Amazon reviews that should really tell shoppers: Don’t Buy
MILLIONS of Amazon shoppers are at risk of being misled because shoddy products are boosted by a flood of suspicious and fake reviews, it has emerged.
Big-selling products, including headphones, vacuum cleaners, dash cams and Bluetooth speakers, that actually perform badly have positive recommendations on the website.
Some of the second rate items, mostly made in China, even carry an ‘Amazon’s Choice’ endorsement, which shoppers trust and rely on.
The details have been revealed by Which? after experts put eight ‘recommended’ products through rigorous tests and almost all fell well short of even an average performance score.
Three of the eight performed so badly they were rated as a ‘Don’t Buy’, which the consumer group advises people to avoid at all costs.
A set of Yineme headphones had signs of suspicious review activity, including unusually high numbers of positive reviews, high review frequency, repetition of phrases and photos and videos often uploaded alongside reviews.
The headphones had a high overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 from more than 800 reviews and an ‘Amazon’s Choice’ badge.
However, it received a ‘ Don’t Buy’ warning as a result of Which? testing with a paltry score of just 37 per cent. The tests found the sound to be ‘ exceptionally poor’ and the headphones failed to deliver promised noise cancelling.
Shortly after the consumer group reported its findings to Amazon, the product was made ‘currently unavailable’. Amazon also deleted customer reviews en masse.
The Onson cordless vacuum cleaner also showed signs of suspicious reviews, scoring an average of 4.4 alongside a coveted ‘Amazon’s Choice’ recommendation.
Which? said there was an issue with sellers offering an incentive for fake positive reviews, often asking for a product photo or video upload in order to collect their reward. On this product, 40 per cent of reviews were accompanied by a picture or video, and all of these were five star.
Tests by Which? found it was one of the lowest-scoring cordless vacuum cleaners ever at just 32 per cent, which warranted a Don’t Buy warning.
It was hard to use, unhygienic to empty and scored just one star for cleaning on carpets, floorboards and laminate flooring.
The consumer group said a sudden surge of positive reviews over a short period should be seen as a tell-tale sign they are unreliable.
Fake reviews are used routinely by unscrupulous online sellers to undermine honest small businesses legitimately using online marketplaces to reach new audiences.
Which? says this is an important issue as online reviews influence about £23billion of UK transactions a year, according to the Competition and Markets Authority.
Which? head of home products and services Natalie Hitchins said: ‘There appears to be no sense of urgency from the industry to tackle this problem so it’s down to the regulator.’
Amazon said: ‘ In the last year alone, we’ve spent over $400million to protect customers from reviews abuse.
‘Last year, we prevented more than 13 million attempts to leave an inauthentic review and we took action against more than five million bad actor accounts attempting to manipulate reviews.’
The CMA said: ‘We’re already cracking down on fake reviews and have recently urged Facebook and eBay to act to stop the sale of fake reviews through their sites. As part of our ongoing work, we are planning to examine the role of websites where people post reviews.’