

A Fake Amazon Reviewer Confesses - boggles
http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2009/07/09/delonghis-strange-brew-tracking-down-fake-amazon-raves/

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DanHulton
I was expecting a big, tearful "OMG I did it and I am sad, forgive me" or
something, but actually, there was nobody confessing to anything. It was a
story about how a fake reviewer was found out, no more.

Misleading title.

~~~
whughes
The reviewer's techniques aren't even particularly interesting. It's no
surprise that she (presumably) was caught out, since anyone could have
verified that bias with a quick glance. I'm more interested in learning about
people who do this for profit, how many of them there really are, and how they
manage to stay hidden.

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dhbradshaw
Check out the 1110 reviews of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gallon, 128 fl oz:
[http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-
Gallon-128/product-r...](http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-
Gallon-128/product-reviews/B00032G1S0)

~~~
noodle
or the classic three wolf moon tshirt

[http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Short-Sleeve-
Black/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Short-Sleeve-
Black/dp/B000NZW3KC/)

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anigbrowl
_So the Atlanta lawyer did what many of us would – he surfed to Amazon.com and
began_ trolling _user reviews for high-end espresso makers._

This brought a completely different scenario to mind from that which the
writer intended :)

~~~
Tichy
Might be an interesting strategy - write bad reviews of the products you are
interest in, and see where the rejection of your trolling is the fiercest.
Might be the most passionate users there :-)

~~~
philwelch
That explains the reviews on, for instance, any book authored by Ayn Rand.

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marze
Remember, only the dumb ones get caught. Fake reviews put up by clever PR
firms would not be discovered so easily.

This also shows that Amazon doesn't even do the most basic of automated checks
for fakes.

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Flemlord
I can never bring myself to trust Amazon reviews. I'm a big Consumer Search
fan, tho.

<http://www.consumersearch.com/>

~~~
dagw
I'll only use amazon reviews for books, but for that I found them to be great.
I don't think I've ever bought a book the turned out to be very different from
how I expected it to be based on the amazon book reviews. The thing I've found
is to read the 1-3 star reviews. For some reason they tend to go into more
detail about the book than the 5 star reviews.

~~~
billswift
I read 1-star reviews for entertainment, but don't trust them, they are often
hilariously inaccurate.

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hristov
The only thing surprising here is that she was so easy to discover. Does
Amazon require people to use real names? Do they actually check IDs?

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edw519
I gave up on Amazon reviews years ago when I noticed that almost everything
had 10 5-star reviews the first couple of days. Mom, dad, brothers, sisters,
aunt, uncle, secretary, mailman, bartender, yea - that oughta do it.

~~~
ricree
I do like that they make it easy to get to the best negative reviews. In
general, I find that they tend to be the most useful by far.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Even a negative review can be spun to make the product seem more positive. Ex:
"Two stars. Works great and beats the other XYZ brand by a mile, but it
doesn't have [random obscure feature that no one else would ever care about],
so I'll stick with the XYZ brand." (see what I did there?)

The other problem is that negative reviews are an open mic for people to
complain about whatever, and they tend toward the extreme. Ex "One star: Mine
broke, and only a few months out of warranty. Piece of junk."

How many people (what %) ever leave comments when the product is just
mediocre?

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lawrence
A fake user review on the Internet? Say it ain't so. Surprised this made the
WSJ.

