Faking reviews? You should fret about more than illegality A recent newspaper investigation uncovered evidence that companies are paying agencies to create false online reviews for their services. But what those companies may not realise is that this is illegal and could ruin their businesses. The practice is called astroturfing, because it fakes grass-roots support, and it is not …
For companies to give out free stuff to bloggers in return for "advertorial" gushing reviews.
Due to how well blogger indexes in google searches, the internet is awash with mummy bloggers loving up everything from deep fat fryers to Asus Transformers, all given away in exchange for reviews.
of advertisements with liberal pinch of salt, I expect that there was often more truth to be found in the Daily/Sunday Sport.
"Breaking consumer laws looks bad. Deceiving your customers looks worse. To do both could spell the end of your business."
To do either SHOULD spell the end of the business or at the very least lead to very public humiliation and a very large fine.
I dont even think getting caught will spell the end of a business.
Customers are too fickle and have too short memories. Sony should be about to go out of business but it wont, its shareprice will hardly budge and people will still buy products.
If a Hotel is caught astroturfing its reviews, it will look bad for a few days but no one will cancel bookings and, importantly, in a week or two no one (except a few IT-oriented types with vicious memories) will remember the incident.
When was the last time people stopped buying products after the ASA found them guilty of false advertising - they just change the advert and every one carries on as normal. Impact on sales is so negligible that it become an acceptable tactic for the company.
Customers are deceived all the time. Companies are caught doing it all the time. Not enough people care.
very much so, not only that, you have hit the nail on the head with the short memory or perhaps attention span of the public in general.
We are all slowly being screwed over by degrees. If it's not corporations and big business it's the antics of government and politicians. It seems once the umbrage from the latest outrage has subsided and the new status quo accepted, along comes something else that exploits the consumer, erodes liberties or just take the piss.
... if the company is caught astroturfing, and there's a nice site somewhere with good page rank that records instances of said astroturfing, I think you'll find the memory will live on for quite some time - hopefully for as long as people type 'CompanyX Review' into a search engine.
"Sony should be about to go out of business but it wont, its shareprice will hardly budge and people will still buy products."
Why is that? The PS3 hacking lawsuit, the PSN network data breach, the battery problems from years ago? It's a $25B company that makes many varied products; batteries, cameras, laptops, game consoles, music, movies, etc. I'd be shocked if a fault in one segment made even a ripple through the rest of the company. Perhaps if it had, they would have handled the PSN breach better and wouldn't have had their music website in Greece or the Sony Ericsson site in Canada cracked open. Seriously, did I miss something?
That said, you're absolutely right that most folks have the attention span of a gnat and buy things with little thought or reason. The saying no such thing as bad press is too often true and accounts for why simple brand recognition will sell nearly anything from pole to pol.
"It's a $25B company that makes many varied products; batteries, cameras, laptops, game consoles, music, movies, etc. I'd be shocked if a fault in one segment made even a ripple through the rest of the company."
Which is why it doesnt care and wont care.
Any segment of its business can piss off customers as much as it wants because it knows that the overall effect will be almost non-existent.
People will still buy a Sony camera and send off their personal details on the warranty card, they wont stop to think that this is the company that almost deliberately fails to protect it.
The end result of this is that there is no economic incentive for Sony (*) to spend money to protect its customer data. They know that when it breaches, they say "sorry", concoct some story about how fantastic the hackers must have been and move on.
Customers on the other hand, get to be in the position of paying for a product and then suffering the consequences. The "free market" should enable customers to express discontent by their spending habits but it rarely works that way - or the public doesnt give enough of a toss about its own data...
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* not just Sony but its easier than listing every megacorp....
This is the sort of socially responsible reporting and analysis for which The Register is rightfully praised. Clear, concise, weighing both moral and commercial considerations, and coming out on the side of the little man.
Well done!. I've recommended The Register to all my friends!
(There, I've left a favourable review. Now, please release my old granny and little puppy from the costody of the BOFH)
When I was (a bit) younger, I signed up for a site that would pay you to post 'reviews' to your personal blog. I never quite felt that I could abandon my principles for £5 a review, but I did wonder about doing a name and shame of all the companies I knew were doing it (and that's only the ones I got 'tasks' from)
At the time, never occurred to me the 'tasks' could be illegal but was clearly very unethical which would be why I didn't earn a penny from that venture.
Perhaps I should dig those emails out
is that even the 'professional' writers have never done or been to the place being reviewed. So are therefor not in a position to write a review in the first place.
For example, would you think it a good idea if I wrote a review about your handle, NomNomNom? From that I can deduce you are an overweight virgin, with BO and small genitals. And look, I've never met you or know who you are. But I wrote it professionally, so that's OK then.
I think you miss my point. In my spare time I do NOT want to be listening to the complaints of the wingeing masses.
If I per chance wanted to read reviews for a hotel, the last thing I would want to read was a series of amateur, poorly spelt, run-of-the-mill dry tone scrawls using facebook-style grammar and complaining about such mundanities as "stains on the carpet" and "no smile on the porter".
What I am looking for in a review is an enjoyable, professional piece outlining the merits of the place I will visit. A foray into the atmosphere and aura of the place told with a flowing pen if you will. The kind of thing that is enjoyable for light reading over tea.
If that means companies must hire professional writers to produce reviews from now on then so be it. Not only does this create jobs but it raises the bar in society full of low standards. In fact if I had it my way shoddy reviews replete with spelling and grammatical errors would be deleted from these so-called "review" sites.
What I look for in a review is an honest account from someone who has experienced / bought / used the product or service I'm potentially interested in using / doing / buying.
I'd much rather it be badly written but truthful than professionally written but fabricated.
Otherwise I'd just read the adverts.
I think it is you who misses the point.
I'll use a recent hotel visit as an example.
The hotel's own blurb (or "review" as you would call it) talked of a superbly decorated, modern hotel with great views over a thriving city. On the strength of their "reviews" I would use it to put up a family member or client I wanted to impress.
My review (and, incidentally that of a stranger whose review I read after the fact) would be: Great location but grubby rooms with adequate bathroom and dirty carpets. I would stay there but only if it were the cheapest (it was) and I certainly wouldn't put anyone up there if I were trying to impress them.
Without customer reviews nobody would be able to tell this particular 4-star hotel apart from a number of much better ones in the same part of the same city. This would be a shame, because the hotel isn't always cheaper than its much-better rivals.
You are so sensitive and delicate that you would rather read reviews of clean hotel rooms, at the risk of being confronted with the reality of grubby rooms later on???
Most people would much rather read about roaches from a remote, and then take steps to avoid the premises hosting them. Rather than making their acquaintance in the flesh, after having paid to share their lodgings. In fact, guess what, that's precisely why I read reviews.
FWIW, my shortcut to reviews nowadays is often to look at the lowest ratings first. More often that not, badly written or not, you can tell if someone is just an habitual whiner or whether there is really a problem with the service/product being reviewed.
What you want then is not reviews, but well written marketing material.
They are two different things. reviews are written by people who have experienced what is being reviewed, marketing is written by marketing people paid to write nice things about the experience, who may not have experienced it.
Whilst many reviews may be poorly written, at least they are (or should be - see article) honest. Honesty is not necessary a word often associated with marketing materials.
= people paid to visit places, experience their services, then give an honest opinion.
Reviews written by professionals = people paid to write the reviews that the customer wants.
Yes, internet forums etc. are full of badly written rubbish, and they will generally be whingeing (people rarely feel the need to comment on a satisfactory experience) but that's not really the point of this article,.
As AC 9:24 alluded it's far more difficult to get positive reviews. Service would really have to be top notch (usually at great cost) for many to care enough to write a positive review.
In the hospitality industry this usually means giving out free room upgrades or other freebies, but it's not sustainable to do this always and for everyone. Plus people who read the review but don't get the upgrades get disappointed.
Even in a well run company you'll get one or the other customer who will decide to throw a tantrum for some reason and post a negative review.
We even have the case where, as said in the article, it's actually your competitor writing the bad reviews: "in some cases, could discredit rival businesses."
So given this how are business supposed to protect their reputation?
Luckily most astroturfers are lazy feckless fools and review normally comprise of comments in inappropriate places stating things like -
Cooking forum -
1 -I had teh greatest oil change ever at Borat's lube and dismantling shop Bolton 0757567887 it was the greatest thing ever. My car now goes faster and uses no fuel
2 - Yes, I too went to Borat's lube and dismantling shop Bolton 0757567887 and my car is also much better and faster
Larger companies may be doing something more sophisticated, but I doubt it.
... severely restricting marketing in general: it is essentially propaganda, and, to add insult to injury, the customer bears the cost of being misinformed and manipulated. A practical measure would be banning broadcast advertising, that is, all advertising which the recipient has not actively sought to receive. This would allow the useful aspect of providing actual information while eliminating most of the useless or outright harmful drivel. Also, this would level the playing field of established companies and newcomers to some extent.
With high hopes given their "Biting the hand the feeds IT" motto and "Integrity: we've heard of it"
What I found was a bunch of pages with decaying HTML and morally smug articles about how it's wrong to astroturf. Some other articles even ring as being partly true.
To say I was disappointed would be a massive understatement. It's shocking too see such double standards and actual reporting going on. No IT bikini clad lady of the week feature either. This is 2011 isn't it?
I should have stayed at The Inquirer and T3 instead.
Have you considered you probably could have earned even more, by finding who is behind the company concerned, making a list of some of the companies that it works for, getting proof that you didn't have to go on the day and then writing an article for one of the publications or TV programmes that specialise in exposing this sort of scoundrel ?
Or maybe bogus-review-busting could become the next major olympics sport!
Yes, did consider some kind of exposé, but too much effort. Ended up just reporting the job offer to the site admins.
And to clarify, no, I don't write reviews for payment. The job alert just came through under a much wider category that I subscribe to.
- Cut out the agencies. A few years ago the authorities in Malaysia tried to stamp out the apparently standard practice of companies simply handing pre-written reviews for their products/services to journos along with a well stuffed brown envelope. A brief stylistic touch up and they were good to go, and, I suppose, had a lot more time to hang around guzzling freebies at press launches.
A quick flick through the supplements of most UK papers might suggest it's already caught on here.
online or offline, are not worth 6 inches of piss in the snow.
So here's what I do:
1. buy the product
2. review it myself
3. send it back if I don't like it
Fairly simple thing that, its called having rights.
Nothing you buy these days is as described. Buy the 5 most likely candidates and send 4 of them back. Until marketing folks learn to stop lying so fucking blatantly, their employers will just have to deal with the massive volume of returns that they are generating.
Pay by credit card and you don't even have to risk any of your own money.
Once again, it's called rights. They're not just for criminals and bureaucrats, you can have them too!
"Nothing you buy these days is as described. Buy the 5 most likely candidates and send 4 of them back. Until marketing folks learn to stop lying so fucking blatantly, their employers will just have to deal with the massive volume of returns that they are generating."
... and you have the time / energy to do that - wish I did.
Buying five items, choosing one and sending the rest back? Do it often enough and you will regret it at some point.
Sooner or later someone is going to go bust, or have admin problems, or refuse to refund you, and you will have serious hassle getting your money back.
Or the item will get lost en route, or you will be out when it is delivered and find a note telling you to pick it up from a depot 20 miles away. Or you will open the package and find it is the wrong item, but try convincing the supplier...
If the items are stolen, damaged or destroyed while in your possession, you can't return them and your insurance, or card company, might a a little suspicious if you claim for 5 brand new laptops.
Do you think that all the CC refunds aren't going to affect your credit rating? Everything else does. And will a retailer carry on sending stuff out to you forever if you always return it? You'll be in a list, and if its a shared list eventually you won't be able to shop anywhere that anyone has heard of.
Mail order is a pain, placing five times the orders you need to is a world of pain.
Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006:
(1)A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b)intends, by making the representation—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
Paying someone to post a false review would very probably come within the definition of fraud.
Whether the Crown Prosecution Service would actually prosecute is another matter...
Of course there's nothing to stop any private person, or association, bringing a prosecution, provided they have enough evidence to show a case to answer.
Some companies "encourage" their employees to write poor reviews of competitor's products. Everybody treats professional reviewers/bloggers/columnists as VIPs. Most large companies have lists of their celebrity customers, who instantly get gold-plated service, just in case they might mention something bad about the supplier. So every organisation tries it's hardest to distort our perceptions of their, or competitors products - that's what advertising is.
So really false-positive reviews is just another form of online advertising. it's also worldwide, so there's little or nothing that a largely toothless and ineffectual watchdog in one single country can do. Which is rather lucky for newspapers, too - as they are amongst the worst at exaggerating the importance of their stories and inflating minor upsets into major headlines.
Maybe we just need to keep reminding ourselves that very little online content contains supportable facts (on either side) and that advertisements have always trodden the thin line between barely supportable and outright lies.
There's also a long and dishonourable history in publishing of writers of rival books rubbishing someone else's work so as to promote their own sales. So I guess it balances out.
As someone who has written the occasional book, I'm always happy to give a glowing review to someone from the same publishing house - if the book merits it. Otherwise I politely decline to do the review at all.
Obviously it'd be libelous of me to suggest that all of the positive reviews of RED Driving School at http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews184354.html are fake, so I shan't do that. It is kinda funny how all of the positive reviews follow the same template and use much of the same wording though, don't you think?
Amazing woman, apparently speed reads about 12 books a day and post up reviews on Amazon at the same ratio each day.
Except all the books get 5 star reviews and often the review has nothing to do with the actual book.
Yet Amazon has allowed this for years and years.
Total bollocks.
Another great article from The Register. I love it. I use this site a lot and its never wrong!!!1! Its always got interesting articles and thoughtful commentators, and even the ads are tasteful and dont interfere with the overall enjoyment of the site. Its classic Red/White styling is bold, distinctive and easy on the eye, and navigation within the site is so simple even my mom can do it. I showed it to all my friends and now they all use it too.
Walt Whitman reviewed his own books, a lot. (Astroturfing "Leaves of Grass", what a concept.) I don't know that he ever got caught at it. Anthony Burgess got caught giving a fairly neutral review to one of his own novels, and got flamed.
Sometimes people seem to do it from simple laziness. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/your-money/24haggler.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=web%20site%20testimonials&st=cse
I was trying to find a local spa for my wife so I could give her a day out. One place had several good reviews, two of them recommended to ask for a particular masseuse called Maxi in poorly written English (uneducated-style, rather than foreign-style). The reviews were written by users named Maxi1 and Maxi2.
I suppose that even politicians get to vote for themselves, but only once.
I like it when the owner writes a review to try to answer complaints in the other reviews and they give themselves only 1 star!
Our governor here in Florida (the one with the uncanny resemblance to Lord Voldemort) got nailed astroturfing about a week ago by one of the more reputable news organizations. He had his cronies draft fake letters of praise that were sent via email to 7 Florida newspapers and one caught onto it.
Now Id better run to Bimini before the Florida Secret Police Inc. drag me off to one of the Dark Lord's newly privatized prisons.
In case anyone's interested in specifics check out http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_local_namesblog/2011/06/rick-scott-cares-he-really-does-care.html
Recently bought a window masking product online to help me sleep better.
Now, this is clearly a mom & pop company. They manufacture & ship themselves, have a really good idea and a great implementation and I am quite happy with the end result.
However... my research before buying wasn't very encouraging. Their product only shows up in about a dozen reviews on as many websites. All with suspiciously similar user names, kate something, saying something "I am a nurse/policewoman/night shift worker and product XXX has saved my sleep, they are so great".
I really wish they understood that this kind of sock puppet review, easily figured out in 5 minutes of Googling, because that is how you look for reviews, is a bigger turn-off than a lack of reviews. What carried the day for me was that they had no BBB complaints listed and that their domain registration actually matched the company info. That and knowing Visa would likely cover my butt if called upon. But if anybody else had had a similar product, I would have bought it there instead.
I suspect it's not so much the company itself that should be shot as whatever brain-dead special-needs dodo 'tard they used that passed themselves off as a web marketing specialist.
and we sometimes get astroturfers. In fact, we love them. Their clumsy efforts are very quickly spotted by the other members and we then have a lot of fun at the astroturfer's expense (e.g. posting photos of real astroturf, sock puppets, belittling whatever product they're trying to pimp) before we kick them out. Sometimes we leave the discussion there for all time as a warning to others, while carefully deleting any URLs to avoid the astroturfer benefiting from a higher Google PageRank.
Astroturfing on a moderated and vaguely intelligent forum is counter-productive. It might work in an anarchic environment like Usenet, but it just vanishes amid the noise.
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