Amazon takes legal action against 1,114 fake reviewers

It has probably crossed most of our minds at some point, while reading the reviews on any given product. This has to be a paid review. This person can't be for real. Well, Amazon has decided to do something about it.

Amazon is going after those who post "false, misleading and inauthentic" reviews online.

The online retailer filed a lawsuit against 1,114 fake reviewers who sell fabricated comments to companies seeking to improve the appeal of their products, according to the BBC. The lawsuit was filed Friday in Seattle.

The defendants, termed "John Does," have offered their false review service for as little as $5 on the website Fiverr.com, according to Amazon. The sellers were avoiding getting caught by using different accounts from unique IP addresses.

However, Amazon was able to identify the fake reviewers by conducting an investigation and purchasing some of the fake reviews.

Article

The article goes on to explain the trust issues that fake reviews cause between the consumer and amazon. It seems to me, I read somewhere that amazon has been written about these fake reviews before, by their customers. Maybe enough customers raising a stink, finally got someones attention.

a reply to: Klassified

Pot - Kettle = Black

From what I remember Amazon has their own share of BS reviewing or screwing around with product ratings so long as they are top sellers.

a reply to: boncho
I have no problem believing that. Which is why I was thinking the reason for doing this might have been to save face.

a reply to: Klassified

I've been an Amazon Prime costumer for years, I do reviews and also answer some questions from other costumers. Glad to know Amazon is taking care of that problem.

a reply to: Klassified

Good that they are addressing it, but I wonder if they plan to address other issues as well. In this case, the reselling issue. We recently ordered some books, the rest of the Missing 411 stuff, direct from the main site, and I noticed they have a disclaimer, warning against reselling these. I can understand why, too, since I saw some listed at 2-3 times the list price on Amazon. You'd think they would frown on such a thing.

It is why I exclusively only buy from Amazon warehouses.

30 money back guarantee, return shipping included, no questions.

3rd party vendors do not offer that.

Sellers sometimes include little notes asking buyers to leave positive reviews in exchange for free products. I've gotten a few of these little notes with a few items I've bought. So, even "verified purchase" reviews can be skewed.

How many figured this out anyway?! As mentioned and agree unfortunately it could be something similar to saving face. At least there's an attempt to do something about these. Gotta love the reviews that say "I read the views and it convinced me to buy this great product!"

Generally if a product has a lot of reviews, if you read through most of them you can get a really good idea which ones are fake and which ones are real (the fake ones are pretty obvious).

It becomes tough though when you are looking at something not many people have reviewed. In that case, I'll usually go and do some Google searches to see if anyone on another website has anything to say.