Falsified Amazon reviews lead to court action against perpetrators

Wednesday, October 21, 2015 - 13:15 by Mike Price

Amazon is finally fighting back against the problem of phoney reviews being posted of products sold on its e-commerce site. Now the retailer is taking over a thousand people to court over the matter in the US, according to the Telegraph.

The providing of fake product reviews is not just a problem for the organisations which are responsible for making the items themselves, but more pertinently for Amazon as a whole, since its reputation for providing a platform for reliable, safe shopping online is founded on consumer trust. And if customers cannot be sure if they are reading genuine user reviews of items or falsely positive missives paid for by unscrupulous third parties, this trust will be eroded.

The lawsuit is targeting a group of people who offer their services as fake review writers online, charging small amounts of cash in exchange for the posting of product coverage to Amazon, without ever actually having purchased or used the items in question.

This is not just a malicious practice which can heap false praise on products, but can also be exploited by competitors, who want to bad mouth rival products in an especially underhanded fashion.

Amazon is not the only major e-commerce site facing this kind of issue, with contemporaries like TripAdvisor also having to take action against companies set up specifically to doctor reviews and project an untrue image of businesses online.

At the moment, people place a lot of stock on customer reviews, often using them to determine whether or not they go through with making a purchase via safe shopping online. So now that Amazon is clearing up the mess left by shady operators in this area, the era of the professional fake reviews writer may finally be coming to an end.