Overcome paid reviews

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Brand Enthusiast
playdime

offlate, i have some blows from amazon and fk while buying few products, example coffee percolator.

reviews were good.

i verified most recent and negitive rivews. Still got cheated and their policies only replace not refund. Ofcourse our own dimers also post such deals.

any suggestions to overcome such and buy good products online?

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Deal Lieutenant Deal Lieutenant
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Try to replace 2nd time you may got return option 

Pro Analyst Pro Analyst
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Read neutral reviews (if available) having 3stars.. ! No other hacks then.

Helpful Helpful
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dont know it’s still working or not this App, earlier i used to use it,although it may or may not work properly as we wanted,the best way is to check unbiased reviews as others suggested….

Tech Guru Tech Guru
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@playdime said above, I use fakespot when in doubt

https://www.fakespo...m/

Otherwise.. 

  • Check for recent comments, rather than the default ones.
  • check the popular commenters other comments, you will understand if that user is genuine or not.

Brand Enthusiast Brand Enthusiast
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https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/d/B07QNRBMWZ/ref=ox...

I am trying to analyze the product review i personally bought and used. The fakespot review matches with amazon. But the product is bad & in a fortnight product is not working or unusable which is not evident from reviews or fakespot. Thats the exact problem here. I have 3-4 such items over a span of 1.5yrs

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Brand Enthusiast Brand Enthusiast
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https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/d/B07QNRBMWZ/ref=ox...

I am trying to analyze the product review i personally bought and used. The fakespot review matches with amazon. But the product is bad & in a fortnight product is not working or unusable which is not evident from reviews or fakespot. Thats the exact problem here. I have 3-4 such items over a span of 1.5yrs

Deal Subedar Deal Subedar
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you get the return option after replacing it 1-2 times

Helpful Helpful
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but after doing this multiple times poses risk to your amazon and flipkart acc
flipkart will directly block ur account

Deal Captain Deal Captain
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If they give 50 rs cashback for a review, 80% of our community here would rate it 5 star I’m sure. smile

Brand Enthusiast Brand Enthusiast
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actually, this should come undet cheating 420 case. But we cannot afford such price of law.

courtesy: indian movies 

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Deal Subedar Deal Subedar
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I think the best way to shop online is to buy only those products which are returnable and have a decent brand. If not a decent brand, atleast amazon fulfilled or Flipkart assured products.

Deal Subedar Deal Subedar
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I once became a part of few WhatsApp groups where some people would post product link of and one has to order them, give 5 star reviews and get 70-100% refund. 

What irked me most was that even some products from leading brands were on offer like saffola oodles, Parachute Jata hair oil, savlon hexa body wash, Dabur tulsi toothpaste, etc. Some brands like Ptron, mcaffeine, the men company, wow, etc are almost always on offer whenever they come with any new product. They mess reviews of almost all sites be it Amazon, Flipkart, nykaa or big basket, 

There is no way we can tackle this cartel.


Generous Generous
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There are not much options here as such to identify or filter fake/paid reviews.

As already pointed out above, fakespot is one tool you should definitely use. Not all times, but generally it is of help. Other than that it is mostly a manual judgement you can do from your side, using some of these points:

  1. First of all, sort reviews by ‘most recent’ instead of top ones & then judge.
  2. Manually scroll through 5 star reviews, if u see a generic language or tone or similar pattern or even nearly same points, these are obvious signs of paid reviews.
  3. Another way is to sort reviews by ‘most recent’ & start from end. If you majority 5 star reviews, then its a sign that product got famous due to paid reviews.
  4. In continuation to #3, check dates of reviews. If the product got too many reviews on a single date or even within a week of launch, its a red flag. Also, if product has garnered too many reviews within a very short span of time, then again its a red flag because people don’t really buy heavily a very new product like that. When you sort reviews by ‘most recent’, the last review will tell you the date when first review was published. Now this logic might not work accurately for some overhyped products like few mobiles or nothing earbuds, but would work nicely for other products like cosmetics or electronics or even the product you mentioned.
  5. Avoid products with good reviews (4.4+ rating) but less than 100 reviews. If u really want to buy, then focus on negative reviews about the product & look for cons.
  6. Also, in continuation to point#5, differentiate between ‘ratings’ and ‘reviews’. For ex. the product you shared has 68 ratings but only 15 reviews. Ratings are not reviews. Don’t consider rating as anything simply because they don’t tell anything constructive actually. Check if product has high number of rating but not reviews in that ratio. Ofcourse ratings will usually be a lot more than reviews, but cross check the ratio with similar products in that category.
  7. If product has many reviews which are too small in size, less than 5 word reviews, like “best product”, “love it”, or “great”, or “go for it”, and no other details, you need to discount these reviews as they make no sense.
  8. If the review is too much formatted, consider it a paid review. Like if you see many bullet points, emojis, star symbols or other characters that you won’t normally find on laptop or mobile keyboard directly, then its a sign that significantly more than required effort has been put there!
  9. Always look for cons in the reviews. Genuine reviews will always have some cons mentioned; however, it depends in products categories as well.
  10. If one or two reviews say that seller gave 50 or 100 rs voucher for a review, then either stay away from product or ignore all 5 star reviews and then re-rate the product yourself accordingly.
  11. While buying cosmetics, if reviews have faces of female reviewers or maybe just face hidden with product in focus or  contains overworked up design elements, skip that product. Its obvious that reviews there are part of brand’s marketing.
  12. If a review gives you some unwanted steps or unsolicited advice or procedure for no reason, you can skip that review. Such reviews can be there because of 2 reasons: a) The reviewer thinks of himself/herself as oversmart and thinks others have no idea, or b) it is probably a brand’s paid review after seeing some negative reviews. Its not really a review but more of a ‘how to use’ guide which should should have been there in product pamphlet and not in review section. Brands put such reviews for damage control – making it appear to people that remaining negative reviews there are because probably those didn’t know how to use the product.
  13. Now in this point, I’ll tell you something which is pro level & a bit time taking. What you can do is open profiles of 5 star reviewers and see their other reviews. If you see mostly 5 star reviews with 4 star for few, it means that profile is of a paid reviewer. Actual users don’t usually have all 5 star reviews. You’ll have to do this check manually. You can either do this for all top review profiles or randomly select few from all 5 star reviews of that product. Now as I said, this is something which definitely gonna take a considerable amount of time, you can do this only for expensive products or products that you really like & want to buy but have no return policy. The reason I said this is ‘pro level’ is because this will not only require time, but will also require some good analytical skills as you’ll have to literally analyse user profiles and judge them on basis of their language, grammar, practicality or kinds of products they review, consistency, etc and then decide. There is a good chance you can go very much wrong or even frustrated if you’re not able to decide! 😂


Now there might be many more points but all of them including these above do not form sure shot guide. It is still possible that even after carefully screening these type of reviews, one might still end up getting a bad product. On the other hand, it is equally possible that a product reviews are not-so-good or have red flags as per above points, but still the product itself is good. I’ll say luck is a good factor here when buying newly launched / relatively unknown / less reviewed product. Good luck!

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