Online shoppers are being conned by dodgy reviews posted in exchange for bribes.
An investigation by consumer watchdog Which? ahead of Amazon’s Prime Day sales bonanza, found best selling products with five star ratings lost their shine as buyers were offered incentives from free gadgets and vouchers to cash for glowing write-ups.
Which? examined the “Best Sellers” sections on Amazon Marketplace ahead of Prime Day on Monday (June 21) and found five out of nine showed “repeated evidence of incentivisation”.
And a quarter of products across those categories - smartwatches, dash cams, bluetooth speakers, in-ear headphones and security cameras - were found to be reviewed by customers who had either been asked to post positive write-ups or remove negative ones.
One online shopper told Which? his two star review of a “poor quality” webcam led to a blitz of emails from the seller asking for it to be removed or altered in return for gift vouchers rising from £10 to £50 over three months.
Some reviewers were blatant over bribes for five star reviews and brazenly posted they had received £15 gift vouchers for top notch write-ups.
One reviewer commenting on an Aswee smartwatch said: “The only reason I have posted five stars is because I want my £15 voucher as compensation.”
Which? said its probe had uncovered many instances of sellers asking buyers to over-hype reviews and said Amazon had failed to “adequately protect shoppers from fake and incentivised review practices.”
It is now calling on regulator the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to crackdown on the tide of misleading online reviews across shopping platforms.
And it is urging shoppers to read all the reviews about a product - not just the five star ones - to get a broader picture and be wary of glowing reports about brands they have never heard of.
Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which? said: “Amazon must, as an absolute minimum, do more to enforce its own policies - especially when evidence of manipulation is hidden in plain sight in its Best Sellers lists.
“The CMA needs to urgently get to the bottom of the problem of misleading and fake reviews and be prepared to take strong action to ensure consumers can trust the reviews that influence billions of pounds of spending every year.”
A CMA spokesperson said: “Fake reviews are a major concern and it’s great that Which? is shining a further spotlight on this issue. A huge amount of shopping is done online, so it’s vital that people can trust the reviews they see and don’t hand over hard-earned cash for items that aren’t as expected.
“We’ve already taken action to clamp down on the trading of fake reviews and have an ongoing investigation into how platforms detect and tackle them once they make their way online. This is a high priority for the CMA and we will be updating on this work shortly.”
Amazon said its team of investigators and sophisticated hi-tech systems checked 10 million reviews a week to weed out untrustworthy or abusive ones before they were even published.
A spokesperson said: “We are relentless in our efforts to protect the integrity of customer reviews. We remove fake reviews and take action against anyone involved in abuse. We have won dozens of injunctions against providers of fake reviews across Europe and we won’t shy away from taking legal action.
“We continue to work to protect the authenticity of customer reviews. We advise customers who doubt the credibility of a review on a product to click the Report Abuse link available below each review. We will then investigate and take necessary measures.”
