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Belkin's Amazon Rep Paying For Fake Online Reviews
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jan 17, 2009 12:19 PM
from the fake-them-yourself-like-everybody-else dept.
from the fake-them-yourself-like-everybody-else dept.
remove office writes "I recently discovered that Belkin's lead online sales rep, Michael Bayard, has been secretly paying internet users to review his company's products favorably on Amazon.com and other websites like Newegg, whether or not they've ever used the devices. Bayard instructed the people he was paying to 'Write as if you own the product and are using it... Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once you post yours.' Ironically, he was using Amazon's own Mechanical Turk service to hire his fraudsters. Did he honestly think he wouldn't get caught? Are Slashdotters aware of other examples of other such blatant astroturfing on behalf of a large tech company like Belkin?"
Related Stories
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Belkin's President Apologizes For Faked Reviews 137 comments
remove office writes "After I wrote about how Belkin's Amazon.com sales rep Mike Bayard had been paying for fake reviews of his company's products using Mechanical Turk, hundreds of readers across the Web expressed their outrage. As a result of the online outcry, Belkin's president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement apologizing and saying that 'this is an isolated incident' and that 'Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this.' Amazon moved swiftly to remove several reviews on Belkin products it believed were fraudulent. But now fresh evidence of astroturfing has surfaced, by the same Belkin executive."
[+]
Technology: Carbonite Stacks the Deck With 5-Star Reviews 197 comments
The Narrative Fallacy writes "In the aftermath of disclosures that Belkin employees paid users for good reviews on Amazon, David Pogue reports in the NYTimes that Carbonite has gone one better with 5-star reviews of its online backup services written by its own employees. Pogue recounts how Bruce Goldensteinberg signed up for the backup service, and all went well until his computer crashed and he was unable to restore it from the online backup while Carbonite customer support kept him on hold for over an hour. Frustrated, Goldensteinberg started reading Carbonite reviews on Amazon and a few of them seemed suspicious. 'They were created around the same date — October 31, 2006 — all given 5 stars, and the reviewers all came from around the Boston, MA area, where Carbonite is located,' including a review by Swami Kumaresan that read more like a testimonial. 'It turned out that Swami Kumaresan is the Vice President of Marketing for Carbonite. His review gives no indication that he is employed by the company.' Another review posted by Jonathan F. Freidin extols Carbonite without mentioning Freidin's position as Senior Software Engineer at Carbonite. 'It doesn't matter to me that Carbonite's fraudulent reviews are a couple of years old,' writes Pogue. 'These people are gaming the system, deceiving the public to enrich themselves. They should be deeply ashamed.'"
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How can i get some of the money (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How can i get some of the money (Score:5, Interesting)
Ask the person who wrote this review [inquisitr.com]
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Does this come as a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does this come as a surprise? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Does this come as a surprise? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Doctors (Score:4, Insightful)
Except huge swaths of doctors are *not* in good health at all. In the "Physician, Heal Thyself", department, they get tricked by HMO politics and overwork, sometimes trashing their diet, too fatigued to exercise, and as mentioned elsewhere, possibly even living on borrowed time just trying to keep going. One of my doctors was in this category.
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Belkin are dodgy (Score:5, Informative)
Belkin have a history of dodgy behavior and should be avoided where possible. Their last trick was hijacking something like 1 in every thousand http connections and directing them to an advertising site.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html [cnet.com]
This company should be avoided where possible.
Re:Belkin are dodgy (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I don't have much of their stuff but I think what I have is ok stuff. Probably just a matter of a grossly overreaching marketing department. Some idiot fatass willing to eat babies to get his bonus.
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Re:Belkin are dodgy (Score:5, Interesting)
The company tolerated it, so the company ought to know that such conduct will not be tolerated by consumers.
I'll not be buying Belkin, and will ensure those who ask me what to buy will be steered away from their products.
Those who piss off geeks forget that non-geeks ask us for advice.
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Re:Belkin are dodgy (Score:4, Interesting)
Belkin pitch themselves are a premium brand, but their products are actually the cheapest and crappyest on the market.
Their favourite trick is to buy whatever cheap wifi chips are going that week, so you end up with 5+ revisions of the same product and have to get the right driver for that revision to make it work. Reviews of their products are totally useless because one chip might be brilliant and another rubbish. Worse still they change the VID/PID pairs so that the generic drivers from the chipset manufacturer don't work, forcing you to use their horrible ones.
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Re:Belkin are dodgy (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that is REALLY annoying, but Belkin are not the only ones who play this game.
Linksys and Netgear, for instance, had many versions of each of their USB wireless. Many of them share the same. exact. model number, but have COMPLETELY different drivers due to versioning and other VID/PID games. I wish these guys would just append the goddamn number and make it easier for people.
Oh, and I've found Belkins support site to be slow on occasion as well. Nothing like needing a driver yesterday and watching a 40+ MB file come in at 10 Kbps. :P
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Sorry, i had to Mod you down (Score:5, Funny)
It wasn't personal, I'm just supposed to do that after I post my glowing review of the belkin backpack as anon. otherwise I dont get paid.
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Re:Belkin are dodgy (Score:5, Informative)
The post(by ls44c) and the article are describing different incidents. The post is describing an incident from 2003 involving Belkin routers. The article is describing a recent incident involving astro turfing.
I believe that the point of the post is that the incident in the article is little more than a pattern of behaviour from a company that continues to break trust with users and is stupid enough to get caught.
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Re:Belkin are dodgy (Score:4, Funny)
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MS laptops to bloggers? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft gave some nice Ferrari laptops to some bloggers recently. It's easy to figure out to whom: just google favorable Vista reviews.
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/vista.html [what-is-what.com]
Oh heck (Score:5, Funny)
I missed out. If anyone wants me to review their products, I'm sure I can do it for the right price.
Re:'can get to' ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
What? You thought magazines were objective and impartial?
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Re:Oh heck (Score:5, Interesting)
This bribery needs to be stopped in its tracks. It can get to the point at which all magazines and on line materials can be worthless as one never knows who gets paid to lie. I would expect that Belken will lose many thousands of sales due to this article. It sure makes me not wanting anything to do with their products.
CAN?? It has been so for decades!
I remember buying a game creation app from a game company in the early nineties which had a three page review in a magazine. Plenty of features that the reviewer raved about were not even in the app.
Any website/magazine that has advertising or sponsorship paying the bills can and will give favourable reviews. Even feedback on sites like Amazon and forum posts are suspect, as there is quite a bit of astroturfing going on. I doubt Belkin or any of the other companies doing this will lose any sleep over a /. article though. Even though we are their customers, there are still plenty of people who will never see this site or any similar sites, and never hear of it. And if we boycotted each and every offender, there would be nobody left to buy from.
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Chinese Astroturfing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Chinese Astroturfing (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out the Olympics stories on slashdot and you'll see them.
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Has there been a backlasth? (Score:5, Funny)
Why did Belkin even both to do this? They make wonderful products. Just the other day, I got a Belkin Tunebase FM Transmitter with ClearScan for iPod and it was my best purchase ever. It plays my ipod over the radio with amazing fidelity, and my truck gets better gas mileage to boot. I've sold my home and I'm living out of my truck because the sound is so much better. (Where's my money?)
Seriously, the first thing that needs to happen is a bunch of people should "review" Belkin's products with the evidence that they're faking reviews. It'd pretty much finish them, at least with Amazon customers. This is extremely annoying and we need to make it as painful as possible.
Re:Has there been a backlasth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, the first thing that needs to happen is a bunch of people should "review" Belkin's products with the evidence that they're faking reviews.
I couldn't disagree more. The first thing that needs to happen is that Amazon should remove the reviews from all Belkin product listings, and put in an obvious disclaimer: "Reviews of this product have been removed because the manufacturer was caught paying individuals to post fake reviews."
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Re:Has there been a backlasth? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Has there been a backlasth? (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with Belkin products is that is extremely difficult to write a review that is both negative and false.
"This Belkin router was actually a Decepticon, which when I was out of the house, would transform and sodomize my pets."
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Re:Has there been a backlasth? (Score:5, Funny)
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Well Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not how I roll...
I look for the worse review possible, extract why the review thought it was bad and then judge whether I find that particular thing worthy of caring about.
However I must admit this doesn't always work, for example I was reviewing headphones and there was an elitist audio expert which marked them down. I bought them anyway and they're really good, I really can't understand why he'd marked them down for the quality.
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Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Funny)
I really can't understand why he'd marked them down for the quality.
Maybe he has a crappy sound card or receiver/amp? Or maybe he just can't! I have a friend who can't tell the difference between regular TV and HD (on my 24" Dell LCD monitor for a fact). No kidding. I also showed her some dry, brown, stemmy weed and I go, "Ah, look, such excellent bud!" and she totally agreed until I go, "Dude, this is dry, brown, stemmy weed, yuch!"
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Bribes to remove bad reviews (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife posted a bad review of one company on Amazon- it really wasn't even bad, it was Neutral. They missed shipping their product by Christmas when there was time. And they kept calling us...once at 11pm at night. We weren't answering and thought they would give up but the harassment continued.
So finally she answered the phone and they offered her a bribe to remove the review. They offered to pay for the item she ordered. Sadly, she accepted.
So apparently this sort of manipulation of reviews is not uncommon.
Re:Bribes to remove bad reviews (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a bribe, it's called customer service. The customer was dissatisfied, so the company took measures to rectify the situation. I would be happy to deal with a seller that acted in such a way.
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Re:Bribes to remove bad reviews (Score:4, Interesting)
eBay have improved their feedback system. Now people don't always give the maximum rating, sometimes they give a 4/5. If the seller raped their mother, wife and daughter in front of them, they might get a 3/5. Nobody really uses the bottom half of whatever rating scale you pick, so the scale needs to be at least twice as large as the graduations you want to see. Really eBay need a 1-10 scale, not because you can really discern a 10% difference in something so intangible as quality of service, but because then people could be expected to rate adequate to good from 7 to 9, which would provide some granularity. Even professional reviewers do the same - check any games site and you'll see games getting scathing reviews with a 6/10 score. It's incredibly rare for something to get less than 5/10. Movie reviews are more subjective than most reviews, so you might expect them to be more varied, yet still most stuff is still scored from 3-5/5.
There's probably some interesting research into this phenomenon. I wouldn't be surprised if it's been condensed into a "$luminary's law" too.
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Jeez (Score:4, Funny)
I went into an electronics store recently and the staff let me try out wireless adapters to find out if it would work on my laptop ( running Ubuntu 8.04 at the time ). The first one we tried was a Belkin USB adapter and it worked fine. I brought it and haven't regretted my purchase in the slightest, in fact, I'd purchase more. The signal strength was way better than other adapters I'd used and it's never dropped the connection ( to a Linksys WRT54G ).
I'd probably recommend them for their hardware but it seems their ethics need to catch up.
Re:Jeez (Score:5, Insightful)
Reported signal strength?
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Re:Jeez (Score:5, Funny)
OMG. Astroturfing Belkin in a story about astroturfing by Belkin.
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Just speculation... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) While reviewing The Orange Box game set on Amazon and seeing all the complaints about Steam, some guy actually had the nerve to make the assertion "Steam single handedly resurrected PC gaming" - as well as other off the wall comments like bragging about how many millions they've sold. After I highlighted a few statements of his and responded to his review - and implied twice that he must work for steam - the entire review and all the responses mysteriously disappeared.
2) Amazon's own reading device, Kindle. When it was released initially, you had people literally declaring war on anybody that said anything even remotely negative about it. Even if they complained about how certain features work, they would fall victim to endless insults and accusations of not having used the product. It was an all out witch hunt.
I know where there isn't... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sites like Thepiratebay don't generally have people hired by the entertainment industry writing favorable reviews about, say, Snakes on a Plane. There are advantages to buying, selling, and aquiring things illegally. People don't lie -- after all, their reputations are on the line. And depending on what's being bought and sold, sometimes quite a bit more.
There's an irony that illegal business is the most honest kind.
Microsoft via Digg.com (Score:5, Interesting)
As the build up of Vista 7 started it became apparent to me that this sort of thing was happening on Digg.com. Critical review of Microsoft simply disappeared as anything was just dugg way down to hide it.
It seemed readily apparent to me that someone was artificially altering anything Microsoft or Windows on Digg.com. I noticed a change where anything negative about Microsoft and Vista were dugg down and anything positive was dugg up. It didn't matter if the negative was spot on and making valid points, it was dugg down. Anything about Microsoft was dugg up. Even if the company was doing nasty things still.
I attributed it to: 1) either a few people had been creating multiple accounts in order to influence the vote, 2) people were being paid by Microsoft to go to digg and change the outcome, or 3) a bunch of Microsoft employees were actively seeking to alter the vote to make Vista 7 and Microsoft look better.
I also noticed several other people commenting as they saw the same thing.
This was like an overnight thing. One day everyone is telling it like it is about Vista and Microsoft and the next day anything anyone said that was negative was dugg way down. Anything positive was dugg way up, even if it was utterly false and few in the face of history.
I will say that Digg.com has declined. I have had to bury a slew of articles that were purely fluff, and moreso of late. Way too many totally stupid posts, uninformative conjecture articles, and poorly thought out pieces that tend to just waste my time.
Combined with the seemingly altered rankings of pro and negative comments regarding Microsoft and Vista I concluded that Digg.com was headed for a big decline.
Now that I see this sort of thing occuring regarding other large company products I can only conclude that there must be something more to my observations on Digg.com
Re:Microsoft via Digg.com (Score:4, Interesting)
I will say that Digg.com has declined. I have had to bury a slew of articles that were purely fluff, and moreso of late.
WTF... "lately"?! I stopped using Digg *over two years ago* because it had become a worthless POS full of sensationalist-attention-getting-vacuous-submissions, a partisan, pack-modding, friend-promoting, adolescent-mentality, moronic, herd-driven mouth-breathing circle jerk.
(There was a really good critique of it on Kuro5hin, but it seems to have disappeared).
Considering it had been hyped as the poster boy of Web 2.0 and an improvement on Slashdot, it was never that great- but I swear it declined noticably even over the few months that I used it. Though I doubt it was *ever* as good as its fanboys implied, even in the beginning.
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Astroturfing (Score:5, Insightful)
Astroturfing is an extremely harmful practice to companies in the long run. I remember a couple of particular travel companies on a site I frequent which did this. The companies themselves had a pretty decent reputation, but a few members were just a little bit too enthusiastic about recommending them, and were outed after a couple of months. Any goodwill the company had instantly collapsed, and any time a new traveler asked for advice relating to these companies, they were told to avoid them because of their marketing practices.
Somewhat strangely, it's actually the successful astroturfing campaigns that do the most damage in the long run. There's thousands of obvious attempts each year which immediately get spotted, and everyone nearly immediately forgets about them. But the few times it flies under the radar and is "trusted", the loss of that trust upon discovery is total and final, and it'll take years for the company to recover (if they ever do).
Say it ain't so! (Score:5, Funny)
First, Belkin is astroturfing Amazon and Newegg. Next thing you'll be telling me is that Monster Cable's stuff isn't actually any better than the generic stuff!
They were already 100% evil in my book anyway (Score:5, Informative)
After their fiasco a few years ago where they decided that it was acceptable to program their home routers to occasionally redirect web requests to their own page to sell people things, they hit my "certified 100% evil" list.
There's no getting off that list. I don't care if they start sending me flowers and candy. Nothing they can do will make me consider giving them a dime again. I don't even buy cables from them; last year I ordered a cable online and waited a week for it rather than buy one locally, because the local place only had Belkin cables in that type.
DIdn't buy it? Then you can't review it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DIdn't buy it? Then you can't review it. (Score:4, Informative)
I personally wish there was a way to filter out those who had not purchased the item at newegg. That being said, at least being notified that the person didn't purchase the product from that site alerts you to the fact that the reviewer just may possible be full of crap...
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I would like to congratulate Belkins (Score:4, Informative)
They've made it onto my shit-list. They are specifically a company whos products I will avoid, and will avoid recommending in any instance where there is a reasonable alternative. And, due to their product lines, there are always alternatives.
If the company has any brains they will prosecute the manager criminally, or fire HIS boss who put him up to it.
Surprised? You shouldn't be (Score:4, Interesting)
The Internet is where people can interact anonymously. I can write someething that you can't trace back to me personally, so no matter what I say or do, it has no effect on the rest of my life.
I try to explain how incredibly dangerous this is to people. If you could drive a car and never, ever suffer any consequences of either personal injury or responsibility for damages you cause many people would drive recklessly and irreponsibly. Why not? Well, this is pretty much the situation on the Internet.
Everyone's "net friend" Lori Drew is likely to get off completely. Now did she directly reach out and kill someone? No, but partly because her obnoxious behavior happened on the Internet she is likely to receive no punishment, fine, saction or anything else. Most people that get "caught" doing evil on the Internet have no one but themselves to blame, because they bragged about it, often publicly. What about the folks that can keep quiet? Nothing ever happens to them.
So, if someone offered you $100 to stand in front of a movie theater telling people what a great movie you just saw when you hadn't seen the movie you probably wouldn't do it. However, offer someone $100 to write 10 reviews on the Internet about products they have never heard of and they often will. Because they have no personal connection with writing those reviews. Nothing at stake, so nothing to stop them.
Lots of people grew up with the idea that things "in print" are reliable. Basically, the Internet is "in print" and no part of it can be trusted at all. Think you are getting the real story anywhere at all> Why? Is it because you trust the person that wrote it? Why would you trust them? Why do you even believe the author is really the person identified with whatever it is you are reading? If you see something supposedly written by Barak Obama on the Internet why would you believe he wrote it? Were you there when he did it? Why couldn't it be anyone (me, for instance) just using his name? Why wouldn't anyone do that? Because it is wrong?
Anyone that really trusts a review, news article, diary, or anything else on the Internet needs to have some bad things happen to them so they wise up. Why do you think people are endlessly taken in on scams? Because they trusted something on the Internet.
Intimidation (Score:4, Interesting)
I had something similar to happen to me. I gave a software engineering book a poor review, and it was removed without explanation a month or so later. I waited 6 months and submitted a watered-down version of same review under an alias, which has remained since. This is perhaps why you rarely see any grades below "C" on Amazon reviews. Publishers apparently bully Amazon and readers.
Nothing new, Belkin went evil ages ago. (Score:4, Interesting)
Company X is Belkin [seebs.net] -- Belkin had a router which would redirect an occasional page view to an ad -- and which could be reconfigured from the OUTSIDE. They tried to make this sound less bad with Usenet postings, then deleted the postings later.
This is why I usually focus on the bad reviews. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a pretty safe bet that the good reviews are going to be astroturfed to some degree. If you don't assume that, you're living in a dream world. If you look at the bad reviews, you can see what pissed people off about the product. If what they say resonates for you, don't buy it. Sometimes what they say just indicates that they don't know what they're doing. But you can be pretty sure that they weren't astroturfed.
Although I suppose at some point manufacturers might start astroturfing the bad reviews too...
Obvious bias (Score:4, Informative)
Not much different than the Linux zealot who hasn't touched a Windows machine since 1997
Gee, from looking at your chain of posts it seems you have a certain bias yourself. Have you EVER used a Linux system, or are you in fact the very uninformed Hater you dismiss so readily?
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Re:Well ... (Score:4, Funny)
I hear the Nostromo has a really nasty bug.
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