What to Know About Fake Amazon Review and Scams

If you do a lot of shopping on Amazon, you may be wondering about the possibility of fake Amazon reviews. Can reviews be trusted? Don’t worry. We have the answers.

Who Can Write Amazon Reviews?

Anyone with an Amazon account can write a review, which has led to a prevalence of fake reviews. This became a problem for the company, so they instituted heavily weighted “verified purchase” reviews. This is what should be done to minimize fake Etsy reviews as well.

Before you move on, you can also see how many products on Amazon have been boosted due to fake reviews. How can you do this? By using a great Amazon review checker. Moreover, you can do the same with other retailers and see if reviews are fake, like with Best Buy.

What are Verified Purchases?

If a review features a “verified purchase” sticker, you can breathe a sigh of relief, as it is unlikely that their review is a scam or fake. The reviewer had to have purchased the item in order to receive that sticker. Additionally, the item must have been bought for at least 80 percent of the average price. This latter policy has been instituted to dissuade scam companies from “selling” items to consumers for under a dollar in exchange for a positive review.

How Can You Spot Fake Reviews?

There are a number of surefire ways to spot fake Amazon reviews so you can make informed purchase decisions. Here are just a few.

Check on the Reviewer

You can click on the review to gather crucial information about the reviewer, which can help let you know if the review is fake or not. The customer’s review hub page will show all of their reviews dating back years. Take some time to go through some to look for obvious signs of a scam. This page will also detail how many votes they have gotten from other Amazon customers indicating that their reviews have been helpful. Generally speaking, fake reviews do not get many positive votes from real Amazon users.

Look for the Verified Purchase Sticker

Make sure any reviews you are allowing to sway your opinion on a product are marked as a “verified purchase.” As previously stated, this sticker is only awarded to reviews that have been legitimately purchased on Amazon for a fair price.

Check the Syntax

Bots often write fake reviews, so the syntax can feel a bit “off.” Read the review over in your head and try to suss out if a real person wrote it. Not only do bots often write these fake reviews, but so do folks living in other countries working on review farms. That is why you should only rely on buyer’s guides to make a purchasing decision.

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