Amazon's fake reviews problem
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Online marketplaces are being flooded with bogus reviews. Is the whole model of ecommerce under threat? Rebecca Kesby speaks to Neena Bhati from UK consumer group Which? about the ways unscrupulous sellers are generating fake reviews to boost sales of their products, and Amazon seller Janson Smith tells us the impact fake reviews can have on legitimate small businesses that depend on Amazon for their sales. Saoud Khalifah, CEO of FakeSpot, decribes the scale of the bogus reviews problem, and the threat it poses to the integrity of the ecommerce model.
(Picture: Graphic of a five-star review, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca Kesbby. |
| 0:08.1 | Coming up, they're the bedrock of online shopping, but can we ever trust online customer reviews? |
| 0:14.2 | The amount of fake reviews has skyrocketed, especially in the last 12 months. |
| 0:18.0 | We've seen levels of fake reviews we've never experienced before. |
| 0:21.8 | A murky industry is flooding platforms like Amazon with fake reviews, say campaigners. |
| 0:28.2 | Honest traders are losing out and customers are getting conned. |
| 0:32.4 | Reviews are incredibly important and they can make or break a product. |
| 0:36.1 | If a new seller comes on board and they can |
| 0:38.3 | buy, acquire or whatever, just obtain, say, 25-star reviews, then that is going to give |
| 0:44.3 | them a massive advantage. How fake reviews threaten the whole model of e-commerce. That's here |
| 0:50.3 | on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:57.6 | Right, let's start somewhere tangible, |
| 1:00.5 | and a mystery item arrives in the post, |
| 1:03.9 | addressed to our own digital editor, Anna Doble. |
| 1:06.2 | Well, the usual thing, I'm working from home. |
| 1:08.5 | I happen to sit right by the front door, |
| 1:09.8 | so whenever the postman arrives, |
| 1:11.8 | I'm the person that receives the parcels. |
| 1:19.7 | On this occasion, I received this small, rectangular or sort of oblong-shaped box, |
| 1:24.7 | crinkling bit of wrapper, the black plastic, with some barcodes on it. |
| 1:31.3 | And then inside, a strange-looking component, |
| 1:35.8 | a red and purple brush-like object, |
... |
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