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The Clark Howard Podcast

12.3.19 Fake reviews online; Gift cards are awful; Revolutionary recycling techniques

The Clark Howard Podcast

Clark Howard

Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.65.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There’s been a huge increase in the number of fake reviews. Consulting firm Pattern found for an item listed on Amazon, a one star higher rating leads to a 30% increase in sales. The marketplace incentives for fake reviews to boost a score are so enormous, fake reviews have infiltrated the retail landscape. According to Fakespot, in addition to Amazon this is a problem at Walmart.com. There’s no reason to believe it’s not a problem across retail sites. 35% of all reviews on Amazon are fake, often generated by paid writers from overseas. This makes it important to read reviews because you can tell when they’re bogus. Most people only look at the number of stars. Red flag: when an item only has 5 stars be suspicious and read on. Check Consumer Reports rating for the most trustworthy assessments. Gift cards remain popular, but 40% of Americans no longer wish to receive them because of all the fraud. Criminals gain access to secret codes enabling them to empty the cards upon activation. LA Times columnist David Lazarus reports gift card fraud has gotten more sophisticated. Now hackers have compromised the entire gift card system, able to use a computer program to figure out secret codes and card numbers for most every card issued. They can now compromise cards at will, and generally the retailers don’t make good on the ripped cards. Caution! Know the risk has increased and retailers have failed to provide adequate security to protect gift card purchases. Dealing with trash is a huge expense for municipalities. But city and county recycling efforts are not profitable today and attempts to do so are burdening tax payers. There’s been a technological breakthrough developed by an Israeli company that’s gotten worldwide attention. Startup UBQ Materials is using a new method that’s achieving zero waste. New machinery can sort, chop, grind, shred, clean and heat garbage into a thick liquid, which can be turned into pellets and reused in manufacturing. Full upcycling has been achieved here. The conversion of all waste into a potentially valuable product has enormous advantage to society, including the elimination of landfills. Key: solutions must be economically sound to be sustainable. We face strong demands on water and other resources, disease from waste and other problems. Solving these problems in such a fashion will make it green (profitable) to be green.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm so glad you're with us here on the Clark Howard Show where it's about you learning

0:10.1

ways to save more and spend less and don't let anyone ever rip you off.

0:16.6

Clark.com is our main website, ClarkDeals.com, is where you go to save money each and every

0:23.6

day.

0:25.3

Coming up in just a few minutes, you work hard for your money.

0:28.4

I'm going to tell you about how gift card scams are booming, what you need to look out for

0:35.0

as a giver or a recipient.

0:38.2

And coming up yet later, recycling programs are in trouble all over the United States

0:46.4

because the prices that people can get for a lot of recycling goods have collapsed.

0:53.3

But I want to tell you there's real hope on the horizon is overwhelmingly Americans

0:58.7

now are interested in seeing recycling work.

1:05.2

So here's something that's not working online reviews.

1:11.3

There's been a huge increase in the number of fake reviews.

1:18.6

And why is this happening?

1:21.2

Well, because listen to this stat, a recent analysis from a consulting firm called Pattern

1:31.3

found that an item listed on Amazon, it gets one higher star level rating.

1:39.8

It leads to nearly a 30% increase in sales for that item.

1:45.2

So the marketplace incentives are so gigantic to try to get fake reviews to boost a score

1:56.7

that they have basically infiltrated across the real estate land, the real estate, the retail

2:03.8

landscape.

2:04.8

I've talked about this before with Amazon, but according to fake spot, this is also

2:12.3

a big problem at Walmart.com.

...

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