Leading Amazon, the American online retailer, sells just about everything (from A to Z, as their logo says). Whether you’re looking for a cheap portable charger, eco-friendly cleaning products, or headphones for your kids, Amazon is probably your first stop when shopping online. And most people rely on user reviews to help them choose between similar products.
The problem is, many of the reviews on Amazon are fake. Unscrupulous or desperate sellers will pay for positive reviews, some offering gift cards or free products in exchange for a 5-star rating. Sometimes, sellers will solicit false negative reviews about competing products. It can be hard to tell for sure what’s real, but knowing the warning signs can help reduce the risk of being scammed. We’ve put together some tips to help you.
Update June 2024: Added more details about the manipulative tactics used by some Amazon sellers, updated existing tips, and removed the unfortunately now defunct review meta.
Fake Amazon reviews
If you shop on Amazon, there’s a good chance you’ll come across fake reviews: A recent UK government report found that 11-15% of reviews for consumer electronics on the e-commerce platform are fake.
The vast majority are positive, extoling the product’s virtues in suspiciously glowing terms. Short, five-star reviews are likely an attempt to game the system by boosting a product’s ranking and visibility. But some are more subtle attempts to convince you to buy. Paid reviewers go into detail, share photos, and even write negative opinions next to many positive ones. For example, giving a product a four out of five star rating can be very persuasive.
Some sellers will post paid negative reviews to criticize competing products. These are usually one-star reviews that focus on a flaw and often mention another product that compares favorably to try to get you to buy it.
Amazon isn’t the only e-commerce site with a fake review problem: Walmart, Target, and many others have similar issues (the Federal Trade Commission has issued warnings to over 700 companies in 2021 and is considering rules to impose stiff civil penalties on violators), so most of the tips here are useful in general, not just for Amazon.
How Amazon sellers get fake reviews
Sellers want to increase sales, and reviews make that possible. Review writers want to earn cash or free products. That’s why a black market for fake reviews has thrived. There are overseas companies that sell positive reviews in bulk, social media groups that assemble teams of review writers, and companies that offer all kinds of incentives to convince genuine buyers to leave favorable reviews. Sellers also offer refunds and other rewards to convince buyers to remove or edit negative reviews. Reply to allThe “The Magic Store” episode of covers some common scenarios and is a fun one to hear about this topic.
How sellers manipulate Amazon reviews
Before we dig deeper into the veracity of individual Amazon reviews, there are some shady seller techniques to watch out for. Some sellers abuse the variations system, which allows them to sell product variations (such as different colors of the same device). Amazon’s variations policy prohibits sellers from adding variations or new versions or models that are “radically different” from the original. Yet it’s easy to find examples of sellers doing exactly that.
Let’s say a merchant has a product listing with 4,000 positive reviews and an average rating of 4.5 stars. The merchant can add products as variations that have much fewer reviews, mostly negative reviews, or no reviews at all, and at first glance appear to have lots of positive reviews. If a merchant finds a product listing with multiple variations, they will have to scroll down and click through to find it. See more reviews and, All formats Use the dropdown to filter reviews for the specific product you’re viewing.
