>> Age old scam that works because of people like Jessica who lack any moral compass and will help to screw over anyone for a buck.
Keep in mind that this current scam has only become the norm because of the outcry over incentivized reviews, which resulted in their subsequent ban.
I used to do incentivized reviews, and I followed the rules with disclosures (most incentivized reviewers did that, but not all). After the ban, all those companies using incentivized reviews switched to the backchannel reviews with reimbursement via Paypal, just like the lady in the article.
With incentivized reviews, you could easily dismiss them at your discretion, because the disclosure had to be in the review text. But everything now is a "verified purchase", and most "normals" don't know what to believe or ignore.
I tend to think a good portion of incentivized reviews were pretty honest (fwiw, the vast majority of products I received were quite good for their selling price). When looking at what other people wrote about the same products, however, I could tell that a small percentage of people were writing reviews without even trying the products. The unfortunate part was that those people tended to have the highest rankings in the review leader board.
The age-old scam I'm referring to is paying people to shill your product to deceive other shoppers. Even transparently incentivized reviews have their issues since no seller wants to pay people for negative reviews.
Keep in mind that this current scam has only become the norm because of the outcry over incentivized reviews, which resulted in their subsequent ban.
I used to do incentivized reviews, and I followed the rules with disclosures (most incentivized reviewers did that, but not all). After the ban, all those companies using incentivized reviews switched to the backchannel reviews with reimbursement via Paypal, just like the lady in the article.
With incentivized reviews, you could easily dismiss them at your discretion, because the disclosure had to be in the review text. But everything now is a "verified purchase", and most "normals" don't know what to believe or ignore.
I tend to think a good portion of incentivized reviews were pretty honest (fwiw, the vast majority of products I received were quite good for their selling price). When looking at what other people wrote about the same products, however, I could tell that a small percentage of people were writing reviews without even trying the products. The unfortunate part was that those people tended to have the highest rankings in the review leader board.