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by xbkingx 2498 days ago
I'd agree if they're was any oversight of the review process. Instead, they have the same score gaming problem as app stores. There are literally sellers that send competing products and their own products to random people so they (the sellers' themselves) can post fake reviews as verified purchases. Hell, even having to mark reviews as verified should be enough to make people doubt the legitimacy of all reviews on the store.

Unless the product is failing in catastrophic ways that inspire loads of pissed off customers, 3 stars is the new 0 stars and be suspicious of anything with a high number of reviews. High review count means the seller had to stuff the ballot box to make up for lower score real reviews or a fake review battle with a competitor.

My latest way of weeding out the more egregious fakes (in addition to ReviewMeta and FakeSpot) is to look for customer pics that are either just pictures of the box, item not being used, or, to a lesser extent, promo styled (nice lighting and odd angles). Also, a quick scan of early reviews to see if there were more low ratings or mentions of a completely different product. Some sellers will pay for or get legit good reviews on an item, then swap the item number to a new item in the same category. Same goes for having multiple very different items in one listing as purchase options (4 options for a keyboard - red color, blue color, travel mouse, fishing lure set).