Amazon’s Fake Review Problem is Worse Than Ever. Here’s Why.

This post is by Chris McCabe, owner and founder of ecommerceChris, LLC, an Amazon seller account consultancy.

Amazon has had a fake review problem for a long time. Up until late 2016, Amazon allowed sellers to give away products in return for a review. Those reviews were “honest and unbiased”, at least according to the disclaimers that reviewers sometimes added.

Back then, many sellers used product giveaways to increase their positive reviews. Amazon’s algorithms acted on the review data, search visibility went up, and buyers bought those items more often. Everyone went away happy, right? Well, at least the sellers did.

Then Amazon prohibited all incentivized reviews, and the problem swiftly went underground. Incentives continued to be offered, but away from the official discount code system, so Amazon couldn’t see the activity at all.

Fast forward to today, and a whole black market ecosystem has evolved. It’s focused on manipulating the Amazon reviews and search ranking systems, using a vast range of nefarious techniques. Amazon’s ban, ironically, has resulted in a fake review problem that makes the old behavior look quaint by comparison.

What do fake reviews on Amazon look like now?

Fake reviews that appear on the Amazon site today often appear as “verified purchases”, just like real reviews, with no indication of a connection between the buyer and the seller. This means that the reviewer actually bought the product from Amazon, which is a big indicator of authenticity in Amazon’s eyes. In reality, the purchase was funded by the seller using PayPal, an Amazon gift voucher, or other means.

To support these fake reviews, black hat service providers use automated buyer accounts (or “bots”) to upvote positive reviews for their seller clients, and downvote positive reviews for their competitors. Both buyers and Amazon appear unaware that this goes on.

Also, no one seems to know how to track associated buyer accounts for sellers who offer payment in exchange for four and five-star reviews (all five-star reviews might generate too much attention).

The same applies to accounts used to target honest sellers with fake negative reviews, and fake upvotes used to give those reviews extra weight. Sellers need to try and track competitor behavior if possible, because they may need to fight back if they are on the receiving end of an attack. Of course, fighting back has risks of its own and should be done under the supervision of an experienced consultant.

Is it safe to buy fake Amazon reviews?

I understand the strong temptation to follow the advice on many Facebook groups and use PayPal to buy positive reviews, or at least encourage reviewers to say something in your favor. I also understand that sellers often take a short term gain over long term account health. When they see competitors benefit, with no apparent enforcement from Amazon, it just doesn’t seem fair. But, despite Amazon’s current challenges in tackling fake reviews now, consider their track record in catching up with the times.

From what I can see in my daily account suspension work, this behavior eventually leads to a couple of outcomes.

  1. You’re tracked down and suspended by policy teams for “review manipulation”; or
  2. The reviews get deleted down the road, and possibly your account too.

If Amazon think you’ve solicited reviews in non-compliant ways you not only lose the reviews, but also your selling account. Amazon are only too happy to dig back months into your account history and punish you for ASINs, warnings, old listings or old behaviors that you haven’t done for a year or more. There’s no statute of limitations to protect you.

What are “review manipulation” Amazon account suspensions?

Sellers can get hooked on buying fake reviews. It feels like everybody is doing it, and they’re all posting about how successful it is. The thing is, people aren’t so quick to post when they get suspended.

If Amazon jump on you with both feet, due to regular reports and complaints of abuse, you will be forced to try and get your account reinstated AND come up with a new strategy to replace your old ways that were working so well.

Getting reinstated won’t be easy, either. If you tell them that you’ll no longer pursue that path, it will fall pretty flat now you’ve waited until you were caught to become a reformed character. Everyone claims to have mended their ways at first, and none of them are welcomed back with open arms by suddenly declaring an interest in proper behavior.

One of the main ways people get tripped up is with their automated review requests. It’s easy to see how sellers might think their email sequence won’t violate Amazon’s policies. But often it’s all about the first impression of your messages, not so much being able to defend the exact wording in a lengthy debate with policy teams.

What problems do fake reviews cause for Amazon?

If all this seem harmless to you, think again. Fake reviews hit at the very foundation of the Amazon marketplace, affecting buyer trust and buyer experience.

Sellers who play by the rules suffer from fake negative reviews, while their competitors accrue fake positive ones. It’s enough to drive some decent sellers away forever.

Amazon itself loses more faith in the validity of the reviews with each passing day. Ultimately, the integrity of the entire marketplace comes into troubling focus, and everyone asks why Amazon isn’t doing more.

Why aren’t Amazon doing more about fake reviews?

There are a number of internal reasons why the current situation is proving difficult for Amazon to address:

  1. It’s hard to scale the kind of investigation work needed. Most of the bad behavior now occurs off Amazon.
  2. So far it’s almost impossible to connect the buyer accounts associated with fake verified reviews back to the third-party “service providers” arranging them.
  3. Amazon are trying to reduce investigator headcount, not add to it, so this pulls them in the wrong direction.
  4. Managers within Amazon are not equipped to address such an unwieldy problem, given the lack of resources allocated for this type of large project.
  5. Higher-level Amazon executives don’t understand the scope of the problem.
  6. There are no fully-functional standard operating procedures which attack the core causes.
  7. And lastly, the greater public isn’t familiar with how this works and doesn’t know how much they should care about it, yet.

What can be done about fake reviews on Amazon?

There’s a lot of room for Amazon to improve its operations around fake product reviews. It only requires the will to proceed meaningfully, from the top layers of the executive teams, and an investment in quality investigations by the teams entrusted with marketplace protection.

The first step will be to assess how review abuse impacts the major Amazon marketplace stakeholders.

Sellers

Many sellers have been on the receiving end of fake negative reviews, and have reported the abuse via the standard channels, but with little success. Sellers need to do more than report abuse via Seller Central, or email Jeff or Seller Performance, or complain about it in Facebook groups. Until sellers learn the proper way to escalate to Product Review Abuse (PRA) managers, they can’t expect much movement or action.

Sellers should be willing to escalate to the teams that are responsible for policing this behavior, even if they feel like no one listens, cares, or takes any action.

Buyers

It’s obvious how bad this is for buyers, once they become aware of the problem.

Some buyers may understand that the overall rating is artificially inflated with biased reviews from friends and family, sure. But do they understand the extent of competitor attacks, leaving negative reviews with comments like “fake” or “unsafe” because they know Amazon scripts flag those instantly?

When will buyers worry that bots have upvoted or downvoted reviews or that other “buyers”, whose reviews they value because they are “verified purchases”, come from third-party service providers working for the seller? I’m not sure, but I don’t believe the current state of affairs will continue much longer.

Amazon

This problem is one of the biggest elephants in the room, because it strikes at the heart of buyer trust in the legitimacy of the marketplace.

If buyers stop believing the reviews they see, whether positive or negative, then the integrity of the site is at risk. While it may take time to develop new tools, and months to create fresh and effective investigator training strategies, there’s no time like the present for Amazon to begin. Hiding from the fake reviews problem won’t work much longer. Word is out.

This post was by Chris McCabe, owner and founder of ecommerceChris, LLC, an Amazon seller account consultancy. Chris was formerly an Investigation Specialist for Amazon’s Seller Performance team.

Author

Jake Pool

Jake Pool

A content writer in the SaaS, FinTech, and eCommerce spaces, Jake Pool has written hundreds of articles and reviews for dozens of corporate blogs and online publications. With four years under his wing, readers can expect many more informative articles in the future.

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Comments

Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe

I totally agree that things have begun to change, Amazon is beginning to understand the size of the problem and grapple with it on the headcount and perhaps even tools building side. But there's a lot of work to do, and so far things are moving very slowly. Hope to see more progress as the year goes on.

Beyond that, make sure you're reporting this violator properly, and keep at it, escalations and follow ups. Don't give up! They need more examples of abuse to develop the best tools and SOPs. Thanks for the comment.

Dayve Ward
Dayve Ward
In reply to Dayve Ward

April 2019 and it’s still very much going on. There was a Which report into the scale of it. I checked one product to find multiple identical reviews. Not so much progress after all.

Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe
In reply to Chris McCabe

Unfortunately, I thought more would be done last year, and here we are, so many months later. Not much improved in terms of enforcement, but the clamor and public disgust is up about ten fold. I hope they create some better tools and turn around the training on the teams responsible for this material.

Tina Amadio
Tina Amadio
In reply to Tina Amadio

It’s now 2023. I called and reported 5 star and over 2800 reviews selling a pest plug in repellent for all reviews about a BOOK, also in Spanish that had to be translated. They took about 300 reviews down. SO???? Do they feel proud of themself that they did their job??!! I can no longer confidentially trust rely on turning to them for reviews. It’s so frustrating. And they don’t do anything about it but continue to allow the seller to sell. This is a seller violation. HOW are they allowed to continue to sell their product on amazons platform lying to millions of people so openly like this??? I cannot comprehend. And, the fact that I have pointed it out 5 times now, it is Still going on?? Baffling. I tried to leave a review to warn people not to buy the product but no surprise it doesn’t allow me to post. Trying my best to do a huge public service here because too many people just look at 5 stars and a large amount of reviews and are sold on that alone without actually reading the reviews. TAKE THAT TIME TO READ REVIEWS PLEASE.

cheryl stewart
cheryl stewart
In reply to cheryl stewart

Amazon and Walmart can not be trusted even a little bit! Walmart controls reviews now. Seriously, you can not always even review a product you bought! I have tried several times and received message that I must receive a link in order to review the product I BOUGHT! Amazon has many many problems, involving fake garbage. I have always read reviews, but things changed greatly. Amazon constantly scams and cons their way to get fake good reviews. I have been asked many times to change my honest feedback. Several times I was bribed. I have never been one of the lucky people to get free products though. Don't trust reviews! A lot of fake China crap!! If it looks too good to be true, it is and is from China!

Jennifer Steele
Jennifer Steele
In reply to Jennifer Steele

I just looked up customer reviews for a bat repellent device. It had a 4.8 star rating so I scrolled down to read the reviews. Most of them were written in a foreign language so I pushed the translation button and was absolutely horrified! Most of the reviews were not written in English - which was not the problem per se however most of the reviews that I translated had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the bat repellent device at all. And even more astonishing was when translated, it was a bunch of SEXUAL SMUT that was absolutely beyond anything I have ever knew even existed. I am not going to go into detail about it but I will say this- I am a 53 year old grandmother that used to work in a male prison as a correctional officer and I thought I had seen and heard it all. However, I was wrong! It was the nastiest and most smutty filth I have ever read and now that I have- I can never unread it. My question is what the 💩 does sexual smut have to do with bat repellent device reviews and why would Amazon allow them to post erotica as a bat repellent device review in the first place?!?!

Carole
Carole
In reply to Carole

I was banned wrongly, 2 years ago. I started emailing the community support email, as instructed. That was April 2022. I emailed repeatedly even as late as 2 days ago,, and even spoke to customer service once, with no help.

Here is is, March 2024 and I had a free hour, so called Amazon customer service and they gave me a new email to contact. I did receive a response from that second email, but was told, as every one has, I have bla bla bla their standards. Here I am, a regular consumer, a retiree who makes regular purchases, is a Prime member. I leave 5 stars for good products, and return others, leaving honest reviews. I'm not making money, I'm spending money.

I used to save up reviews and do a swath at once, 5 or so. It was fun. I do the same thing on Goodreads. Maybe I'm bored or geeky. Regardless, Amazon maintains I have offended their standards and can't be bothered to go back 2 years. I read above that they actually can.

Not sure why innocent people aren't considered. Its irritating, to be accused of something like this. Thoughts?

Mark
Mark

Has anyone checked out Netgear’s reviews?

JACOMM
JACOMM

@Melita
So glad to have found your post here and realize - I'm not alone.

Seems like most larger corporations that ignore a problem when they finally get a fire under them they overcompensate and "throw the baby out with the bathwater".

I too have no idea why my account reviewing privileges were suspended. Heck, I can't communicate at all publicly on Amazon.

I too have been an Amazon customer for YEARS. Since they started only selling books and occasional software.

All I can think of is that after being injured and NEEDING Amazon for goods related to my injury and resulting surgery, I was reviewing all the pre and post surgical products in one bunch after not being able to do much on a computer for months.

Maybe this red flagged, but their accusations of having relationships with sellers or gaining payment for reviews was so disheartening to me after being through a major traumatic accident, surgery and difficult recovery that I've refused to personally purchase on Amazon for the last four to five months. If I absolutely need something I have a family member buy and ship it to me.

There is no such thing as "too big to fail" only "too big to have common sense and treat people right" all in pursuit of ever growing gains.

It's sad, Amazon really was almost THE pioneer in bringing products to your door through the Internet. Too bad they have an opinion of themselves that far outreaches the reality of who they really are, and how they truly treat people in the race for the almighty "dollar".

Mi
Mi

If I were Amazon, I will open some review service to provide fake reviews. So I will know which sellers potentially use fake reviews to grow their business on Amazon. lol

Margaret Skrovanek
Margaret Skrovanek

Sadly, I am in the same boat. I became a vigilante by posting reviews for products/sellers that receive "F" grades from Fakespot.com.

This week I received my official ban because "Customer Content violated our guidelines and Conditions of Use. We won't reinstate your posting permissions for this account." So Amazon is penalizing us for trying to point out dishonest sellers!

There must be an organization that deals with this. Have you had any luck since your posting? We should ban together!

Margaret

Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe
In reply to Chris McCabe

Hi Margaret, you became a vigilante? you're going to be banned of course, it looks like retaliatory strikes against another seller, or fake review behavior.

Richard Bryan
Richard Bryan

I buy a lot of hiking and backpacking equipment on Amazon and very frustrated with the fake equipment reviews. So many times they’re so obvious because of the same poor sentence structure and Chinese-English usage of words and phrases and punctuation. Reviews used to be a trust worthy way to evaluate whether to purchase a product but not anymore.

Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe

Hi Richard, glad to hear you're a fellow hiking and backpacking enthusiast! Unfortunately, Amazon still hasn't ironed out the best ways to identify and scrutinize reviews that are all copied from another listing, or use the same sentence structure over and over on the same listing, which you'd think they could do fairly easily. Plenty of engineers to figure this out! There's been a lack of will to act, and a lot of technical solutions or tools, or both. The PRA teams definitely aren't staffed with enough knowledge people who can handle the load, either. Tough times for product reviews now, where you really want to know what's safe and effective and what isn't. The good news is, I think in 2019, they won't have a choice. They'll have to fit together some of these broken pieces into a fixed strategy to regulate these properly.

Dayve Ward
Dayve Ward

It’s April 2019 and it’s still going on. I noted one of the products had hundreds of reviews with repetitions. It was so easy to spot but despite Amazon’s apparantly sophisticated algarithams they are still rife. It seems that Amazon may not be too bothered after all.

Dayve Ward
Dayve Ward

That’s so sad to hear. I wonder if the fakers are reporting the genuine reviews. Amazon clearly don’t have the staff to actually review these reports so maybe they just automatically take action in the reporter’s favour. Great scam though. The genuine reviewers get banned leaving the fakers to do their worst. Just my sceptical theory. Anyway, it’s now April 2019 and Amazon still haven’t got a grip on fake reviews.

Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe

you've met them personally? So you know who it is, and they admit doing it?

Chris McCabe
Chris McCabe

Also, have you reported this info to Amazon? You should let me know what you need to do so the right way.

Christopher C Smith
Christopher C Smith

Looks like I am not alone. I became frustrated with reviews that have nothing to do with the product listed as verified purchases for the seller. I raised the issue with Amazon. They stated they would of course take care of it, NADA. After I Complained 3 times they started blocking my comments and even questions to sellers.

First I understand that this is a huge issue. Amazon likely has lost control of this and it is difficult to manage. With people buying reviews it has gotten worse. Being able to count on the validity of reviews is next to impossible in many cases.

Second, it appears that looking the other way to protect revenue is the direction that has been taken for now. While the problem exists, it is simply more cost effective to look the other way instead of dealing with it.

Third, I have actually spoken to several sellers who provide very good follow up and are just starting out. I feel like the odds are against them as they struggle for positive reviews. It is not fair to them to enter into a system that is corrupted and stacked against them to from the get go.

This brings me to FTC violations. Why is this not illegal? If Amazon is complicit in allowing this activity they should be called on it. Has anyone written to a legislator about these issues?

C W Sharp
C W Sharp

Great article. I was curious about the scope of bad reviews on Amazon and came across this site.
Two weeks ago I wanted to buy my daughter Apple airpods for her birthday. I didn't want to buy the Apple product if there was a suitable aftermarket alternative. I found a set for $30 that received about 30 4.5 star reviews. I went ahead and ordered them but unfortunately after they arrived and she tried them they had serious issues. I checked back on Amazon to see if the product had any reviews I missed the first time but the item was no longer listed (2 days after purchase). Thank goodness for Amazon's return policy!
I sent this pair back and spent a little more time looking/researching for a replacement set. I found another seller that offered them for $40.00 and had 40+ 4.5 star reviews. I ordered those hoping for the best. Two days after I ordered this next set, but before they arrived, I started have misgivings about them so I went back to Amazon to look at them again. I know I went to the correct listing because I clicked on the item from my orders page. The aftermarket Airpods were still listed but the number of reviews dropped from 40+ at 4.5 stars to 3 reviews at 1.5 stars. I immediately processed a return for them (they were delivered later that day) and went to Apple and bought original airpods for $159.00.
I know it's almost an impossible task of maintaining 'real' customer reviews but it would have been nice for Amazon to have an automated reply when the item you are buying either gets pulled from its website or there are significant changes to the listing.
I do appreciate how easy it is to return purchases on Amazon and that is why I'll continue to be willing to use them.

JR
JR

I am a frequent buyer on Amazon and have been looking at reviews a lot closer. I noticed that several products with high ratings only have a rating history of 1-2 months which is not enough time to determine how well a product will work over time.. You can also click on the name of buyers who have given 5 stars and see how they have rated other products in the past. Most of the time I see they are ALWAYS giving 5 star ratings to each and every product. This makes me think there is more to the rating than meets the eye.

Richard Bryan
Richard Bryan
In reply to Richard Bryan

I agree with an earlier poster who said that Amazon was complicit in this fake review system because they cannot possibly not be aware this goes on and Never the less look the other way.

Declan
Declan

I'm a seller on Amazon and I am being badly affected by other sellers with loads of fake reviews. I don't think Amazon has any interest in fixing the fake review problem at the moment. The reason I believe why is that Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is the most profitable money they make and if you are an honest seller, you have to fight it out on PPC with the sellers who have loads of fake reviews to be able to get sales for your product. I believe that the problem could be solved by using big data, for example, as someone else suggested check the purchase to review ratio of sellers and of buyers. They could also use artifical intelligence to check the language of the reviews. They just invested a few hundred million dollars in Deliveroo so if they invested that money in their own business instead, they could easily fix the problem. I just don't think it suits them at the moment to fix the problem and they won't do anything about it until their sales/profit go down. Hopefully the FTC will do something about them as only a government could take them on at this stage.

Margaret Skrovanek
Margaret Skrovanek

Hi All,

My first post here was 12/16/18.

First, I want to say thanks to Declan for his honesty! I can see how honest sellers are being hurt badly by fake reviews. I always wrote a review listing Fakespot.com's grade if it got below "C" in honesty rating. That's why I was banned.

I don't have the energy to put any more into this fight, which is what Amazon is undoubtedly counting on. If there is ever an organized effort to stop this dishonesty, sign me up!

Matt
Matt

Fake reviews are harder to detect? How so? I'm looking at a webcam right now, 24 five star reviews. Not a single verified purchase. Poor grammar in every review. Every reviewer has the screen name 'Amazon Customer'. Checking on the other reviews from these 'purchasers', they've all reviewed multiple pairs of earphones from the same sellers. Yet Amazon has this item labelled as a 'best seller'. Any real person or bot could identify these reviews as fake, but they still persist on 1000's of items.

Sheery
Sheery

Same thing has just happened to me. I kept getting emails to review some bathbombs that bought for my daughter. The emails was reminders to review and they were feom amazon. I paid for these I did not get anything special feom them. Just the same normal purchases that I always buy. I checked the link in the email to review and now it says I can’t review anymore. I’m not happy about it especially after paying yearly for prime and I have been a member for as long as I can remember

mitch
mitch

if each item of a sale were assigned a 16 digit entry code. That entry code had to be entered on Amazon to provide a review. If product is selected for a return then 16 code assigned to product would also be flagged and either completely removed from product reviews or marked as a RETURNED REVIEW.

Jr
Jr
In reply to Jr

Mitch, that is a fantastic idea! I never thought of that, but that would totally work. Wonder why there’s slobs at Amazon haven’t thought about that?

Cecelia Fortney
Cecelia Fortney

Our problem is chinese sellers jumping into Amazon and they dont usually attack our product ( although it has happened and we reported it) they get an extremely high number of reviews in a very short time. OUr product has been sold since 2010 and is an Amazon Best Seller, Amazons choice etc and have about 5000 reviews. Two chinese competitors jumped in and had almost 9000 reviews in 2 years !

Frank Rizzo
Frank Rizzo

I was contemplating the distortions that occur every time when there's a consolation and concentration of influence-regardless of the type or the occasion-when I inadvertently stumbled head-on into the inherent contradiction of the implicit in the statement "authority corrupts." Yes, in fact it does so by design; and for reasons that have disproportionately positive track records, that's considered a feature, not a bug. So let's say Amazon (or another unified marketplace) didn't exist, and we still had independent stores, owned by individuals. That would solve only part of the problem; sooner or later, there would be a site called Amazon, and everyone would visit it to get info regarding the best product to buy. To fix that, let's do away with the Internet...as if!

Well...I got nothing.

Deborah
Deborah

Fake reviews are getting so bad that in many cases the review has nothing to do with the product you're even buying. It's like the seller just copied reviews from another product and added them to their product reviews.

Jr
Jr

February 25 will be one year since I purchased anything on Amazon exactly because of the fake reviews. I can’t trust any item on there not even a bar of soap

VanWin
VanWin

It has become worse since the Chinese moved in on both Amazon and eBay. They blatantly lie about their goods, use fake names, sometimes Scottish or German.
It is only when you receive a purchase and inspect the labels and packaging you find "Made in China". But if they can get away with it others will copy them.
I always give both good and bad reviews - totally honest. But on Amazon and Argos, both have refused to publish my low HONEST reviews.
I cannot be bought or bribed. That would make me part of the problem. A review system could be a great help if they were all genuine.
I start by looking at a product lowest reviews and work my way up. Look at those which are too similar. Once you could pick out the likely ones from their bad English but now the literacy of British people is below standard, their spelling and grammar is hard to understand, so it is no longer a sign of foreigners pretending to be British.

David Thomas Chapman
David Thomas Chapman

so many of my reveiws are not allowed that I really dont believe much about what is sold and commented on. A review is the only guide that a buyer can reley on when searching for goods on Amazon, having said that, compared to Ali Exp Amazon are very good

gfmucci
gfmucci

Was intending to buy a squirrel repellant. Every product with aggregate reviews of 4.5 stars or better had great majority of 4.8 or 5 star reviews for other, totally unrelated, products. The small smattering of reviews for subject product were 1, 2 or 3 stars. This must be the latest technique for fooling the algorithm. The system has become worse than useless.

Jemar
Jemar

2023 and I am receiving emails asking me to purchase something from Amazon and provide a five star review within 14 days for a £40 Amazon voucher (£50 if I include a video). Can I forward the email to Amazon? No. I can report it on their web site and include just 4 photographs and a very limited comment. I don’t think Amazon takes this seriously.

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