WHETHER it’s a copycat SKIMS bodysuit for £15 or a water bottle for £4, Amazon is the go-to site for thousands of Brits.
The retailer is the ultimate one-stop shop for pretty much everything, with some items arriving on your doorstep in just eight hours.
Founded in a garage in Washington in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who is now the third wealthiest person in the world, the site is active in more than 50 countries with an eye-watering 9.7 million merchants globally.
It has 310 million users and the site ships close to 1.6 million packages each day – that’s about 20 orders per second.
And many of us won’t part with our cash until we’ve read the product reviews.
Reviews which we believe are genuine.
But all isn’t what it might seem on the lucrative e-commerce platform.
In an attempt to boost sales and their profits, some sellers are actually PAYING customers in return for five-star reviews.
A recent study by Scams Info discovered six in ten products on the site had over 40 per cent reviews, which were in fact misleading or completely fake.
What’s more, a 2023 survey by Which revealed that 10 per cent of people who bought from the site between August 2022 and July 2023 had received a note or card in the packaging offering an incentive if they left an impressive review.
Some of the ploys are startling and include customers being offered incentives such as full refunds, gift cards and even cash which is transferred directly to their banks.
Amazon says it deleted an astonishing 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2022 alone.
But it seems plenty are still falling through the net.
In addition to reportedly putting notes inside packages inviting customers to falsify their reviews, they’re also targeted through Facebook.
Money to make ends meet
Cheryl* claims this happened to her after being lured in during summer 2020 via a “spammy message” on Facebook Messenger.
“I had a few people contact me during the pandemic, which is when I started doing it,” she claims.
The unemployed 27 year old saw it as a good way to earn some extra money as the cost of living started to rise.
“The sellers send you about 30 photos of products to pick from and all in, I did 19 reviews over about 18 months,” she claims.
Among the products Cheryl gave five-star reviews to were a sink strainer and LED fairy lights – with some products being worth up to £19.
“I dealt with quite a few different sellers; I think once you say yes to one, word spreads and more people message,” she adds.
“For a while, it was constant.
“They were pretty clearly fake accounts and sometimes, the different accounts were even Facebook friends with each other.
“Often, the sellers would overlap and send me batches of the same products – so I’d have to tell them I’d already seen that stuff.”
According to Cheryl, Facebook would sometimes shut down accounts while she was talking to them, but they’d reappear shortly after under a different guise.
Once she’d posted a review, she’d sent the seller a screenshot and they’d process the refund straight away.
What is Review Incentivisation?
- Sellers on Amazon offer rewards or incentives to buyers in an attempt to manipulate reviews and star ratings
- This helps their products rank higher when shoppers search for them
- Reimbursement typically comes in the form of a refund or an Amazon gift card, which can even surpass the value of the original product
- However, sellers will typically only ‘reward’ reviewers in exchange for a four or five-star review
Cheryl claims that her refunds would typically come through PayPal but occasionally via Amazon gift card.
Amazon detected what she was doing and her account was eventually banned from posting reviews due to “suspicious activity”.
But by then she’d earned hundreds.
“They could have easily banned my entire account and made me lose what I’d paid for a Prime subscription for the year,” she says. “But they didn’t – and I was a bit shocked by that.
“They weren’t taking as hard a line against it as I thought they would.”
It was a risk worth taking
Another woman, Alice* claims she was gifted an ice bath worth around £100 in exchange for a favourable review in August last year – but says the offer fell in her lap “really randomly”.
“I was on Facebook Marketplace looking for ice baths and one came up for £30 that was advertised as ‘like new’,” she says.
“I messaged the girl and she told me it wasn’t second-hand, but that she had just started a business and was trying to get reviews on Amazon to get it pushed up to the top of the search list.”
Alice claims the seller offered her to keep the ice bath for free if she left a five-star review on Amazon.
She says it was “worth the gamble” because she planned to buy one anyway.
“She asked me to let her know if I had any friends who wanted to do it,” Alice adds. “It was a genuine profile – not a fake one.
“Her pictures were genuine and she was chatting away to me like we were friends.
“But I have had messages from fake profiles offering me freebies for reviews – I’ve never trusted them.
“With this one, I did take a bit of gamble. But I wanted an ice bath anyway and was already looking at spending £100 on one so I thought I’d take the risk.
I probably wrote a slightly longer and more in-depth one than I would normally, but that’s because I knew I was getting the item for free
Alice
“She had really good contact with me all the way through. She seemed really genuine.”
Alice insists that had the ice bath been “rubbish”, she would have sent it back, rather than falsifying a review just to receive the incentive.
But she adds: “I probably wrote a slightly longer and more in-depth one than I would normally, but that’s because I knew I was getting the item for free.”
Alice says she would do the same again if the item was something she wanted already.
What is Amazon doing to crackdown?
Amazon bosses say they are “aggressively fighting fake review brokers”.
As of the end of July 2023, the company had taken legal action against 120 fraudsters across the US, China and Europe.
“Customers rely on product reviews to make informed purchase decisions,” says David Montague, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Risk.
“And these fraudsters need to be held accountable for intentionally deceiving Amazon customers, harming our selling partners and abusing our store.
“These latest lawsuits represent our zero-tolerance policy for fake reviews and illicit activity.
“We will continue pursuing fake review brokers in order to maintain a trustworthy shopping experience.”
These fraudsters need to be held accountable for intentionally deceiving Amazon customers, harming our selling partners and abusing our store
David Montague, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Risk
An Amazon spokesperson told Fabulous that the company has “zero tolerance” towards sellers’ ingenuity.
“We have robust and long-standing policies that prohibit review abuse, and we suspend, ban, and take legal action against those who violate these policies,” they said.
“We consistently monitor and enforce our policies so customers can shop in our store with confidence.
“More than 99% of products viewed in our stores contain only authentic reviews.
“We invest significant resources to proactively stop fake reviews, and are constantly evaluating emerging technologies and relentlessly innovating to stay ahead of bad actors as they devise new tools and techniques to evade detection and harm customers.
“We have teams dedicated to uncovering and investigating fake review brokers.
“Customers can report concerns about fake reviews, or whether a review is for a different product using the ‘Report Incorrect Product Information’ on the product page.
“Customers who have received direct contact from sellers offering compensation of any kind can send this evidence to us.
“If someone offers you compensation to create, edit, or remove a review mail us at report-review-compensation@amazon.co.uk.
“Please include the product name and a photo or screenshot of the compensation offer.”
A Meta spokesperson said: “Fraudulent and deceptive activity is not allowed on our platforms, including offering or trading fake reviews. We’ve removed the groups shared with us for violating our policies. While no enforcement is perfect, we continue to invest in new technologies and methods to protect our users from this kind of content.”
*names have been changed