There has been growing distrust on Amazon product reviews lately and this has been primarily driven by famously known as “private labels” pushed on to us from the US. For any buyer who is trusting Amazon for their quality service may get which are private labels with reviews generated via free product give aways.

We have generally seen 5* reviews on free products and they may not be honest and this is the issue. Though reviewers mention disclaimer saying “this product is received free for honest product review”, many don’t see them. They are misguided by stars! Many have ended up with quality products and many have not. Most importantly we don’t know if these products have properly gone through compliant procedure to ensure the quality of the product. Do you remember Hoverboard product problems last year!  Many trusted Amazon and many were disappointed. Due to repeated case this like this, buyers trust on Amazon is not paramount as before. At least not mine!

I have just tested one product on Amazon using a free tool called reviewmeta and I have received a report

44 of the 73 total reviews for this product are unverified purchases. The unverified purchasers have rated this product an average of 5.0 while the verified purchasers have rated this product an average of 4.1. Based on our statistical modeling, the discrepancy in average rating between these two groups is significant enough to believe that the difference is not due to random chance, and may indicate that there are unnatural reviews.   

• On this particular product 60% of the reviews are unverified which means only 40% are actual reviews from customers who actually bought this product
• Also to be noted – people who left 5 star reviews mostly are those who actually did not buy this product

If you want to test this tool, simply enter Amazon URL to get Review report. There is a quicker way with browser extension. Guardian has done a good work by making buyers aware of this useful tool.