Computer Bild Claims Half of Amazon reviews are fake

Online reviews are very important when it comes to online shopping, customers who regularly shop online often depend on product reviews that were written by people who already purchased the product they want to buy, but what happens when these product reviews are fake?

According to the report from a German magazine – Computer Bild, five out of every ten Amazon product reviews are fake. A reviewer that has worked for a reputation management agency made this claim.

The reviewer stated that lot’s of dubious agencies offer reputation management, these agencies offers lot’s of fake product reviews to help the participating store gain more visibility in product search results.

“There are striking number of top reviews on Amazon for the headphones of a start-up: clearly fake reviews. Who’s behind this, can be read in the current issue”, the magazine writes.

An editor at the German Magazine tried to review a product that was actually sent by a client through an online review portal, the client didn’t bother to verify if the product was actually used or tested by the reviewer.

Not only did the client condemned a 3-star rating but also persuaded the editor to rewrite the review and change it to a 5-star rating.

Amazon was confronted by Computer Bild with this issue and the ecommerce company indicated that they are strongly against fake and dubious product reviews but these left us with a striking question; can we still trust online product reviews?