We can't have legitimate consumer reviews interfering with our profits, now can we?

I used to be part of Amazon's program where you get free items to review. It's even worse than people think.

I left negative or neutral reviews that just don't appear on the listing, or the seller will contact you directly offering you more free things to upgrade your review, or they'll just relist their crappy broken product and hope the reviewers write positive reviews (a lot of reviewers would just get free stuff and then write something positive without actually testing it).

Amazon reviews are totally unreliable, and even those sites and extensions that try to determine if a product's reviews are legitimate aren't very effective.

I just ask people directly to share their experiences now or create a post on Lemmy because it's so bad.

Also what they'll do is the product listing switcheroo, where they'll sell some commodity item that's not necessarily crap and get a ton of positive reviews generated for it, legitimate or otherwise. Then the seller will update the product listing to refer to a completely different item, but all the reviews from the old product are remain attached to it.

A lot of online retailers also filter out negative reviews for things. Sometimes this is because they're shyster bastards, but sometimes it's because the manufacturer(s) of said items bully them into doing it. Two I have personal experience with are Cyclegear/Revzilla, and Rocky Mountan ATVMC. Both of these retailers will refuse to publish negative or middling reviews for their private label "bands" in order to make themselves look better. That's Tusk for Rocky Mountain, and Bilt/Sedici for Cyclegear/Revzilla.
- The switcheroo is why I always start with the product name and model if I review anything. Amazon reviews are designed to be gamed this way though, so you should always check reviews elsewhere.
  
  This can work in your favour sometimes as well. In the past I've complained that the product sent to me did not have the same brand or model name as the listing. I got a full refund ($110) and I kept the product, which has actually turned out to be pretty good. You gotta make companies pay for anti-consumer practices.
I wasn’t even in any program, but once I left a bad review on a screen protector for my phone, and the company offered me $45 to remove it. That’s how much they care.
- Take the $45 and leave the review up
At this point I only trust reviews that have pictures or videos of the product.

FaaS - Fraud as a service...

These headlines just flow right into each other

So, everyone else finds a product with only 5 star reviews to be suspicious, right?

My strategy is to skim the 1-2 star reviews to see if they have any legitimate complaints or if its just personal bullshit.
- Extra fun when the reviews are for some other product.
  
  Product: A sock
  
  Review; 4/5 this didn't come with batteries like the description said it would, but the motor works great for my model car.
- Yeah like "flashlight is pretty bright but the switch quit after 2 months" and if I see several reviews talling about failed switches I kmow what's up. A good product will have a 1 star review talking about "flashlight tastes terrible and hurt my teeth."
- Awesome product, but delivery took too long so now I can't gift it to my kid for his birthday. 1 star.
It depends. If it is 2 reviews it might be real, if it is 200 it is extremely unlikely.
- Even 2 reviews is kinda sketchy, because it means the listing for that memory foam keyboard wrist rest is either scrubbed of negative reviews, or it's only been up for a few days because it's a shit product that has been sold under 804 different brand names in the past four years; they just switch up the branding every time someone gets the message through that the wrist rest is made out of leaded asbestos and it makes your lungs antisocial which is just another way of scrubbing negative reviews.

Glad fiverr fixed the problem on their platform.

Just kidding!

There are also "reputation management" services that offer to manipulate your Google listings, so that bad things about your company will get pushed down and the things you want people to see will get pushed up. They're not cheap. Whether or not they work, I don't know, but I would assume that some of them are capable of doing what they say.

Monsanto had a whole ass "fusion center" with ex-intelligence agents doing research and attacks on people doing research into Monsanto or their products.

It goes so far beyond reputation management now.
probably by participating in seo spam

From the company that brought you "Fire Alarrm Silencer - because you don't want that annoying noise in your ear, right?"

I'm homeless and my cat is gone, but the product works exactly as advertised. 4 out of 5 stars.

I have known this for a long time

I got most of my negative reviews removed without reason on different platforms. Even a negative review on an online store removed by trustedpilot on request of said online store.

I had the same happen with TrustPilot. They asked me to substantiate my negative review, which I did. The vendor then claimed I wasn't even a customer so TrustPilot removed my review, despite receiving copies of my invoice and correspondence. These review websites seem to frequently be fraudulent at their core.

One of the reasons I order almost nothing online anymore