Are Amazon Product Reviews Really Trustworthy?

While you’re asking about Amazon, you’re really asking about user reviews across the entire Web. The reality of the situation is that, unfortunately, there are very few online reviews that are entirely trustworthy because it’s impossible to know the author’s motivation. While Amazon is the most obvious, this conundrum proves true for every site that allows customers to submit reviews, and doubly so with influencers and social media sites.

In the early days of Amazon, I remember being at a bookstore and checking Amazon reviews before making purchase decisions. If the average review was poor, I’d typically skip my purchase. I still do that with some purchases, but am much more skeptical about what I read.

SELLERS GAME THE SYSTEM

At a certain point, authors realized that they could manipulate their book ranking by motivating fans to post overly glowing reviews. In fact, they can even manipulate the Amazon best-seller list. Ever received an email from your favorite author offering a big discount on their new book if you buy it on a specific day? That’s one common way authors trick the system seeking to gain best-seller status.

Manipulation isn’t limited to just books, lots of products — even apps! — now include a card inviting customers to write a positive review on Amazon. Heck, some restaurants offer free appetizers or desserts for Yelp or Google reviews.

The worst offenders in my book, though, are the vendors who have people deliberately leave bad reviews of competitors’ products. Products with higher star ratings get better visibility and are therefore more likely to garner good sales, so there’s some logic to it. But it’s certainly not ethical and it’s a pretty slimy business practice even if you can somehow justify it.

AMAZON FIGHTS BACK

To combat these scams, Amazon instituted a new program back in 2016 called the Verified Purchase program, where only people who purchase the product are allowed to review it. A definite help, but it doesn’t solve the problem, particularly for less expensive products.

Every day people are incentivized to buy products, leave 5-star reviews, then receive a gift card for the cost plus a few dollars from the seller. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to finding people willing to participate in these schemes.

Amazon also has a team that analyzes user-submitted reviews and claims that it blocks millions of bogus reviews every year. Perhaps that’s true, but let’s be honest, if I offer you a gift card from Best Buy to review my next book or gadget on Amazon, how would Amazon’s team know?

By the way, here’s what Amazon now explains about Verified Purchases. Notice it leaves the option of people who don’t buy the product on Amazon still reviewing it on Amazon:

The key is “Reviews without this label…”. Can they really be helpful?

LET’S NOT FORGET INFLUENCERS

And we haven’t even talked about influencers and how they’re often paid hundreds, or thousands of dollars to share their (secretly biased) opinions on social media channels. How many are good at disclosure? How many think that they can extoll the benefits of a product or service then bury “#sponsored” in a cluster of 25+ hashtags and feel they’ve properly disclosed their relationship?

Here’s what Instagram says. Not very focused on the user experience, though, is it?

What I suggest is that you take all reviews with that proverbial grain of salt: If someone’s over the moon about something pedestrian (like a charging cable: Why are there charging cables with over 45,000 reviews?) or loathes a mundane product (who bothers to complain about a coaster that isn’t perfectly flat when it only cost $3?), it’s suspicious. If there are fewer than thirty reviews, the disappointing truth is that they might all be bogus. Buyer beware.

To end on an up note, however, if there are lots of reviews then the overall sentiment is probably trustworthy, even if some individual reviews might be questionable. It’s still fascinating just how often every single product in a popular Amazon category is rated between 4.2 – 4.9, even across hundreds of products. Where are the 3’s? The 2’s?

The ultimate solution: Allocate the time to read more reviews to get a better sense of overall sentiment and you’ll likely get a good sense of the product in question. Good luck.

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Amazon since it was just a place to buy books, along with a lot more about shopping online, etc. Please check out my Amazon and Online Shopping Help area for more tutorials on this subject!