Fake 111 continued

Chancing across the report about fake reviews on Amazon at reference 1, a correspondent has drawn my attention to reference 2, from which I got to reference 3 and 4. With Kape being a rather tricky looking operation based in the Isle of Man, out of harm's way. It is not obvious to me that they are not in the business of helping people with something to hide keeping that something hidden.

But it does seem that someone has unearthed a large cache of records of people being paid to put nice products reviews on Amazon: '... open ElasticSearch database ... a treasure trove of direct messages between Amazon vendors and customers willing to provide fake reviews in exchange for free products. In total, 13,124,962 of these records ... potentially implicating more than 200,000 people in unethical activities ...'. ElasticSearch is probably the service offered at reference 6. 

I had never previously heard of any of this.

Although, as it happens, the FT published another piece on the business of reviews on Amazon yesterday. See reference 5.

To my mind there are various things that could be done about all this. More or less impossible to root out all abuse, but one can bear down on it. And I use 'Amazon' as a proxy for all large scale carriers of reviews.

All Amazon reviewers and all Amazon suppliers have to provide an email address and to service that address, responding in a reasonable way to reasonable emails. 

All Amazon reviews should include a declaration to the effect that the reviewer has paid a regular price for the service or product being reviewed and has not been rewarded in any other way. Reviewers who get given product to review have to find some other way to publish.

No Amazon reviewer is allowed to post more than one review a day.

Serial offenders will be black listed. With offenses including false declarations.

Consumers should not use reviews by people that they do not know or on websites that they do not know. So in the olden days, one used to trust product reviews in reputable magazines like 'Which'. Less sure about specialist magazines about things like cars or canal boats, where things are much more murky, with their journalists getting all kinds of gifts, perks and services from suppliers. One such used to inhabit TB - and he had lots of yarns about it all.

Moans about poor service, say poor wrapping, damaged goods or slow response, can be dealt with, more or less privately, by Amazon, as I believe they are now. If you are a supplier and you clock up too many complaints of this sort, they will mark you down.

That apart, for myself, I do not read these reviews and I do not make any use of them.

PS: the first advertisement for ElasticSearch has already arrived in my email box.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/fake-111.html.

Reference 2: https://www.safetydetectives.com/blog/amazon-reviews-leak-report/.

Reference 3: https://www.safetydetectives.com/. From where I took the snap above. But what is the box labelled '£GBP' for? GBP being an abbreviation which I usually read as Great British pounds. Aka pounds sterling - for which Wikipedia offers various explanations, none of them anything to do with the similarly spelt place in Scotland. Is something tricky going on here too?

Reference 4: https://www.kape.com/. The people who run the safety detectives.

Reference 5: UK competition watchdog to probe Google and Amazon over fake reviews: Competition and Markets Authority says tech groups may not be doing enough to protect consumers - Kate Beioley/FT - 2021. 25th June 2021.

Reference 6: https://www.elastic.co/elasticsearch/service.