Everything comes with a review these days, contractors, movies, and kitchen appliances included! “How many stars does it have?” Is common lingo when discussing to buy or not to buy a certain product. Consumers, though, are not the only ones who have caught onto this nifty trend—corporations have taken note too. They realize that the higher star rating an item has, the easier it is to sell and at a higher price. Using all of the tools they learned in business school, product promoters use a series of tricks to get their products ranking great on sites like Amazon, Yahoo, Wal-Mart, and Yelp—without any real customer approval necessary.
The Truth Behind Purchased Reviews
As any freelance writer will tell you, there are a great many people out there hungry for writers to create fictional reviews for their products. While some turn away and find it unmoral to lie to the general public about a product, others take jobs where they can get them. Willing to string together a few lies and earn $10 for it. Once I discovered this myself I started double-crossing every review I came across—how could I know who was the telling the truth and who was full of lies? These hired writers are not bad at what they do, they pen together whole stories about how they purchased it as a gift, or they were perhaps unsure about it at first and then this and that happened and now they love it… these long winded stories make that 5 star rating look all the more genuine but in reality, when people are paid to write reviews for products they are given a specific word count to meet, which is at least 300 words, give or a take a few—thus, in order to fill the page and write a number of reviews, they have to get creative. Still, there are those that love to write and take the time to give lengthy and detailed reviews about the products that they really have purchased, the information that they take the time to provide is much appreciated—but when it’s mixed up in a sea of purchased reviews it losses some of its weight in worth.
How Do You Get Real Reviews?
Besides TouchFridge.com, there are other sites that provide great, comprehensive reviews—I suggest looking for these but once again, even if you think you’ve found the real thing, you just never know. Therefore, talking to friends and family members, asking if they have heard anything about a particular product is a great start, there are little bits of knowledge that we all have stored up over the years, you never know if someone close harbors the insider information you need unless you ask.
You can also cross check reviews by searching the product in question on another site, this is also a productive way to price check and ensure you are getting the best deals. Until technology advances enough to decipher the real reviews from the paid phonies, I’m afraid we will all just have to exercise some extra precaution whenever we purchase any ‘reviewed’ items.
Happy shopping!
