[Vision2020] For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews

[lfalen]

Wayne
I believe you subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer. There is an article in the February issue on Alternative Medicine and NIH.
Would you post it on the vision.
Thanks
-----Original message-----
From: Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:01:35 -0800
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews

> Note:  The same goes for companies arranging negative reviews and
> denegrating those who post negative reviews of their products.
> 
> 
>  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>  Reprints<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/technology/for-2-a-star-a-retailer-gets-5-star-reviews.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha25&pagewanted=print#>
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> January 26, 2012
> For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews By DAVID
> STREITFELD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_streitfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
> 
> In the brutal world of online commerce, where a competing product is just a
> click away, retailers need all the juice they can get to close a sale.
> 
> Some exalt themselves by anonymously posting their own laudatory reviews.
> Now there is an even simpler approach: offering a refund to customers in
> exchange for a write-up.
> 
> By the time VIP Deals ended its
> rebate<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/286364-vip-deals.html>on
> Amazon.com<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amazon_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org>late
> last month, its leather case for the Kindle Fire was receiving the
> sort of acclaim once reserved for the likes of Kim Jong-il. Hundreds of
> reviewers proclaimed the case a marvel, a delight, exactly what they needed
> to achieve bliss. And definitely worth five stars.
> 
> As the collective wisdom of the crowd displaces traditional advertising,
> the roaring engines of e-commerce are being stoked by favorable reviews.
> The VIP deal reflects the importance merchants place on these evaluations —
> and the lengths to which they go to game the system.
> 
> Fake reviews are drawing the attention of regulators. They have cracked
> down on a few firms for deceitful hyping and suspect these are far from
> isolated instances. “Advertising disguised as editorial is an old problem,
> but it’s now presenting itself in different ways,” said Mary K. Engle, the
> Federal Trade Commission’s associate director for advertising practices.
> “We’re very concerned.”
> 
> Researchers like Bing Liu, a computer science professor at the University
> of Illinois at Chicago, are also taking notice, trying to devise
> mathematical models to systematically unmask the bogus endorsements. “More
> people are depending on reviews for what to buy and where to go, so the
> incentives for faking are getting bigger,” said Mr. Liu. “It’s a very cheap
> way of marketing.”
> 
> By last week, 310 out of 335 reviews of VIP Deals’ Vipertek brand premium
> slim black leather case folio cover were five stars and nearly all the rest
> were four stars. The acclaim seemed authentic, barring the occasional
> indiscretion. “I would have done 4 stars instead of 5 without the deal,”
> one man bluntly wrote.
> 
> VIP Deals, which specializes in leather tablet cases and stun
> guns<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stun_guns/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
> denied it was quietly offering the deals. “You are totally off base,” a
> representative named Monica wrote in an e-mail.
> 
> But three customers said in interviews that the offer was straightforward.
> Searching for a protective case for their new Kindle Fire, they came upon
> the VIP page selling a cover for under $10 plus shipping (the official list
> price was $59.99). When the package arrived it included a letter extending
> an invitation “to write a product review for the Amazon community.”
> 
> “In return for writing the review, we will refund your order so you will
> have received the product for free,” it said.
> 
> Anne Marie Logan, a Georgia pharmacist, was suspicious. “I was like, ‘Is
> this for real?’ ” she said. “But they credited my account. You think it’s
> unethical?”
> 
> While the letter did not specifically demand a five-star review, it broadly
> hinted. “We strive to earn 100 percent perfect ‘FIVE-STAR’ scores from
> you!” it said.
> 
> The merchant, which seems to have no Web site and uses a mailbox drop in
> suburban Los Angeles as a return address, did not respond to further
> requests for comment. As of last week, the company (as opposed to its
> products) had received 4,945 reviews on Amazon for a nearly perfect 4.9
> rating out of five.
> 
> Amazon is expected to sell 20 million Kindle Fire tablets this year, making
> the market for cases potentially enormous. But it is also bitterly
> competitive, with dozens of models in Amazon’s Kindle showroom. With a
> modest investment<http://topics.nytimes.com/your-money/investments/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
> VIP pushed its product far above the competition, none of which had so much
> enthusiasm with so little dissent. Customers like Ms. Logan, who got
> something they had genuinely wanted for only a small shipping charge, were
> of course thrilled. And Amazon racked up more revenue.
> 
> Even a few grouches could not spoil the party. “This is an egregious
> violation of the ratings and review system used by Amazon,” a customer
> named Robert S. Pollock wrote in a review he titled “scam.”
> 
> He was promptly chastised by another customer. This fellow, himself a
> seller on Amazon, argued that he had both given and gotten free items in
> exchange for reviews. “It is not a scam but an incentive,” he wrote.
> 
> Under F.T.C. rules, when there is a connection between a merchant and
> someone promoting its product that affects the endorsement’s credibility,
> it must be fully disclosed. In one case, Legacy Learning Systems, which
> sells music instructional tapes, paid
> $250,000<http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/03/legacy.shtm>last March to
> settle charges that it had hired affiliates to recommend the
> videos on Web sites.
> 
> Amazon, sent a copy of the VIP letter by The New York Times, said its
> guidelines prohibited compensation for customer reviews. A few days later,
> it deleted all the reviews for the case, which itself was listed as
> unavailable. Then it took down the product page itself.
> 
> Asked why Amazon did not seem to notice that at least a few consumers
> called into question the VIP deal on its own site, a spokeswoman declined
> to comment. Nor would she say exactly what happened to VIP’s other
> products, like the Vipertek VTS-880 mini stun gun, which also disappeared
> from the retailer.
> 
> The gun, like the Kindle case, received nearly all five-star reviews. “I
> bought one for my wife and decided to let her try it on me,” one man wrote
> in a typical display of the sort of effusiveness that VIP inspired. “We
> gave it a full charge and let me just say WOW! Boy do I regret that
> decision.”
> 
>   [image: DCSIMG]
> 
> -- 
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
> 
>