Prime Day is fast approaching (again) and maybe you plan to spend it Finding good deals on off-brand technology like wireless earbuds and phone cords. But for all its convenience, the biggest shortcoming of online shopping is still the inability to see or test products firsthand before buying them. To feel like we know what we’re getting, we turn to user reviews – which are on Amazon at least increasingly unreliable.
It’s still wise to check out the reviews of Amazon products, but it’s worth taking your review a step further. Some product reviews on the site are misleading (to be charitable), if not fake, and all are worth checking out to see if they’re honest, whether it’s due to user error, a glitch on Amazon, or the increasing likelihood that the reviews have been bought and paid for, Amazon reviews should not be taken at face value.
This is how you can tell whether an Amazon rating is fake
Mistakes happen and sometimes reviews are inadvertently linked to another product. For example, a recent change to a Blu-ray player’s metadata on Amazon’s backend resulted in a brief period of displaying a number of reviews of unrelated products for the Blu-ray player, which changed its star rating until the bug was fixed. Likewise, it is not uncommon for a user to inadvertently rate the wrong product.
There are, of course, more suspicious reasons for independent reviews to appear on the wrong products, such as: And even if the review is the correct listing, there are plenty of reasons why it could be fake or misleading – whether as part of one Review-for-pay racket; “Review Bombing” campaigns aimed at changing the rating of a product; Ads disguised as reviews; or those nosy positive product reviews that include a one-star rating because the reviewer wants to “send a message” that it is taking too long to ship or has some other aspect of the transaction that doesn’t apply to the product itself. Anyway, there are ways to determine if a product’s reviews are trustworthy.
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- Actually read the reviews: It is often easy to spot a fake review based on how it is read. If a reviewer has a completely different experience than what is expressed in other reviews and makes extremely positive or negative claims, it is likely to be untrustworthy. The same applies if a review spends a little too much time recommending an obscure alternative but does not offer a fair comparison or comment on the product for which the review is intended. And if there are plenty of one-star or 5-star reviews out there, but the text for each review is barely longer than a sentence (or even a word or two), this is another tell-tale sign of falsification.
- Look for “confirmed purchase”: Reviews from users who actually purchased the product will be marked with a “Confirmed Purchase” badge next to their name. There is a good chance they are reputable ratings / reviews, although given some unscrupulous sellers, that is not a certainty will offer “Refunds” in exchange for 5 star reviews.
- Read the product Q / A: These answer frequently asked questions, and responses from users who have purchased the product are tagged again with a “Verified Purchase” tag.
- Read non-Amazon reviews: It is always wise to seek external reviews, especially from professional reviewers / critics / websites that you trust. It can help you get a basic idea of how the product is rated elsewhere, and you can rate user reviews elsewhere. But just because a reviewer and user arrive at different conclusions doesn’t mean they are lying. Reviews are inherently contextual and subjective, so don’t throw an opinion away just because it goes against the broader consensus.
Discover fake Amazon reviews with FakeSpot or ReviewMeta
Even if you know the signs of a fake review, sometimes you will come across reviews or product reviews whose legitimacy you cannot pinpoint. In these cases we recommend using the FakeSpot app. Fakespot analyzes the reviews and / or product reviews for an offer on Amazon, rates each review and tells you how real or fake it seems (it also works with online stores like Best Buy, Walmart, Steam and Sephora). FakeSpot is available on the Internet, and further Android and iOS. As alternative, ReviewMeta works in very similar.
Report incorrect and misplaced Amazon reviews
The reality is that a fake or misleading review or two will turn up for almost every popular product. These can be reported, but a few incorrect reviews are unlikely to change an entry’s overall score. However, if you notice a particularly enormous number of fake reviews for a product or discover that reviews for a product appear elsewhere, you can use the “Report abuse” button next to a review to draw attention to Amazon.
This article was originally published in 2019 and was updated on June 17, 2021 with additional context and links, and adapted to the current Lifehacker style.
