I've written about this before, but this week I got an email that was so blatant, I believe it worth repeating prior to this holiday season. What bothered me? Well, this:
"Hello, if you are interested in writing a 5 stars review for [Chinese maker] lenses on Amazon, please email me. We will refund you via PayPal after review."
It should bother you, too. Basically, this type of promise skirts around Amazon's policing, as you could show up as a verified purchase review while behind the scenes out of Amazon's view something else is going on. This gaming of reviews has long plagued pretty much every buying site that has user reviews. Making said reviews unreliable.
I get multiple offers for play-to-pay reviews every week now. More often than not, they're "we'll let you keep the lens if you review it positively." Many are "we'll let you have early access to the lens..." However it seems like the intensity is increasing, and the ask from the reviewer is getting higher.
My sites have a strict policy: while I'll take a loaner or free sample from time to time, I fully identify when I did, and there is absolutely no quid-pro-quo behind the scenes; I insist on being to write freely about what I find. Several companies have withdrawn their offers of loaner/free products when they learn that there's no guarantees on what I'll write, and that they'll not get a preview of it, either.
Given how pervasive the "please help us cheat" requests are becoming, I'm strongly considering going full Consumer Reports (all reviewed products purchased anonymously). That, however, either raises my costs of doing business, or it means I need to review fewer products. I'm leaning towards the latter. That would also mean my reviews get delayed further, as buying a product through something like NPS Priority Purchase—which I usually do for Nikon products—would not be anonymous.
Anywho, the main reason for writing this article is a bit of a warning: if you're going online to buy things this holiday season, I'd say that you should probably avoid paying any attention to the buying site's user reviews. Moreover, be careful of even independent site product reviews. So many games are being played behind the scenes now that you need to verify the integrity of the reviewer in order to trust the review.
