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Gun fetishist John Lott has made a career out of boosting his own books under false names (and then when he was outed, he tried blaming his kids for most of the reviews), and also using false names to write scathing reviews of authors with whom he has disagreements (and sometimes in those reviews he endlessly touts his own books, without ever mentioning that he is that author, of course).
Phony reviews work so well because the average person is so gullible and desperate for other people's approval. People are so willing to like/dislike something just because other people do. Ever notice how if the first comment in a thread is positive, most of next posters follow suite? Then if someone makes the exact kind of thread later and the first comment is negative then so is everyone else's opinion on the subject.
The answer to the age old question of "if all your friends jumped off a bridge would you, too?" is and always will be "yes!"
I'm not sure that what happened with the Amazon reviews is any worse than what Kohl's does, if you post a bad review they remove it and then they won't discuss the removal with you. I bought a bedding set from them and the whole thing was made of polyester (no content label on outside of package).I posted that the polyester sheets were like sleeping in a plastic bag and that there were large brown spots on the sheets. My review was removed and I was notified that I had violated their terms of service.
My rule of thumb, never pay attention to people who have one or two reviews. I've had really good experiences following like minded reviewers on Yelp. A lot of the ones who give multiple reviews are great.
You now see tons of Amazon reviews where reviewers were given a product for free (or at a steep discount) by the seller/manufacturer in exchange for giving a purportedly honest and unbiased opinion. It is human nature to give a good review in such instance because (i) the reviewer wants more free stuff from the seller/manufacturer to review in the future, (ii) the reviewer is probably very grateful for getting a free/discounted stuff, and (iii) the "value" assessment for the product is skewed because it is free/discounted. The reviews all disclose that they got the product for free or with a steep discount, but that is not apparent unless you actually read the entire review and if you just look at the star ratings, you'd never be able to tell.
To me, that's a rather shady practice but they do it openly and Amazon seems to condone it.
The biggest problem with reviews is people are more likely to take the time and write negative ones. Happy customers don't take the time. About the only thing I've found useful with reviews is look at the negative ones too find out specific things that *may* be wrong with a product.
I do read the reviews on Amazon and find many of them to be helpful and accurate. I also write reviews for nearly every item that I buy on Amazon.
I generally don't pay much - no - ANY - attention to reviews on products if there are only a handful of reviews and they're all gushingly positive. Call me skeptical but it works for me. But many Amazon products have hundreds of reviews and they're a mixture of good and bad. To me, when I see that sort of activity on a product's review section, I feel pretty confident that I'm getting some honest feedback.
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