[nr07]

Saw an AI-generated 5-star reviews on Amazon and had to check my package as I knew the incentive had to be there.



I work in marketing and am no stranger to incentivized reviews. However, this needs to be done without asking for a specific rating i.e you incentivize a fair review and hope they give you the best rating since you are paying for the review.

Asking directly for 5-star review in exchange of cashback tells you what you need to know about the company.

Not commenting on quality, just for awareness in case people are buying solely based on online reviews.

[dass]

Unfortunately, this has become quite common. Some of the recent purchases made on Amazon, through prime also had this 'coupon' for providing a 5 star review. For me, this is a red flag to not purchase from them again as well as try and scrutinize the reviews online. Extremely difficult to figure out the genuine ones.

[arunphilip]

Amazon's TOS does not allow incentivized reviews.

Aukey was my go-to brand for chargers and charging cables, and they dropped off Amazon some years ago due to them being caught violating the TOS (link).

This seller may be getting away with it now, but the odds are they'll get caught - either by Amazon's own data analysis, or by someone informing Amazon.

[Doge]

It's all too common now, have received these cash back coupons frequently. Best way to deal with them is to first post a positive review and get the cashback and then edit your review and mention all the fake reviews

[nr07]

Originally Posted by Doge

It's all too common now, have received these cash back coupons frequently. Best way to deal with them is to first post a positive review and get the cashback and then edit your review and mention all the fake reviews

Problem is most people who keep the product won't do this and it affects new buyers.


Also, I had originally posted this in the Motorbikes forum and the company is GrandPitstop. Just putting it out there.

[Y@SH]

This was very common with Amazon, However not received any such cards recently. I do inform Amazon whenever I get them so they can take action against the seller

[saket77]

If the product is good, I just buy it. If they ask for 5 star review and offer cashbacks for that, I simply don't review them at all. I think I have received at least 7-8 such products from Amazon 'requesting' 5 Star reviews for cashbacks.

[Funny]

It's not just cashbacks. The sellers offer different kinds of incentives for reviewing their products. During my recent electronic purchases I have seen the trend of warranty extension incentives for reviewing the purchased products. The seller will offer additional 3/6/12 month warranty for reviewing their products and providing them the proof in terms of screenshots of the reviews. Although I have not seen an explicit ask for 5-star review but I do assume that the seller do expect a positive review in exchange for their incentives.

I must admit that I did review few such products in exchange for extended warranty but I have only reviewed the product when I found them to be actually good and not bother about reviewing bad products or products that didn't live up-to my expectations during the initial usage period. Also in the reviews I made sure I added both the positives and negatives and unless there were any deal-breakers, I mostly reviewed only 4 or 5 star worthy products. This is kind of a win-win situation for genuinely good products from local/small brands that get over-shadowed by big brands/players who heavily advertise their product as the king of the segment although the actual product itself is just about average for the premium charged compared to similar products from lesser known brands. One good example would be to just search for water purifiers on Amazon, there are some local brands with similar features at almost half the cost of the well established brands. Their spares (filter set) also cost almost half of what the established brands charge for their spares. I believe in good product rather than brand value, if a small brand makes good products which is at par with the established brands at a lower cost then I don't mind supporting them by reviewing their products and they also incentivize it by offering the warranty extension.

[Bagheera]

This reminds me of the time I bought Solimo bean bag from Amazon with my Dad's name and number to my native home. After receiving the product, My dad starts to recieve calls and whatsapp messages to leave reviews. Since, It was I who bought it he called me up to leave review.

Solimo is supposedly Amazon's own brand and it was a prime product. So, the item should have shipped from Amazon warehouse itself. I was shocked to find that Amazon so carelessly handling personally identifiable information. I duly called up the customer care and raised complaint. They were apologetic and the calls stopped.

But this really raised my concern in ordering to someone else's number. The information could have surely been used for something far more malicious than farming reviews, like scam calls and sending trojan apks and links.

[jinojohnt]

This has reached a point where you can not trust majority of the reviews on Amazon. Once I posted the photo of a "Cash Back Offer" card in a review, warning users about biased reviews but Amazon support did not approve my review and this was deleted.

Originally Posted by Funny

It's not just cashbacks. The sellers offer different kinds of incentives for reviewing their products. During my recent electronic purchases I have seen the trend of warranty extension incentives for reviewing the purchased products.

I am yet to find a person who has been able to claim warranty on a product bought online (in India), so this should be another scam.

[ishekk]

Originally Posted by jinojohnt

Once I posted the photo of a "Cash Back Offer" card in a review, warning users about biased reviews but Amazon support did not approve my review and this was deleted.

I too once posted a review warning users about seller offering extended warranty in lieu reviews but Amazon did approve the review.

I think Amazon also wants that the products listed on its website should have good reviews as good reviews translate to sales.

[Funny]

Originally Posted by jinojohnt

I am yet to find a person who has been able to claim warranty on a product bought online (in India), so this should be another scam.

Not entirely true, I had recently claimed warranty on a budget gaming chair that I had bought from a unknown/new brand on Amazon. The chair was a 3 part DIY assembly. After about 2 months of use, the backrest fabric clip came off from one corner and all I did was reach out to the brand asking for help to maybe send someone to fix it since it was fixable by any skilled technician. I tried to fix it myself but the fabric was too tight to be pulled back into place with the clip. The brand immediately sent me a new backrest itself which was surprising since the cost of fixing that clip would've been in hundreds whereas a new backrest would've cost them in thousands + shipping. And as expected they did ask for a review post that which I added.

[neerajku]

Personal experience is, even a mildly critical reviews are not published on Amazon anymore. Wonder how their bots work.

[Naetik30]

I reported this to amazon as a seller feedback and my review was rejected. So, not sure if Amazon is subtly encouraging this.

[dhruvagarwal]

Today, a significant portion of the reviews on Amazon and Google are manipulated, to the point that I have lost any trust in both these platforms. I'm back to seeking recommendations/ references from friends and family.

While explicitly seeking 5-star reviews is against Amazon policy, and is deplorable, most seller on online platforms continue to resort to this and several other unfair tactics to fool the public and the algorithm (on the platform) in multiple ways.

Am elaborating one of them as an insider from the industry:

A seller could reuse an old listing that was for Product A (with say ~5k reviews on it) for their new product - B and the reviews will get carried forward to the new listing as is. So, as a customer you'd see a 4.5 star rating with 5k reviews and believe that it's a tried and tested product, but in reality you're getting an entirely different product with negligible reviews/ feedback for it. Each seller is trying to game the algorithm (and subsequently generate more organic visibility on their products) by doing this, which puts the onus on platforms to wiser and fair to their customers. In their rush for targets and useless metrics, the best interest of the customer has been forgotten.