Fakespot Reviews 141

I checked one of the items that I sell on Amazon which only has 12 reviews in over 8 years. I'm a small seller so I see when people leave reviews, and I can promise of those 12 reviews, they were honestly earned and were received from the seller who purchased that item. Yet I have a C star rating from Fakespot, even thought I have a 5 star raring on Amazon. I checked a few other sellers too who had low feedback over several years, and they all had C and D ratings, even though I'm sure that those sellers didn't pay someone to just leave one fake review on a product that's been listed for years.

I'm Starting to wonder if this app wasn't developed in China to give lower scores on items that are sold and shipped in America from American sellers, because when I looked at a few Chinese sellers with millions of obvious fake reviews, mysteriously they have higher scores which we all know from our own online shopping experiences that this is totally impossible.

Absolute garbage. If you are using this app because you think Amazon's reviews might not be accurate then your in for a surprise. Fakespot's grade are a shot in the dark as well.

I sell on Amazon. I sell HANDMADE items I make myself and know their quality. I suspected some of my competitors who have cheap crap made in China were "buying reviews". If you order one of their products you get an offer to receive 5 dollars off your next purchase for leaving an *honest* review.

I do not participate in such schemes, I do simply, in any correspondence, ask that if they like or value my product to please leave me a review. Every single review my products have are completely ORGANIC. Yet Fakespot rated my competitors who KNOWINGLY purchase reviews better than my own.

I also checked out some products from a few folks whom I know personally from my business that also do not buy reviews and they scored average to low as well.

Simply put, if your looking to Fakespot to help you make sound decisions on a purchase, then know that you are just taking a wild chance, no better or worse than dealing with possible fake reviews.

It is like having a virus scanner that CONSTANTLY gives out false positives. Do you want a virus? No. But having legitimate files deleted because a crappy algorithm WRONGFULLY identifies it as a virus is almost worse.

Remember Fakespot is in business to make money, whether it be ads or affiliate deals etc.

Fakespot is clearly fake. I saw an item with less than a dozen reviews and most them were bad english, unintelligible, and clearly fake, and Fakespot gave a rating of B! On the other hand, I found a product that gets consistently good ratings across the internet and Fakespot gave it a D. You're busted Fakespot!!!

Initially I used Fakespot to help me identify competitors that might be manipulating their reviews, as they might be more likely to also leave negative reviews on my product listing.

However, as my product gained traction, and reviews, it got flagged by Fakespot as a "C".

That leads me to really question the results. I know with 100% certainty that I have not manipulated any of my reviews. In fact, my first review came from someone that wanted a sample in exchange for a review, and I declined to do that. They went on to buy and review the product anyways.

While some reviewers on here may be from people who manipulate their reviews, and want to discredit this service, many are probably just small business owners like myself who are frustrated to see their reviews get discredited. Especially when we have taken the ethical route, and not participated in any review manipulation.

The intent of Fakespot is good. The reliability of results ....no so much!

It appears "Questionable reviews" (which may not even be questionable), are always assumed to be "Fake" by Fakespot. This is one of the most unreliable and irresponsible service providers, and definitely a form of defamation. We'll contact the appropriate government agencies, to put a stop to this factless (fake) information provider.

I discovered Fakespot after finding it mentioned often on a deals forum, probably about six months ago. At first I was really confident with the results, but that confidence has ebbed as of late. It now seems to be extremely random, and items I have purchased in the past that I've been completely pleased with are now being graded with a D or F.

On another note, the deals forum that I first heard about Fakespot on hasn't mentioned it in quite a while. Coincidence, or maybe not...

A huge wake up call and a must for buyers! I'll never shop without this again. It allows you to shop the way you're supposed to be!

The sellers on here are throwing a huge hissy fit and gave this great app a poor rating. Years of shopping online and noticing Amazon's quality is descending is why I found this service.

I think fakespot is useful for outing sellers and their schemey ways but I prefer to use other review apps like meta-review because the app tells you exactly why these sellers, the ones lying on here, are liars. If their reviews are marked as terrible, they more than likely are.

Why?

Most of the sellers good reviews are people who don't have a verified purchase. People without verified purchases, on average, rate the product much higher than verified purchases which means bribery, and being refunded through PayPal and fake reviews are taking place behind the scenes. I read a study that 80% of Amazon reviews are fake. This proves it. I'm tired of being misled on Amazon. The third party sellers are guilty of scams.

I don’t appreciate what appears to be a heavily biased business model this website appears to be operating on. It appears they make their minds up about products from the get-go and seek out negative reviews to confirm that bias whilst ignoring other, more positive reviews. This is the opposite of what should happen, and is reflected in the extreme disparity between average reviews on this site vs the majority of other sites.

Sellers hate this app and it's easy to see why: As a long time Amazon purchaser, it became quite evident a while back that many, many of the four and five star ratings and reviews, for many, many products on Amazon, were fake. I did my own investigation of them, and found that for all the four/five star ratings/reviews:
1. many had nothing to do with the product.
2. many were not from verified purchasers.
3. many made no sense, or were simply worded "great product", "good product", etc.
4. many attributed characteristics to the product that just did not exist.

I contacted sellers and also Amazon about the issue. After several emails to them, and zero responses, I revealed to Amazon one especially egregious seller: I soon received an email from Amazon that all my reviews (even ones from years ago) would be erased, and that I could no longer review or ask questions about products, EVER AGAIN. That was three years ago. I contacted Amazon recently to reinstate my review capability, but they haven't even extended to me the common courtesy of a reply. Digging a bit further, I found that this is a common occurrence with many Amazon purchasers. So as a seller, please don't whine about Fakespot, because many of you are dishonest predators. I, and many others, now consider Fakespot a necessary resource against unscrupulous sellers on Amazon, who seem as plentiful on the site as the snakes in the real jungle the site's named after. I hope that someday, someone or some group successfully challenges Amazon and comes up with a better way to more cheaply sell and deliver goods, and is more scrupulous and honest than Jeff Bezos. I'll be their first customer. However, considering the climate of rampant corruption that now exists in this country, under the current regime now in power, I really don't see much chance of honesty prevailing in the future.

If anything it's fakespot that's got the lowest reviews and is worthless so don't use it and make your own mind up about a product

I have two products on Amazon, both have entirely legitimate reviews - there are only about 100 reviews between both of them. Fakespot gave the first product a D, it had 3.5 stars on Amazon. The second product (which was an improved version of the first product) had 4.5 stars and fakespot gave it an F.
The only thing they seem to base their analysis on is how many bad reviews it gets - the more negative reviews an item gets, the higher they rank it. ReviewMeta seems to be much more accurate at least for my products.

Terrible company with very unreliable ratings, they never reply to any emails and you can't find any information on who actually runs the company - gave our listings poor grading when we have never asked for reviews or paid for them. Repeatedly asked for them to be looked at but never got any response from the company - I think it's outrageous that they can hide behind their website and not respond to their appalling software damaging legitimate companies selling on Amazon.

I used to rely on Fakespot. But seeing fakespot giving poor ratings of good reviews of products I think are great has me no longer trusting them. And I have ordered products for my dogs on Amazon that had so many reviews saying dogs love it. Fakespot gave the reviews high marks. And then my dogs hated the products.

Unreliable. One week a product is rating A, the next is D, even though the numbers of reviews haven't changed. I've also read Amazon seller forums frustrated about Fakespot giving their products bad ratings in spite of reviews being genuine.

i wonder if fakespot is victim of fake reviews...

Been using fakespot for a long time. It used to be an amazing and very helpful tool. I have noticed over the last few months it has become rather inaccurate. Gives D-F ratings for totally legit product reviews and products. It's totally unreliable now and just a waste of space. Such a shame!! No point using it.

not accurate at all, I tested it with different links from amazon that I already know some of which are using fake reviews and other are highly reputable stores and found out that fakespot is categorizing them in the wrong places. giving the fake A and B and giving the authentic C and F. fakespot is not trust worthy

Fakespot is not reliable. We have never solicited a review for our business. We go above and beyond to follow Amazon TOS and fakespot gives our products C and F. Yet one of our competitors who has manipulated reviews and brushed listings gets an A. After doing further research these guys are making money off promoting certain products. Its sad to see a service that is supposed to promote transparency is nothing more than a page to promote products they make money from.

Use to be accurate, but for some reason a product going from A to F and the only difference is that it received new reviews.

Be careful.

Edit:

We found out the cause of the issue!
When it comes to multi ASIN products when split from the parent it shows split reviews as being altered and lowering the grade incorrectly.

Trying to reach out as I think a lot of people may have this issue.

This is a fault, it is intended to stop sellers merging new products to get more reviews which is fine, but it doesn't take into account when Amazon splits a listing then brings it back together. Fakespot need a system to recognise the issue otherwise they are hurting genuine sellers.