Amazon US has filed a lawsuit against over 1000 unidentified people over the issue of fake reviews on its website.
Amazon US has filed a lawsuit against over 1000 unidentified people over the issue of fake reviews being posted on its website. According to a report by the Guardian, Amazon claims that 1,114 defendants sold their services for fake reviews on the website Fiverr, a site that allows for “buying and selling minor tasks.” Interestingly Amazon is not suing Fiverr.
Fiverr on its part, has acknowledged that its services were used for sale of reviews on Amazon. The complaint filed by Amazon is against Jay Gentile, a California resident and the fake reviewers who are named as “John Does.” You can read the full complaint here.
It goes on to give examples of how fake reviews for a USB cable were posted on the site. One of the fake reviews read, “Review: I was kinda doubtful about the “electroluminescent technology” of this USB cable. That it actually would work. But it actually did. Not only did the blue light function as they should, they were clear and bright, plus they turned off when the charge was finished. It’s rad…” Amazon’s says the fake reviewers are misleading “customers and tarnishing Amazon’s brand for their own profit and the profit of a handful of dishonest sellers and manufacturers.” It also points out that some of websites selling fake reviews even told the interested parties to ensure that some of the fake reviewers did ‘verified purchases.’ Amazon’s complaint notes, “Defendants offer to provide fake ‘verified reviews’ for a premium charge, even though the reviewer has not actually obtained the item. In order to avoid detection by Amazon, Defendants permit (and even encourage) a party buying inauthentic reviews to send an empty package to the reviewer in an effort to mislead Amazon into believing that a product has actually been shipped and thereby calling the review “verified.’” Verified reviews are by those buyers who have actually bought the product but it appears that the scammers found a way around this as well. According to the Guardian report, Amazon plans to use “algorithmic filtering to tackle the issue of fake product reviews and inflated star ratings.”