--- Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 54% to 80% of online shoppers use consumer reviews before making a purchase
---43% of
travelers check out the online reviews of fellow travelers regarding the
flight, hotel, and destination experience.
---46% of
travellers post hotel reviews.
---Some
estimates are that as much as 15% - 20% of online reviews are fake.
Online
reviews in sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor and Angie’s List have been invaluable
for many but there are reasons to be wary. Many companies discreetly post their
own positive reviews, try to get negative reviews removed, and post critical
reviews of their competitors.
A plethora
of online businesses have sprung up offering to help companies with their
unfavorable reviews. Future Solutions claims to “Dispute bad reviews on behalf of
our clients.” They accomplish this by trying to get the comment removed for
violating the reviewing site’s guidelines and standards. Often the unhappy
customer is contacted and offered a refund or large discount in return for
eliminating or improving the review.
Some review
sites are much more reliable than others. Tripadvisor allows anyone to post
reviews – negative or positive – without proving that they have purchased the
product or service. Expedia does it right – only paying customers in good
standing can post reviews.
One of the
most widely used review sites, Yelp, uses an algorithm to sniff out and delete
suspicious reviews whose wording seems contrived and phony, such as language
that is excessively promotional. On average twenty-two percent of reviews are
scrapped. Yelp’s content guidelines:
“Conflicts
of interest: Your contributions should be unbiased and objective. For example,
you shouldn’t write reviews of your own business or employer, your friends’ or
relatives’ business, your peers or competitors in your industry, or businesses
in your networking group. Business owners should not ask customers to write
reviews.” http://www.yelp.com/guidelines
Another
popular review site, Angie’s List, is subscription based and has possibly the
most rigorous standards. The site requires “commentators to provide their real
names and affirm that their feedback reflects firsthand experiences. The firm
also puts itself through an external audit each year to make sure that
advertisers aren’t receiving preferential treatment on the site or that ratings
aren’t being manipulated.”
Watch out
for litigious Amazon! They are correctly sensitive over inauthentic reviews on
their site. The mammoth company has filed several lawsuits against sites that
sell 4 or 5 star reviews to unscrupulous firms. They are also currently in the
courts against 1,000 people who allegedly wrote positive reviews for only $5!
(fiverr.com users are you listening!)
Many
positive reviews, especially blog posts, are legally legit but not beyond
suspicion. Firms offer free or heavily discounted items for an “honest” review.
Honestfew.com brokers such deals. Their site states:
“Get free or
heavily discounted products in exchange for your honest and unbiased reviews.
HonestFew is a tight-knit community that connects growing sellers with savvy
buyers who love to review products. Whether you’re a customer looking for
deals, or a seller looking to skyrocket your business… there’s something for
everyone!” https://honestfew.com/
The world’s largest travel site, TripAdvisor, contains “350 million reviews and opinions
covering 6.5 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions.” How do they
detect fraud?
“Unfortunately, we can’t tell you exactly how we do it, since that might
offer potential offenders a roadmap to subvert our system. We can tell you that
we dedicate significant time and resources ensuring that the content on
TripAdvisor reflects the real experiences of real travelers. We have quality
assurance specialists who have brought a wide range of professional experience
to enhance our prevention methods and our team spends thousands of hours every
year ensuring the integrity of content on TripAdvisor. We also use automated
tools that help flag questionable content for review, and our large and
passionate community of millions of travelers keeps an eye out on our site as
well.” https://www.tripadvisor.ca/vpages/review_mod_fraud_detect.html
The Clark Howard web site recommends:
“Look for at least 2 dozen reviews for a given business. You want to see a lot of opinions
before you can know that there's a credible trend happening. A handful of stray
reviews won't cut it. Generally, at least 2 dozen reviews is a good
guideline.” http://www.clark.com/should-you-trust-online-review
The
popularity and ubiquity of social media does skew reviews on occasion. Daren
Fonda writes in Kiplinger’s Personal
Finance:
“Bombarded
with information online, we tend to rely on social media cues – such as article
‘shares’ or ‘likes’ – to form our own judgements. These signals can trigger
herding around a product, and people often amplify the effect by contributing
their own likes and shares. What’s more, sites such as Facebook and Twitter use
algorithms that interpret social signals and our own online behavior to curate
the information that reaches us. It then becomes harder to determine if we’re
evaluating a product based on our independent thinking or on signals bopping
around in our social media bubble.”
The Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides:
“Endorsements
are an important tool for advertisers and they can be persuasive to
consumers. But the law says they also
have to be truthful and not misleading.
The FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in
Advertising are guidelines designed to help advertisers of all stripes – TV,
print, radio, blogs, word-of-mouth marketing
– make sure that they meet this standard. For example, advertisers are advised that
using unrepresentative testimonials may be misleading if they are not accompanied
by information describing what consumers can generally expect from use of the
product or service. In addition, the
Endorsement Guides let endorsers know that they shouldn’t talk about their
experience with a product if they haven’t tried it, or make claims about a
product that would require proof they don’t have.
“The
Endorsement Guides also state that if there is a connection between the
endorser and the marketer of a product that would affect how people evaluate
the endorsement, it should be disclosed.
The Guides are not regulations, and so there are no civil penalties
associated with them. But if advertisers don’t follow the guides, the FTC may
decide to investigate whether the practices are unfair or deceptive under the
FTC Act.” https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising/advertisement-endorsements
Primary
Source
Darren
Fonda, “Can You Trust Online Reviews?” Kiplinger’s
Personal Finance, July 2016 http://www.kiplinger.com/article/spending/T062-C000-S002-can-you-trust-online-reviewers.html
Crackdown on fake online reviews
Fake online reviews: How easily can
you buy a reputation?
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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