Those Internet Customer Reviews

Finally, someone is taking action against those phony on line reviews of products and businesses that we all read and pay too much attention to.  Amazon.com has filed a lawsuit accusing  more than 1,000 people of offering to post bogus glowing write ups for as little as $5 apiece. No wonder that dry tasteless burger that I ate at that trendy restaurant was reviewed so glowingly. Well, I never put too much faith in those kinds of reviews anyway.

The Amazon case has been filed in Washington state court because the false reports, both too positive and too negative, not only are obvious plants, but causes both business and consumers to play on a less than level playing field.  It is in response to what appears to be an ever increasing practice of some businesses to pay for fake reviews that masquerade as testimonials from ordinary people. Fake reviews are nothing new to online retailing, and Amazon is far from the only big company affected.  Just about every one in the U.S. has long known that Yelp's restaurant reviews and TripAdvisor's hotel ratings were so easy to post that many were not real.

But now a large retailer, Amazon, appears to be taken on the distortions of products consumers think have been reviewed impartially. It' the first attempt by a big company to stop the practice. Its lawsuit alleges that individuals would write five star reviews about products they never even tried, and plotted with product makers to get around Amazon safeguards that are meant to stop false reviewing and give users of the Amazon web site confidence in the reviews given there. In essence, Amazon is saying that if the government won't stop the false reviewing, we will.

The incentives to plant fraudulent reviews are attractive. About 45 percent of consumers consider product reviews when weighing an online purchase, according to Forrester Research. Two thirds of shoppers trust consumer opinions online, according to research by Nielsen. So for a struggling or small businesses, it can be more economical to pay for positive reviews than to pay to legitimately advertise the business. For example, a half star increase in a restaurant's online rating can increase the likelihood of securing, say, a 7 p.m. booking by 15 to 20 percent, that according to Gartner Research. So a restaurateur might be tempted to pay $250 for 50 positive reviews online in the hopes of raising that rating.

The big online sites like Amazon, Yelp and TripAdvisor have worked hard to thwart the planting of fake reviews, but in the internet world it's hard to stop phony ads. I can't even stop those Nigerians from sending me those mails telling me I have inherited 50 million dollars from my cousin the always recently deceased Nigerian king. No wonder the big companies have failed to stop phony review postings at their sites.

They employ computer algorithms and teams of investigators who scour reviews and delete suspicious entries. Often, only people who have paid for a product or service and been verified can post reviews. Yelp says that when suspicious reviews are found, the company puts a "consumer alert" badge on a company's Yelp site for 90 days warning consumers that reviews might be deceptive. If the problem persists, Yelp removes all reviews of the company. TripAdvisor says it has a team of 300 people using fraud detection techniques to weed out fake reviews. So they have been trying, but failing to stop the false review practices.

Despite that, experts in the field claim at least 10 to 15 percent of all product reviews are fake. Suing the businesses has been hard. That's why Amazon is going after the little people (you and me) who write the reviews. Amazon has already sued several web sites that offered to produce positive reviews for businesses. Amazon says the offenders are liable for breach of contract for violating Amazon's terms of service. Gee, I hope one day I don't get sued for writing so much stupidity here.