Belkin caught fixing Amazon reviews
It has emerged that Belkin, the computer accessory manufacturer, have been filling out fake reviews on Amazon in an attempt to boost sales and push a good business image to customers. Belkin are claiming that the naughty activity can be blamed on one “rogue” employee who is said to have paid others to write the reviews, however, the admittance by the company comes after some denial.
The “rogue” employee who is responsible for the review fixing, Michael Bayard, is claimed to have paid people who don’t even own the product to write positive reviews on the Amazon website and to even go into depth about why they think the product was so great.
However, Belkin, in an attempt to spin the news to suit them a little better, have released a statement underlining the company’s ethics and surprise therefore on discovering the news.
“Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. Similarly, we support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad. So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.
“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,” said the statement.
Perhaps the biggest mistake the business development representative made was to post the job as an advert on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. Bayard advertised for people to “write a positive 5/5 review for product on website” – did he really think he would get away with that?
Bayard went on to say in his advert that he wanted people to use their “best possible grammar and write in US English only”, as well as to “always give a 100% rating” and to “write as if you own the product”. How honest…
The news can’t be received very well at Amazon either, as the economic downturn has provided business around the world with a steep hill to climb in terms of sales and such bad advertising cannot be good news. If Belkin can bend the rules, what is stopping every other company with a product on the Amazon website doing exactly the same?
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