Do you shop Amazon and find more knock-off products in your search results than the brands you’re looking for? You probably also see a surprising number of 5-star reviews from these no-name brands too. If they’re so good, why haven’t you heard of them, right? That’s because the 5-star reviews are paid for, and they’re cheap. Having done it myself, I’ll reveal the entire process from a reviewer’s perspective and share everything I know from the process.

How I started

If you know me, you know I’m a technology geek. I love technology and electronics. For years, I’ve been finding my way into beta testing software and hardware for a number of companies both small and large. The beta testing products slowed down during COVID-19, so I looked into other, related opportunities. I joined a website in November 2020 that promises to let anyone be a social media influencer. It sounded great, but it left a lot to be desired. I also learned there were several cookie-cutter websites that were exactly the same thing with different names. I mention joining this website because I think this is how I found my way into the Amazon Review “scam” but it could also be coincidence.

Intellifluence

The website I joined is called Intellifluence and you can join too by clicking here. The website asks you to create a profile listing your Amazon profile, social media profiles, a biography, things you’re willing to do as an influencer, etc. Then you can view their marketplace to see your opportunities to be an influencer. This might be writing a blog post, posting to social media, or reviewing a product on Amazon. I only did the Amazon reviews since that was easy to do, but I didn’t do many. Before I knew it, I started getting private messages on my social media asking me to review products on Amazon for them. I was contacted by several people over the course of 6+ months privately. It had gotten to a point where I had no time for Intellifluence anymore.

Amazon Reviews

Who are the Sellers?

I don’t know a lot of information about the companies or individuals that request reviews, but I’ve observed a lot over the months. I understand that the clients (those requesting reviews) are not American or European. The best I can determine is that they’re either from China, South Korea or somewhere in the Middle East. I’ve determined this because some have been completely absent during holidays celebrated on both of those parts of the world. They’re also most active late at night (I’m in the Midwest in the United States). I often would wake up to a message asking to review products with a time stamp of 3am, for example. All of my payment receipts show Chinese or Korean characters in the “from” line.

Despite obviously being from a very different country, they use American/English names and try to pretend to be American/English. However, if you try to speak with them more deeply than “I want x product,” there’s a very clear language barrier and difficulty understanding the conversation. Also the way they speak is very forward and often comes off as pushy or rude.

The clients also appear to work for one company that subcontracts to many other sellers. For example, each client would send me many products and each one would be from a completely different seller. However, they didn’t work directly for each seller. Although it wasn’t explicitly discussed, the how pushy they got and some of the comments regarding products suggested to me that they had a quota to meet for each product. Once the quota was met, that product was no longer available for review. I also got the impression these clients were under a lot of pressure to meet these quotas.

How does it Work?

Bought reviews for Amazon products is a very specific process. It’s not that complicated but it can appear overwhelming on the surface. It requires a lot of patience, but also persistence.

1. Choose a product

   When contacted by a client asking for Amazon reviews, they will contact you on Facebook, Instagram, or some other social media platform. If you express interest, they will send you photos of products that are available to review. Many will not have an description, but some will. If you see something you like, I found it easiest to screenshot the one you like and send that to them and indicate that’s what you’re interested in. They will respond with an Amazon link to purchase the item - DON”T open the link yet.

2. Search for the product

   To avoid red flags with Amazon growing suspicious of you writing “fake” reviews for products, you should try to find the product you’ve selected naturally with the search bar. Add it to your wishlist or cart or at least a similar item, so it looks like you’re thinking about buying it for a little bit. It’s ok if you don’t find the exact item, but it helps if you do. Once you spend time searching, you can open the link the client sent you to purchase the item.

3. Purchase the product

   Make the purchase of the product and take a screenshot of the completed order once the order is complete. Yes, you are using your own money here. Yes, you can return the product if you feel like you’re being scammed. I don’t suggest returning many items because it will draw attention to your account from Amazon. When capturing the screenshot, however, the client is looking for the order number and the total you spent. The order number helps them track the purchases and verify you actually made the purchase and the total tells them how much to pay you back after the review.

4. Use the product for 5-7 days

   This is simple. Use the product for 5-7 days before writing a review. This serves 2 purposes. First, to make the purchase look more authentic and avoid Amazon looking into your activity more closely. But it also ensures you’re actually using the product for the review. A fake sounding review is worthless. It’s harder to write an authentic review if you haven’t used the product.

5. Write a 5-star review after 5-7 days

   After 5-7 days, write your review. Try to avoid generic phrases that lack details of the product you used. “Works great!” is a worthless phrase and can trigger a spam filtering system. “These headphones fit comfortably and are easy to pair” is much more useful and authentic. Don’t wait to review too long either, though. If you wait past the 7 day period, it’s possible the item can be removed from Amazon due to suspicion of fake reviews. Once this occurs, then you cannot write your review and you won’t get paid. You can still return the item, but that’s your only option at this point.

6. Wait for an email from Amazon confirming your review was published

   Once you write your review, the seller (separate from the client that asked for your review) needs to approve the review. This can take a few days, longer over a weekend. Once approved, you will receive an email from Amazon thanking you for your review. Inside the email will include a link to view the full review.

7. Share the web link of the Amazon review, ideally from the email you received, with the client

   Once you receive this, send the link to the review to the client as proof of your review. It wouldn’t hurt to save a screenshot for yourself in case the review or product gets removed form Amazon for suspicion of fake reviews. It’s unlikely they will pay you in this event as it has happened to me once or twice and the language barrier had me talking in circles, but a screenshot proof might help depending who you work with.

8. Allow a day or 2 for payment to process, excluding weekends

   Hopefully by now, the client has asked for your PayPal account email address. Once the review has been seen by the client, they will process payment to your PayPal account. It won’t happen immediately as I get the impression this is done through the parent “company” the clients work for. It can take a few more days to process. The payment you should receive should be the total for your purchase — a 100% refund for the item in exchange for a review. From here, you can either transfer the money back to your bank account or make future purchases with the balance on your PayPal account - or use it for anything you want with PayPal.

9. Politely ask about payment if you haven’t received it in a couple of days

   It’s not a bad idea after a couple of days to ask about your payment if you still haven’t received it. Don’t be rude as these people are dealing with a lot of other people too and they likely don’t process those payments themselves. Just don’t leave it go for too long either because anyone can make mistakes or forget. You want to get your refund before Amazon removes the product’s reviews or the product entirely.

Precautions to Avoid Reviews Being Disabled

Writing reviews for an incentive goes against Amazon’s terms of use. Amazon will disable your account’s reviews if you’re caught and they disable seller accounts entirely if they are caught. The good news is for the one writing reviews, your account doesn’t get deleted. The worst that can happen is you’re no longer able to write product reviews. But to avoid this, here are some things that will help you avoid this from happening (and it’s not a guarantee as I just received the Amazon hammer and lost the ability to write reviews - my motivation for exposing this scheme).

• Try to avoid clicking the links to the products directly. Always search first and always view similar products. Make it look like you’re actively shopping for the product.

• Don’t write a review too soon. Spend time with it, get to know it, actually use it. They ask 5-7 days before writing a review. Also don’t wait too long because the product could get removed. The longer you wait, the more authentic it appears. You’ll have to find that balance.

• Write detailed reviews. They don’t have to be long. The clients don’t care how long they are and likely don’t care what you write in them. I was tempted to write a lot of negative content in one while keeping it a 5-star review just out of curiosity, but feared it might draw attention from Amazon. However, I do point out some flaws I discover within my 5-star reviews kind of like a “by the way” mention.

• Try not to make too many Amazon purchases in a short period of time. I understand this is pretty vague, but I suspect this is partly what caused me to lose my ability to review anymore. My normal purchase history was very light. I might normally purchase a few things a month. The reviews has me purchasing several things per week. It was unusual behavior for me, but these clients would send me stuff on a daily basis and I would work with multiple at a time — some of which almost begged me to choose something each time. I didn’t order each time and only ordered when there was something I was interested in.

• Don’t return too much. This I think might have drawn even more attention to my account. I had reviewed a few products that were good at first, but I later found to be flawed or in some other way not good. I also make legitimate purchases that didn’t work and needed to be returned. After a few returns close together, I found my reviews disabled.

• Write reviews for your authentic purchases that weren’t purchases for a paid review. Review them lower than 5 stars to diversify your review patterns.

The Ethics of Paid Reviews

This is where things get messy. Are these fake reviews if the reviewers have actually purchased the item? They might be skewed, but they’re real. The point is, these “fake” reviews are written by people who have actually used the product. It gets messy when a 5 star is required because it means all negativity is ignored and the review is all praise. In fact, the product could be complete crap and the review doesn’t say that at all. I guess my opening sentence here is asking how technical you want to be with the definition and that’s pointless. What is important is the fact that this promotes praise, even when it’s not warranted.

If you choose to do this, whether for the free stuff or in an attempt to balance these reviews somehow, know that you can still be honest. You may not like that I had done this, you may not care. That’s your opinion to make. Just know that I always mentioned the flaws, despite my review being 5-star. I was always very detailed, often writing lengthy reviews with very specific details in how things worked, why they behaved certain ways, etc. If there was a flaw, I discussed how to avoid it or deal with it. Products that were truly bad or didn’t work, I simply returned - and that may have resulted in my review ban but I simply couldn’t write a good review for a truly bad product. You can even change your review from a 5-star to something lower after you receive payment if the product hasn’t been removed by then.

Call me a hypocrite but I do agree this scheme has an overall negative impact on the customer experience on Amazon. I tried to be more helpful than hurtful in the details I included in my reviews, but I understand that doesn’t always matter. I mostly continued this process to learn about it and how it all worked. I wanted to write this blog almost immediately after my first couple of reviews were completed to raise awareness of it, hopefully in a neutral way. I don’t blame some people that want to get free stuff they may or may not actually use. But I also want people to know they can’t trust the reviews all of the time. Which takes me to my next point.

Final Takeaway

Simply put: don’t read the 5-star reviews on Amazon or hardly anywhere. Whenever I review a product, I look at the 4 star reviews for authentic, positive feedback, but I also look at the 1-star reviews to see if there are any glaring defects. I’ll ignore 1-star reviews over shipping problems or things that are out of the seller’s control. But if I see a pattern of the product falling apart, failing to work, or other similar issues that are affecting more than a couple of users, then I know there’s a widespread defect and determine if I am willing to take that risk. At the same time, consider user error in those reviews too. Sometimes if I’m uncertain, I’ll explore 2 and 3 star reviews, but I usually get enough information from 4 and 1 star reviews.

If only these sellers would allow us to write authentic reviews, no matter how good or bad, perhaps the battle over fake reviews wouldn’t be an issue. On the other hand, perhaps people would assume a 5-star is required regardless and it simply wouldn’t matter anyway. In my opinion, the smarter thing to do from the perspective of “fake reviews” would be to put a quota on reviews of all star levels. This would be difficult to impossible to track and still allow for the seller to remain on top in search results. But I hope this tactic goes away because I’d rather read real user reviews myself - as you would too.

These clients that request reviews in exchange for products keep begging me to create a new Amazon account to continue working with them, too. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re still desperate for reviews or if my reviews were so well written (I’d like to think), but they have asked me numerous times. I have no intention of doing that. Now that I understand this world and can share some of the mystery with the world, I’m done. Take what you will from it, think what you will of me being a part of this problem. Decide for yourself how to respond if you receive a message on social media to review products.