Amazon has become a hotbed of 'fake' five-star reviews, Which? Finds

The manifesto was recreated in a 74-page paperback by a publisher who was permitted to sell it on Amazon
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Amazon is being flooded with “fake” five-star customer reviews, a new investigation has found.

The consumer group Which? trawled through hundreds of listings for headphones, fitness trackers and other popular tech products to check for telltale signs of suspicious reviews.

It found that the top-rated items all belonged to unfamiliar brands, including Aitalk and Itshiny, many of which had thousands of unverified reviews, showing no evidence of the reviewer having bought or used the product.

Another red flag was the number of items that had received a high number of five-star ratings posted in a short space of time.

When researchers analysed headphones, they found 71% had perfect ratings, while all the top-ranked items according to average customer score were produced by little-known brands.

Of 12,000 reviews reviews for these products, 87% were by unverified buyers. One pair of headphones made by a brand called Celebrat had 439 reviews, all of which were five-star, unverified, and posted on the same day.

Smartwatches offered similar results, with the top four products receiving 99% unverified reviews.

Natalie Hitchins, head of home products at Which? announced: “Our research suggests that Amazon is losing the battle against fake reviews, with shoppers bombarded by comments aimed at artificially boosting products from unknown brands.

“Amazon must do more to purge its websites of unreliable and fake reviews if it is to maintain the trust of its millions of customers. To avoid being misled and possibly buying a dud product, customers should always take reviews with a pinch of salt and look to independent and trustworthy sources when researching a purchase.”

Amazon responded with a statement saying: “[We] invest significant resources to protect the integrity of reviews in our store because we know customers value the insights and experiences shared by fellow shoppers. We have clear participation guidelines for both reviewers and selling partners and we suspend, ban and take legal action on those who violate our policies.”

Which? was unable to contact any of the brands cited in the report, or pinpoint the source of the suspected fake reviews.

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