Should I Buy Something From Amazon That Only Has One Review

Like a lot of people, we read Amazon reviews as part of our product inquiry. Getting broad feedback on a product can exist very useful when we're looking for widespread problems or seeing how a company handles warranty claims. However, every bit time has gone by, we've begun to read user reviews with a far more critical eye.

Although many reviews on Amazon are legitimate, more and more sketchy companies are turning to compensated Amazon reviews to inflate star ratings and to drum upwards purchases.

Have you always seen some random production for sale that'due south from some brand y'all've never heard of, and the company has no website—yet its widget has somehow garnered fifteen,000 5-star reviews since … last week? We sure accept. This situation is likely the result of a compensated-review programme. Such compensated reviews—orchestrated past businesses that cater to companies that want more public positive feedback—violate Amazon's terms of utilise but are difficult to law. (This arrangement is non to be dislocated with Amazon's Vine plan, in which companies provide products to users in substitution for an honest opinion, although those reviews tin can be problematic in their own way. Yous tin can read our thoughts on them below.)

The compensated-review process is simple: Businesses paid to create dummy accounts purchase products from Amazon and write 4- and five-star reviews. Buying the product makes it tougher for Amazon to police the reviews, because the reviews are in fact based on verified purchases. The dummy accounts buy and review all sorts of things, and some of the more than savvy pay-for-review sites even have their imitation reviewers pepper in a few negative reviews of products made and sold by brands that aren't clients to create a sense of "authenticity." In fact, for extra cash, a company can pay ane of these firms to write negative reviews of a competitor'southward product. Wirecutter contributor Brent Butterworth has written about this do also.

Super shady, we know. And Amazon has a history of trying hard to deal with offenders and shut them downwardly. In fact, in April, Amazon sued some other round of companies that are accused of selling fraudulent reviews. Only by the time those companies are caught, their clients have already fabricated a agglomeration of sales, and the fraudulent reviewers will probable pop up again nether new names to repeat the process.

Want to know more? Wirecutter headphones editor Lauren Dragan talks to Marketplace Tech most compensated Amazon reviews and how to tell real crowdsourced opinions from astroturfing.

How to avoid getting scammed

You have a few ways to suss out what may exist a fake review. The easiest style is to use Fakespot. This site allows you to paste the link to whatever Amazon product and receive a score regarding the likelihood of imitation reviews.

For case, nosotros ran an assay on some headphones we found during a recent inquiry sweep for our guide virtually cheap in-ear headphones. You can see from the results below that the headphones' reviews didn't score so well.

fakespot rating amazon review — Fakespot'southward analysis of the Rxvoit reviews. Doesn't look good. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

Nosotros corresponded with an official spokesperson for Fakespot to get a amend idea of where these results come from. He said:

The quick answer is that every analysis does two simultaneous things: we clarify every unmarried review posted and we review each reviewer and every review that reviewer has ever posted on that account. We take all that information and run it through our proprietary engine which grades everything and looks for patterns.

The engine adjusts based on the prevailing patterns used by proven fake reviewers and their reviews, so while there is some base criteria, we're able to employ bogus intelligence to keep ahead of the imposters. Every fake reviewer has patterns. And the more than data we collect via analyses completed, the more our engine is able to adapt and acquire. The secret sauce is not only in the engine but the ability to run the information in the quickest amount of time possible; ensuring swift delivery of an accurate production.

The likelihood of knowing for certain if a review is false

To get some perspective, we spoke with Bing Liu, a professor in the department of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose focuses include sentiment assay, opinion mining, and lifelong motorcar learning. He has written textbooks on the subjects. We wanted to know his stance on whether information technology is possible for a programme or group of programs to evaluate reviews and correctly determine their validity. Liu'southward thoughts:

It is hard to say without knowing their techniques. The problem with this chore is that there is often no hard proof that the detection is really correct unless the author of the bodily imitation reviews (not made up imitation reviews) from a review hosting site confirms it. Of class, information technology is easier if the company actually hosts reviews (e.g., Amazon or Yelp) because they can analyze the public information that the full general public can come across and likewise (more importantly) their internal data which tracks all the activities later a person comes to the website. A lot of unusual behaviors tin can be detected. Unfortunately, such data is non available to people outside the site.

In other words: Unless you have a way to confirm with the person (or company) writing the review, or y'all are Amazon, it'due south all conjecture. Keep in mind that these analyses are based on Fakespot'south techniques, then we have to take their word for it. Nosotros don't have a style to verify how precise they are. However, you can make educated guesses. And if you're in a hurry or in need of a second opinion, Fakespot can be a useful tool when y'all're considering a purchase.

All of that aside, nosotros had a similar opinion when nosotros read the Rxvoit reviews ourselves, and we tin tell you a few factors that we utilize when evaluating client reviews.

How we spot a phony review

What aspects of the Rxvoit headphones' reviews felt funny to the states? Well, showtime of all, nosotros noticed that a lot of the positive reviews happened inside a few days of each other. That indicates to us that people made a button for reviews to happen on a timeline.

In fact, at the fourth dimension we did our research sweep, the Rxvoit headphones had a v-star rating and a few hundred reviews posted within a week or two. This, for a company that is very new (as in, it has only one product—these headphones) and ane nosotros had never heard of. That'southward a crimson flag.

Second, within those reviews, we saw a lot of the aforementioned diction, and fifty-fifty similarly staged user photos. It was as though someone said, "Hey, take a picture show of a shut-upwards of your hands holding the headphones over a countertop." While nosotros know that people do post pictures to accompany their reviews, information technology seemed too coincidental that they were all staged in the same way, all over a bridge of a few days.

And lastly, we couldn't find a visitor website for Rxvoit. While the lack of a Spider web presence isn't in itself an indication of a shady manufacturer or a signal to look out for fake reviews, it is worth noting. When your just point of contact for a company is through Amazon, you have no way of accessing customer service straight. This means warranty claims are tough to redeem. It also means information technology's tougher for a significant number of people to "just happen" to stumble across a product and decide to purchase it, which makes a sudden spurt of reviews very unlikely.

What does this look like in the wild? Well, here's an example of reviews that are accused of being fake from the virtually recent Amazon lawsuit.

amazon reviews lawsuit example — Bodily reviews from the *Amazon v. Gentile* lawsuit in Washington Superior Court.

Notice how all the reviews appeared inside days of one another. They also reference the aforementioned key matter: the calorie-free on the cable. In fact, two of the three use the verbal phrase "how vivid the lights on the cable are." That's a skillful indication that something is sketchy. And although we don't know what product the lawsuit'due south case refers to, if the production's manufacturer was brand-new and had a few hundred of these kinds of reviews within a few days, chances are good that the company paid for them in some manner.

The Vine program

The Vine programme, and similar methods of eliciting feedback, give away products for free (or sell them at a deep disbelieve) to potential customers vetted (by Amazon in the case of the Vine plan) for the helpfulness of their reviews, in exchange for an "honest review." While these sorts of reviews are far more ethical than paid-for reviews, they can likewise be a lilliputian problematic. Even if the style the review was obtained is disclosed on production pages, several aspects of the purchasing process don't go considered as part of these programs.

For example, returns and long-term utilize aren't part of the evaluation. When you go something for free, you're less probable to follow upward on breakage concerns or customer service issues. Additionally, if the reviewer didn't actually buy the product, that person doesn't take the buy and shipping processes into consideration.

But virtually important, receiving something for free or nearly gratuitous can greatly touch 1's opinions. You might notice how few of the reviews through Vine and similar programs are negative or even critical. This isn't a case of reviewers intentionally being dishonest, but rather the result of unconscious positive bias. Non paying for an item tin can make difficulties with that item seem less irritating.

Additionally, reviewers may give their opinions on items for which they have no expertise or real feel and therefore take no frame of reference about how well something works by comparing. It's difficult to say how skilful something is if you don't know what else is out at that place.

So, just know that yous can't always believe what y'all see when it comes to five-star reviews. While some overnight successes do be, oftentimes a four-star product with authentic reviews and a proven rail record is a amend purchase. Look across the overall star rating and read with a critical centre, and you'll be in good shape.