricey but I also didn’t want a substandard pair that sounded like tin cans.

Inevitably, Amazon came up on a product search. But when I clicked to view their offerings, a much cheaper set popped up in their listings, one with far more four and five-star reviews than the branded sets, praising excellent sound at a major savings.

I was persuaded – so many good reviews! They arrived. Before long, they stopped working. At the price, I couldn’t be bothered to return them and stuck them in a junk drawer, where they’ve merged with the tangled cords of other electronic detritus.

I thought their failure was my bad luck. Only much later I realised that the bulk of the reviews were more than likely fakes, the product of paid-review farms or people who got the product for free in exchange for 5-star plaudits.

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Back then, I’d thought fakes were a minor problem and easily spotted. But fake reviews are big business, and they game online platforms and search sites with evasive sophistication. Yet buyers rely heavily on reviews. In surveys, consistently large majorities – over 70 per cent – say online reviews influence purchases.

Last summer, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said online reviews would influence $3.8 trillion of global ecommerce spend in 2021, with fake reviews having a direct impact on $152 billion in global online spending (including $5 billion in the UK), based on the modest assumption that just 4 per cent of online reviews are fakes.

Which? went undercover to expose how 18 private Facebook UK groups... enabled sellers to solicit reviews in exchange for free products

Fake reviews inundate us “because the return on investment of soliciting fake reviews make them highly profitable”, says the WEF. Extra stars translate into increased bookings and purchases, and, according to one Harvard study, shove an item higher in online searches for weeks, even if the review is swiftly removed.

Reviews done for pay, or for a free or discounted product or service, or to get you to buy from a review website with a link that provides a cash kickback to the “reviewer” from your purchase – there are myriad ways to exploit the person trying to find a good buy.

The UK consumer magazine Which? has conducted several investigations into the fake review trade for Amazon products, most recently running a story that noted how rampant, and orchestrated, the problem remains.

Which? went undercover to expose how 18 private Facebook UK groups with more than 200,000 members enabled sellers to solicit reviews in exchange for free products.

"Group agents acted on behalf of Amazon Marketplace sellers, often based in China, India and Pakistan, posting photos of products that they said they needed reviews for, often using easily decipherable cryptic messages, such as 'Ne3d R3vi3w Full Fr33 product', presumably to avoid detection," the story notes.

Last year, an Amazon data breach revealed up to 200,000 people involved in exchanges between vendors and reviewers to post concocted reviews

The investigation found that reviewers choose a product, buy it and are “told they will only be reimbursed once they’ve written a glowing five-star review on Amazon, usually including photos and a video of the product”.

One of the products Which? bought was a webcam with the lucrative and coveted “Amazon’s Choice” designation. Another was magnetic eyelashes that didn’t work. Nonetheless, 92 per cent of reviews on Amazon gave them a gushing five stars.

Both platforms say they work to eliminate this review system, but struggle to identify questionable activity. Last year, an Amazon data breach revealed up to 200,000 people involved in exchanges between vendors and reviewers to post concocted reviews.

Business reviews also can be unreliable. Reviews firm TrustPilot announced last week that it will start taking legal action against what it termed the “small number” of companies that solicit or utilise fake reviews. Many consumer activists might respond with a tart “about time”.

TrustPilot has been the subject of several media investigations, including one in 2019 by the BBC’s Watchdog programme, accused of not taking action against a burgeoning number of fake reviews, sometimes created in attempts by businesses to bury bad reviews. This system too appears easily gamed.

The European Commission has just published a review that found enormous problems with fake reviews across the EU. After a 2020 market review found that over 70 per cent of consumers said they relied on online reviews for purchases, the commission and the Consumer Protection Co-operation Network – a network of authorities responsible for EU consumer protection laws – examined 223 websites across the EU, Norway and Iceland. The review said "almost two-thirds of online shops, marketplaces, booking websites, search engines and comparison service sites triggered doubts about the reliability of the reviews".

The commission concluded that 55 per cent of the sites violated the EU’s unfair commerce practices directive.

Soon, these bad practices will have consequences. From May 28th, new legislation prohibits selling, buying or submitting false consumer reviews to promote products. The caveat is that enforcement lies with member states, but it’s an important start in tackling a problem that leaves consumers unable to have confidence in a basic aid to online buying.