So you can't even ask someone for a referral anymore without screening whether they are paid to give you a specific recommendation. That's not just creepy, it's chilling. No one can trust anyone, even family.

"Tremor's connectors are not your average consumer. Our connectors have social networks 5 to 6 times larger than normal. Connectors have a propensity to talk, are highly influential, and amplify YOUR product's message across their networks of friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances."

"We have relationships with 350,000 Mom and 200,000 Teen connectors who want to hear about exciting new brands and brand benefits. Their ability to connect helps your brand message reach a significant share of your target audience."

WOM How to write a pay for post blog
[wom-study.blogspot.com]
"If you want future work, don't tell your readers that you are writing paid posts. This includes filtering the posts into a "paid post" category, or tagging them as such. You are basically telling your sponsor that you are embarrassed to write about them."

(2006) FTC Response on Word of Mouth Marketing Regarding Disclosure
[wom-study.blogspot.com]
"- when payment is made to a consumer, that payment, by law, needs to be disclosed;
- marketers do not need to get parental permission for teens 13-18, but do need permission if the kid is under 13.
"Under the FTC Endorsement Guides, financial tie between the seller and paid agent should be disclosed." It also notes that WOMMA's ethical guidelines call for disclosure even when there isn't payment."

As usual - The FTC has the willingness to be an enforcement arm more like that of a mole. No doubt no org. has been called on violations since it's openly happening. Belkin should be receiving headlines and fines. (Although headlines is kind of crowded right now).

Ticks me off - I should be getting paid! (attempt at humor)

Maybe now we need a review of rating websites..... Where does it end???

But then companies like Pizza Hut get around that by saying in their commercials:
Real People on Hidden Camera.

As opposed to fake people?

@Alex Brewer: I read customer reviews all the time to see if there are any usability issues. I recently was looking at a HDMI to DVI adapter and was ready to click "Purchase" when I saw a comment that the converter was a bit large and may block some adjacent ports. I dug a bit deeper and determined that the dadapter would not work in my application. It was not a defect of the product, but it was a real-world issue that was only made public through user reviews. These types of comments are invaluable to me.

MT collects identity info from both requesters and performers when signing up. I'm sure Belkin wouldn't be apologizing if they hadn't verified his identity. (Thanks, LRR.)

Anyone else kinda pissed off that said apology doesn't say anything about Bayard being fired?

Uh, no, they weren't. Please read the HIT description in the screengrab again.

...
Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)
...
Write as if you own the product and are using it
Tell a [not the, but a] story of why you bought it and how you are using it
...
Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once you post yours

This is precisely why action was/is necessary: people who don't read thoroughly will cause Belkin to benefit from the deception.

Jesus Christ...that's the worst "feature" in the history of computing.

"Might be misunderstood." Oh, yes people might misunderstand how good it is for them to be given the good news about Belkin products. They might not understand what they are missing out on by not giving us more money.

[www.belkin.com]

I take Amazon reviews with a grain of salt, especially on tech products. Most of the people that write reviews are morons and they give poor ratings on products for irrelevant things like the product arriving on their doorstep a day late. Or 1-star ratings because the instruction manual is in PDF and not an actual printed booklet.

The self proclaimed experts and the top 100 reviewers are just as bad. Not sure what they're agenda is, but to me they're either being paid for their reviews or they're just attention whores. If you look at their reviews, they provide lengthy reviews for numerous products under different product categories.

Amazon's not dumb. They'll do a little slap on the wrist to help subdue bad PR on their side, but they dont want to risk a manufacturer angry and possibly not willing to sell with them.

Sure Belkin isnt Going to break amazon's bank, but we all know there are other companies out there that do it. If a big enough company gets busted, Amazon doesnt want to have to punish them and in turn punish themselves.

Amazon is a good company but in the end they are a company, and making money is more important than punishing companies.

I agree about the lax regulation. Corporations are so huge and have so much money and provide so many jobs that revoking their charter seems impossible. But I still think it should happen when companies break the law.

I ignore:
-If someone gives it 1 * because they yelled at the customer service person after they broke the product and ended up returning it...especially if most of the other reviews are good. (A bad and ignorant customer shouldn't be reviewing the product)
-If someone gives it 5 * and only says: I liked it much! Fast shipping, go newegg! (too vague plus I wanted a review of the product not the site)

you get the drift.

I still laugh because I work from home, personally you couldn't pay me enough to work in the restaurant industry. If I happened to be their competition and was trying to make my restaurant look better, you'd think my review then would have included the name of this restaurant I supposedly work for.

In the end, I'll let their post stand for itself.

As much as I could use the money, I'm just not willing to accept that kind of deal.

@CheritaChen: When you missubmit a comment and then try to comment somewhere else it appears in the second location. I only figured that out after it happened to me.

@CheritaChen: Making the products unavailable hurts Amazon. They have stock on these parts and can't move it. A notice is good and deletinging comments and encouraging legitimate commenters to resubmit is probably better.

@Gstein: That's appropriate. It would give people more of a reason to trust the review. I can see reviewing a good or bad product that I bought from another site, but by letting people know it gives the user the ability to choose how much weight to give it.

@wickedpixel: I believe they do have separate accounts. You might be able to identify some of them.
.
I would delete all comments and send a note to the commenters. Tell them what happened and hhave a link for them to resubmit their comments if they are genuine. Since the frauds won't get paid to do it again, the comments should be real.

@Alex Brewer: Just like advertising, you have to learn to read reviews with a critical eye. You need to pay attention to the proportion of reviews in each category. Luckily amazone provides a helpful chart. I usually find the middling reviews to be very useful - people who've used it and had some issues. A certain proportion of any product will not work. Some of these will be actual product problems, and some will depend on the user or the user's configuration. You can ignore a few of these, but if there's a lot, stay away. Look for reviews with specific comments.

That sounds like a good idea. I always look at the reviews on Amazon before I buy, and so far I haven't been burned, but with this happening more and more, it's getting hard to know who to trust. With so many B&M businesses going bankrupt, we'll have to buy online more now. How are we supposed to know whether a product is fraught with bugs, or isn't as it's advertised without authentic reviews?

http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/letter.html

Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction. We regard our responsibility to our user community as sacred, and we are extremely sorry that this happened.

We want to stress that this is an isolated incident and to re-instill trust with you, we have taken the following courses of action:

- We've acted swiftly to remove all associated postings from the Mechanical Turk system.
- We're working closely with our online channel partners to ensure that any reviews that may have been placed due to these postings have been removed.

It's also important to recognize that our retail partners had no knowledge of, or participation in, these postings.

Once again, we apologize for this occurrence, and we will work earnestly to regain the trust we have lost.

Sincerely,

Mark Reynoso
President, Belkin

I think Amazon definitely should. And if it's not already a violation of seller TOS, they should add it and warn that in the future they will act on it. If it were me, I'd have a three-tier penalty structure -- first time, you get a private warning from Amazon. Second time, you are publicly warned by Amazon (like on an Amazon blog -- not that prominent, but people will be watching it and publicizing it when it's really egregious). Third time you suffer monetary fines/have your seller privileges pulled/have your pages listed with a "fraudulent reviews" stamp.

@Gstein: but THIS is a good idea.

My favorites are, "I haven't read this book but the writer votes conservative/hates Jesus/has dire B.O.! DO NOT BUY IT!"

I do sort-of wish that Amazon would delete reviews and sanction reviewers who admit to NEVER USING THE PRODUCT in the review.

I actually find customer reviews VERY helpful, often more helpful than professional reviews, because they say things like, "I'm not a great button-masher, so I'm always getting stuck in a corner/shot in the head" or "This mixer is very sturdy but it's impossible to set the speed dial properly." Sometimes because professional reviewers ARE professional, their reviews ignore some issues applicable to amateur or casual users.

And I feel like I'm pretty good at filtering Amazon reviews for the information *I* want -- I just skip right over the 200 reviews going "Best book ever!!!!11!!!!" and look for the ones that detail the highs and lows.

Still going on and... P&G are WAY into it:

[business.tremor.com]

Kinda creeps me out.

These days, the corporation has the same rights as a man

Not just these days, but *always*. This is nothing new. Corporations are designed and treated as "moral persons". This is nothing new, it's just part of the basics of incorporation. This is why corps can lobby and donate to political candidates. It also means that corporations are entitled to almost all the constitutional rights that you have. This is a big reason why businesses incorporate, besides liability protections.

Also...

Lincoln made that statement in the 1860's and the "Republic" hasn't exactly been destroyed, you know? Actually... on the whole... corporations are what brought our country into the modern world and put us into the top strata of economies.

Some corporations use their rights for evil... but many more are don't. Incorporation rights aren't the issue IMO, it's horribly lax regulation at the state and federal level that allows the evil corporations to profligate. That's the real problem.

Why should Belkin be punished? They're not asking people to lie. They're asking someone to write a positive review of a product that they actually purchased - meaning their standards are actually higher than Amazon's. In return for taking the time they're fairly compensated. This just seems to me like good business strategy to counteract the shills for competitors that populate every product review.

Not to be off topic but doesn't estranged imply acrimony or alienation? I thought it was simply a sale of the site to Consumers Union.

Customer reviews are supposedly a great resource for Amazon; not so much if people start to think that they're full of lies.

you might still have people abusing the system, but if belkin wants to pay people to review the item & buy the product...well, that doesn't seem like a very viable advertising strategy.

I read a story apx 3 years ago where a company was paying pre-teens to hold slumber parties and giving them free products. One of the conditions was they didn't tell their friends the party was sponsored by them. They rationalized it as 'market-research'.

I think doing write-ups and sponsoring events (or anything else they come up with) without informing people should be considered FRAUD. Isn't that why advertising needs to be clearly marked?

@GuinevereRucker: No, he never said that.

[www.snopes.com]

"The above quote, attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, has been periodically dusted off and presented to the public as a prophetic warning about the destruction of America through the usurpation of power and concentration of wealth by capitalist tyrants for over a century now, undergoing a renewed burst of popularity whenever wartime exigencies stir public debate over governmental policies."

i've rated many items i didn't buy directly from amazon, usually as a warning to other buyers, but sometimes to rave about how awesome it is. it's not like my opinion isn't as valid as that from someone that bought it from amazon, so cutting out reviews from people who hadn't bought directly may not be the best option.

it's also hard to differentiate which of the people were paid and who actually liked it. i know it's known to be horrible, but there's people who don't expect perfection from electronics. if it cuts out every once in a while, it's no big deal, so they may still rate it a 4 or even a 5. it may be a small portion of people, but it wouldn't be fair to assume all the 5's were false and delete them.

and for amazon, not selling belkin products for a while doesn't make good business sense, as they would be diminshing their own sales, not the sales of belkin. the only person feeling that would be amazon.

so to sum up, something needs to be done about the false reviews, but i have no idea what that is!

Amazon should also flag all Belkin pages that the existing reviews may have been paid for.

Finally, the names of anyone who was paid to review should be exposed. As a blogger myself, I hold the foot soldiers ultimately responsible. Whether or not their review was genuine, they should offer full disclosure. Anything else makes them less ethical than Belkin itself.

Considering how many people use Amazon's ratings as a research tool but make their purchase elsewhere, this would eliminate a lot of legitimate feedback.

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

[www.crunchgear.com]

I think the suggestion that Amazon limit ratings to those people who have purchased this item is a good one. I know that a lot of people who submit ratings at Amazon's website have purchased items elsewhere and this limiting-the-ratings-to-Amazon-buyers might reduce the number of ratings on the website. Perhaps Amazon could offer an inducement to its customers to leave ratings for the products they've purchased?

As to Amazon...saw a cool GPS system and looked up the cost and reviews at Amazon. All of the reviews were 5 stars practically and the first 10 out of the 25 used lots of exclamation marks. I'd guess they were written by schills.

There are a few that go to extremes, on either end of the scale. ("Everything ever made by this manufacturer is crap!" or "I love this product so much we're getting married on Saturday!") Toss those out, look for trends across multiple reviews, and check the writing style and quality in the reviews ("Diz ting is teh r0xx0rs!" is not a useful review,) and you've generally got a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Reviews can also be useful if you run into a problem with something. There's a good chance someone else has had the same problem and has figured out a workaround, and put that in their review.

I'll wait until Linksys or Buffalo are caught doing this before I get despondent.

When your product are notorious crap, and you've got no hope of changing that in the near term, you can get desperate.

The amazon users who posted the fraudulent reviews are just a guilty as the Belkin representative. Everyone involved in this scheme should be banned from Amazon, to matain some level of integrity.

Amazon's customer reviews are a very powerful resource for them, and I'm sure they know it. They should make it clear they're protecting the quality of that resource.

They should also investigate this and similar events, and if they can't mark the fake positive reviews as contaminated, they should just delete them, and consider deleting all the reviews written by those users.

On sites like Amazon or NewEgg, I usually just read the negative reviews. If there are a bunch that say the item has a certain deficiency/bug/problem from people who sound reasonably intelligent, I figure they are probably right.

If all the negative comments are complaints that don't really seem relevant (product was DOA - yup, that occasionally happens) or demonstrate that the person doesn't know how to use the product (router does not dispense ice cold beer), I ignore it.

Well said!

"Reputable review sites" often have to concern themselves with ad revenue. See: Gamespot, and the firing of reviewers who wouldn't suck advertiser dick.

Yeah, there's still Consumer Reports...but even they JUST DONT GET IT when it comes to certain items (cars).

The best bet, IMO, is to find a forum you trust. Like a blog or message board where there's actual discussion, and go with a consensus arrived at by interaction.

Every day more and more stories of corporate corruption coming to light.

Business ethics are seen only in books these days and no longer practiced.

No wonder so many consumers have lost confidence. We're tired of being manipulated and lied to.

This post was written using a buggy overpriced Belkin wifi card that never had worked right.

This incident shows one of the best reasons to always look for the negative reviews of any product.

Not really. Competitors have been know to write negative reviews for competing products.

One of the flaws in the Amazon rating system is that you don't have to prove you own the product to review it, a hole this *hole took advantage of, deliberately instructing people to write reviews for the product as if they owned it, even if they did not.

at the very least, if you give priority to reviews for items bought thru that retailer & then delete all other reviews when situations like this present themselves, that could help to restore some authority to the reviews.

Gasp! What? You mean the same company that sticks 50cent cables in a pretty package and sells them for $50? They wouldn't!

I'm sure Mr. Bayard's actions were entirely his own. (cough)

Measured by numbers affected, these guys are worse than Monster.

I guess I picked up an additional reason to avoid them.

Maybe then, after a few weeks, I'd make their account and products available again, with the notice described above--on the condition that Michael Bayard is banned from Amazon's domain and Belkin's account will follow if any further interference is revealed.

Meanwhile, if they really want to gain appreciation and trust, Amazon might consider publicizing this issue themselves. There must be some sort of fraud or misrepresentation in this that is legally actionable, and Amazon should publicly warn all vendors that they will pursue judgments against any company or individual interfering with their business model and reputation.

Yeah, I know that's really a bunch of feel-good BS, but it sure sounds satisfying.

I'd love it if there were a way to close the accounts of those who sold their reviews, but I don't know how Amazon could prove an individual account holder guilty, so unfortunately I think they're off the hook.

I guess I'm meaner than you are.

*Actual review when I was researching my first Kodak digital. By the end of his review, he hated it so much that I think he returned it without even trying to take pictures. Turned out to be a good camera, and one that took two hard, plastic breaking drops and still works.

Not sure what should be done about these reviews but in the future, a human should probably look at the HITs when they're submitted to filter these kind of things? Amazon could submit their own HITs to do so.

Adding on to that note we should have a 'spam all belkin products with negative reviews day'

As a Mac user, all I have to say to Belkin is that I will never buy a Belkin product ever again. Never! You've lost my business for life. Which is kinda sad, I was going to pick up a few accessories tomorrow and a few at the top of my list were Belkin. I guess I'll be looking at the alternatives.

Let Belkin keep the positive reviews, but put a big blood red "Fraudulent Paid For Review" next to it.

Also those "Fraudulent Paid For Review" comments should always show up on the first page that people see when they go to leave comments and not eventually get buried in the back as people buy more stuff.