27 Customers Who Tried to Ruin Businesses With Lies—and Got Exposed

The unfortunate truth is that the internet allows for pure anonymity, so it’s not hard to lash out vindictively against a business that you think slighted you in some way or maybe just mess with someone’s day. A more sinister phenomenon, depending on how you look at it, is the rise in bought, fake reviews. Amazon is the prime location for these sorts of operations, where anyone can unleash an army of bots or poorly paid users to give their products rave reviews. Even worse, a nefarious business owner can, instead, use these services to give competitors bad reviews. 

The result of all this manipulation is that many customers simply don’t know whether they can trust a review or not. This basically has the effect of removing any and all trust in general. This has become such an issue that certain regulatory bodies are actually looking into ways to hold companies accountable. The UK Competition and Markets Authority is investigating Amazon and Google for not doing enough to combat fake reviews.

As a consumer, if you plan to put down serious money for a product, you would want to at least read through a handful of user reviews beforehand. But now that you know that so many are faked, what can you do to be sure? While it's impossible to know one hundred percent, there are a few telltale signs to look out for. You can use services like Fakespot or Reviewmeta to analyze if something is real or not. There are also browser extensions like Camelizer that can rate the reliability of a text.

Generally, just reading through the review can give you some good indicators. Vague descriptions, a multitude of grammatical errors, and generally short texts all point towards a review being created by a bot or a service provider. Reviews with images of the product are more likely to be real, and you can reverse image search the picture to see if it’s just been taken from elsewhere. 

Another suggestion is to explore reviews outside of Amazon. Professional reviews can be helpful, though they often don’t use the item long enough to determine if it's suitable for long-term use. Similarly, restaurant reviews can be difficult since tastes, literally, differ. If it's a more mundane item, might be hard to find an expert review, since, say, garden hoses and roof shingles might not have a dedicated community assessing them.

The best bet would be to go to a store to try the item in person, but this only really works for a handful of options. Most restaurants don’t really let you sample random dishes for free, though you can at least enter the establishment to determine the vibe. Similarly, service providers like wedding planners and photographers might have impressive portfolios, but until they actually do their job, it can be difficult to keep track. The bottom line is that buyers really do have to be wary. Fortunately, at least some business owners do their part to ensure only fair and, more importantly, real reviews.