Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges
By Harry McCracken | Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Belkin president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement in response to the discovery yesterday that one of its employees was paying people sixty-five cents to post fraudelent favorable user reviews on Amazon.com, Buy.com, and Newegg. The gist of the statement: Belkin didn’t know it was happening, it’s sorry it happened, it’s undoing the damage, and it won’t happen again. It’s appropriately humble, but you’d hope that Belkin is doing one more thing, whether it chooses to disclose so or not: Terminating the staffer who came up with this brilliant idea. I think most every consumer would agree that you don’t want other employees at other companies thinking it’s possible to play these sorts of games and get away with it…
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ZNF ‘Round The Web Says:
January 19th, 2009 at 4:13 pm[…] Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges Honestly, it doesn’t matter what Belkin does in response. Amazon’s review system is broken. Competitors slam each other, companies pump themselves up, upset customers lash out, beta testers shill, etc. And then there’s Spore. They needs to limit reviews to paying customers. […]
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Do You Trust User Reviews on the Web? | Technologizer Says:
January 19th, 2009 at 9:56 pm[…] all: T-Poll More scuttlebutt continues to emerge in the case of the glowing reviews for Belkin products that turned out to be written by a glowing-review mill set up by…. The Daily Background, which broke the story in the first place, has found evidence that the Belkin […]
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FreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Why do people write reviews? Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 2:54 am[…] Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges (technologizer.com) […]
January 18th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Honestly, it doesn’t matter what Belkin does in response. The system is broken. Competitors slam each other, companies pump up themselves, upset customers lash out, beta testers shill, etc. And then there’s Spore. Amazon needs to limit reviews to paying customers.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I worry that you’re right, Dave, although I think public humiliation for Belkin and a beheading for the guy who did it might help a little. And you’re right–the only real way to police this stuff is to make it very hard for someone who hasn’t bought something to post a review. And even that is far from foolproof.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Nothing is perfect, especially on the internet. There will always be ways to game the system. But I believe that when you have something open like this, where anyone can go in and write their own reviews, it’s HARDER to game the system than it used to be. There will always be cheaters, but if you take a look at the playing field now versus in the past, it’s still a hell of a lot more fair now.