Amazon is brimming with fake reviews. Products with 5 stars are less and less worthy of 5 stars. Some providers work with a scam, which Amazon is now cracking down on. Is that the end of the coupon trick?
Imagine buying something on Amazon , relying on the good ratings and reviews and in the end the product turns out to be cheap junk. The business of purchased reviews on Amazon is flourishing. Many buyers are now aware that articles are not only given real reviews. But it is not easy to find out what is fake and what is true.
Whether it’s good reviews to make your product look good or bad reviews for a competitor’s item: Buyers’ trust in reviews is falling. Because: Reviews can be bought – pretty easy and cheap. The sufferer: almost every customer. Amazon is trying to control it and is now banning supposedly very popular products and their providers from its online shop. It was a voucher trick that broke the barrel for Amazon.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Who batteries exchange bought for the smartphone from Amazon Chargers, Power Banks or is high security on products from manufacturers like RavPower , Aukey or MPOW stumbled. All three shops have countless technical items in their range that have been rated well and often and are comparatively cheap. But now Amazon has banned the retailers from its online shop. The US company admitted this to the technology magazine ” The Verge “. Also TaoTronics , a shop for LED lamps, Bluetooth-Headphones or massage guns on sale has been closed by Amazon. Amazon did not give a reason. But it’s obvious what’s behind it.
All four shops appear to have included vouchers for their products. So if you bought a charger, headphones or a power bank, you received an Amazon voucher. But you can only redeem this – the value is usually around 30 euros – if you leave a rating in exchange and write a review. Of course, the rating must be 5 out of 5 stars. Amazon sees this as a violation of company guidelines and banned the providers.
AMAZON VOUCHER FOR 30 EUROS: THIS IS HOW THE TRICK WORKS
Such a voucher is also available inside digital. Not from one of the three named suppliers, but from a headphone supplier from China. At Amazon, the headphones from the rather unknown manufacturer have an incredible number of ratings and reviews. It is therefore clear to potential buyers: The inexpensive headphones that we also tested must be good. But most of these ratings were only given because there was then a 30 euro voucher for Amazon. And to be honest: Who doesn’t like to invest 5 minutes in a fake review and then shop for 30 euros? At a disadvantage are those who fall for this scam and order a supposedly excellent product.
To get the Amazon voucher, you have to give a 5-star rating and write a positive review. Then you send a screenshot of it to the manufacturer including a photo of the gift card. Finally, there is an “important note” on Amazon. Under no circumstances should you write about the discount campaign in your review or publish pictures of the voucher, otherwise it will become invalid.
Compared to inside digital, the company admits that it “sometimes” sends out new products with an Amazon voucher so that it can already have reviews at market launch. The reason: Potential buyers tend not to try out a product that has no reviews.
If you ask the analysis tool Reviewmeta , which detects fake reviews on Amazon, it quickly becomes clear why the headphones have so many reviews. According to the tool, around 71 percent of all reviews are potentially unnatural. Of over 330 reviews, only 97 remain after filtering. In addition, the high number of those users who only rated one product, namely this product, on Amazon shows that the voucher seems to play a major role in the award of stars.
