According to a story in the SeattleTimes, later picked up by the BBC News page, Amazon is bringing suit against
three different companies that had been selling a service that provides
positive reviews on Amazon for the client’s products. Initially most of these
companies were attempting to claim that nothing they did was wrong, let alone
illegal, but I have trouble believing that this will go over in court well,
either, given that the companies are called things like “buyamazonreviews.com.”
Neither will the fact that the various review providers have been advertising that
they can get the customer all of the 5-star reviews they want at the very
reasonable price of $18 to $22 per (fake) review…
One of the less certain
aspects of the case is whether it will remain a purely civil affair, or if
there were also be criminal charges involved. Normally, Amazon will not post reviews
from anyone who isn’t a verified purchaser of the product – that is, if they
don’t have any record of your buying the product, they won’t let you post a
comment about that product. In the lawsuit against “buyamazonreviews.com”
Amazon is also claiming that the defendants have been using fake purchases and
fake shipments – buying product from their clients through a series of dummy
accounts and then receiving “shipments” containing only empty boxes. The allegedly
faked reviews are already dodgy, from a legal standpoint, but the companies
responsible for them can (and apparently do) claim that they are just finding
satisfied customers and getting them to post positive reviews of the product.
If Amazon can prove that the same companies are actively circumventing their
verification system using faked purchases and fake shipments, it is going to be
much harder to convince anyone that this isn’t fraudulent…
By themselves, a large number
of five-star reviews aren’t likely to hurt anyone; Amazon will benefit from its
share of additional sales, the company selling the products will benefit from
the sales, and the review generation firm will make money on the deal. As a
method to convince online shoppers that a given product is far more popular
than its sales would indicate this strategy is far more problematic. And if the
company making the product is able to secure extra sales using this method, but
is then able to avoid demands for refunds when the product turns out to be less
desirable than the fake reviews made it appear, then they have effectively
defrauded the purchaser as well as discrediting the entire Amazon online review
system…
Amazon contends that
confidence in their review system helps to create confidence in their
customers, which in turn makes it much more likely that electronic shoppers
will chose to purchase goods from Amazon. If someone is allowed to make a
mockery of the Amazon review system, the company claims, these result will be
much lower consumer confidence, much lower sales of everything, and a
significant cost to the company. If the court concurs this could be a very
costly mistake for the review generation firms. If the Washington State
Attorney General or the relevant U.S. Attorney’s office take notice and end up
prosecuting this as a criminal case, things could get significantly worse than
that…
I find it interesting that
since this litigation began, two of the four companies named in the suit
have shut down their websites and disappeared completely, one is refusing to
respond to requests for comment by the media (and may also be in the process of
shutting down and going away), and the fourth is trying to claim that they
haven’t done anything wrong, including not breaking any laws. But I suppose we
will have to wait and see what the jury (or juries) decide on this one…
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