There’s a great article in the Wall Street Journal today about how an employee at an espresso-machine manufacturer was writing wildly positive reviews for the company’s products on Amazon.com.
Now this is nothing new — there have long been reports of employees and business owners writing fake reviews, either praising their own businesses or dising their competitors’.
What IS surprising is that the major review sites haven’t really figured out a way to ensure the integrity of reader-written reviews.
Even Amazon.com, which seems to read my mind every time I visit by displaying products I’m likely to buy, hasn’t figured it out, even though there’s a lot of sketchy stuff in their reviews, like people reviewing several similiar products from the same company, as in the case cited by the Journal.
Many people are now using reviews to choose moving companies, which I generally applaud.
However, you need to make them just one part of your entire search for a moving company, not the sole factor. And you need to be wary if there’s an oversupply of positive reviews — there’s just no way to satisfy every customer.
We’re collecting moving reviews from our customers now, and hope to start publishing them on Relocation.com in the near future. We enjoy a bit of an advantage from other review sites because we can near-conclusively determine if the consumer used the moving company they’re reviewing. So be sure to check back later to see our moving company reviews!
Relocated Articles:
How to Save $1,000 on Your Move
How to Check the Public Records on Your Moving Company
Be Skeptical of that ‘Guaranteed’ or ‘Flat-Rate’ Moving Estimate
This entry was posted
on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 11:48 am and is filed under Moving, Moving Industry, Moving Scams.
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Thank you for identifying this article. I had not seen it yet.
Frankly, while disappointing something like this is not surprising. People are constantly trying to game the system and this is just another indication that one can not always believe what’s posted on the internet.
For any review similar to the one that the WSJ article mentioned, I would suggest that a user select a sentence of text that includes the item name/model number and search for the entire string to determine whether it was a spammer constantly publishing the same review.
Of course, this can apply for moving and storage companies too.
Lastly, consulting the Better Business Bureau is another basic test that many people also fail to apply.
Thanks.