Amazon Cracks Down On Incentivized Reviews

[deathmetal]

Some of you may remember me warning against this practice:

The ban was meant to address the growing problem of less trustworthy reviews that had been plaguing the retailer's site, leading to products with higher ratings than they would otherwise deserve. Incentivized reviews are those where the vendor offers free or discounted products to reviewers, in exchange for recipients writing their "honest opinion" of the item in an Amazon review. However, data has shown that these reviewers tend to write more positive reviews overall, with products earning an average of 4.74 stars out of five, compared with an average rating of 4.36 for non-incentivized reviews. Over time, these reviews proliferated on Amazon, and damaged consumers' trust in the review system as a whole.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/11/24/1655249/amazon-makes-good-on-its-promise-to-delete-incentivized-reviews

 

[mackeson]

I've always been suspicious of those reviews even though many state something to the effect of, "Full disclaimer, I recieved a discount on this product for my unbiased review." Seems a bit shady to me. Some products have this for more than half their reviews. I'm glad Amazon is cracking down on them.