Why Amazon Is Suing More Than 1,000 Product Reviewers

Amazon is taking its battle against bogus product reviews to a new level by targeting the individuals who are allegedly writing the reviews.

Months after the e-commerce giant sued three companies it claims faked product reviews, Amazon has filed a new lawsuit against individuals who are writing and selling phony reviews through Fiverr.com, Consumerist reports.

Fiverr is a website where people sell creative and professional services for prices starting at $5 (thus the site name). The lawsuit, which does not target Fiverr, includes 1,114 unnamed defendants who used Fiverr to sell Amazon reviews.

According to USA Today, many people promised five-star reviews for products.

“I will post awesome review on your amazon product, kindle book, ebook etc,” read one offer, cited in the suit. That person, whose screen name was bess98, described themselves as having more than 30 different accounts and offering 24/7 support.

In other cases, the defendants didn’t actually write the review. Instead, they offered to use their identity and Amazon account to post a review written by the product seller.

“You know your product better than me. So please provide your product review, it will be better,” one poster quoted in the suit wrote.

Amazon spokeswoman Julie Law told USA Today that Amazon is targeting phony reviews because the company wants its customers to be able to use the reviews to make informed purchasing decisions.

“We continue to use a number of mechanisms to detect and remove the small fraction of reviews that violate our guidelines. We terminate accounts that abuse the system and we take legal action,” Law said.

Find out what other methods Amazon is using to thwart bogus reviews. Check out “Amazon Deploys New Weapon in War on Phony Reviews.”

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