Who pays attention to good reviews anyway, always read the bad reviews.
FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
111–120 of 281 posts
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#112Random thought: before the Internet were reviews any better? I know there were/are quality reviews like Consumer Reports and such. But were there any crowdsourced reviews? Are we worse off or are we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?
Aside word from mouth, certain magazines that you'd trust (or unsubscribe otherwise), the most prominent part was: the brand name.
Before moving to Taiwan (and then China) a lot of the goods were produced quite locally and not outsourced, so it was even possible to have a most so remote relationship to the factory/engineers responsible for a product.
The brand is still a thing, yet a lot of brands are owned by the same mega corporation and effectively produced/assembled in the same outsourced factory with unknown amount of suppliers.
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#113Good. Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Fine any company selling products with "warranty void if removed" stickers. Mass shut down fake sale websites that do not sell the product imaged. I want to see the ftc breaking down doors and deleting entire companies off the face of the earth for their illigal practices. I can dream of course.
> Now also fine game companies releasing broken products.
Do you have any example where this happened?
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?
Consumer Reports was (and still is!) so trusted because it is the one publication that lacks the usual conflicts of interest that every other publication has.
The Wirecutter (now part of NY Times) is another that doesn't accept freebie products, if I recall.
They do use affiliate links, so they have incentive to want you to buy _something_, but no incentive to give any particular brand or model a biased review.
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#115Maybe a silly question, but is there a special way to report fake reviews, or is it just the normal site? [0] I was semi-scammed (they delivered what was promised, but the quality was awful) by a specialized goods dealer. A few years later, I see the business has attempted to whitewash its Google reviews with recent stellar feedback from obviously-fake people (e.g., "Matthew McConaughey"). I reported them to Google,…
Can't answer your question, but give advice. Get good with Amex or Chase, and buy everything with a credit card.
Anymore I don't even worry about such scammers, I just get my money back and move on.
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#116I would love to know about how a paid product showcase where the payment is not at all conveyed in the YouTube "review" would be viewed in light of this.
Ie someone regularly charges money to review products within an industry, is considered an expert in the subject matter - and appear to do a fine job of it, but isn't transparent about the fact that all videos are commissioned.
Ie basically charging a production fee without disclosing this in the channel itself. Thanks!
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#117Good. Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Fine any company selling products with "warranty void if removed" stickers. Mass shut down fake sale websites that do not sell the product imaged. I want to see the ftc breaking down doors and deleting entire companies off the face of the earth for their illigal practices. I can dream of course.
> Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Do you have any example where this happened?
Pick any big budget game released by a AAA studio or publisher
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#118Platforms that make a business out of scaled access to advertising services such as Facebook should be held liable by the FTC for all the knock offs and fraud there that they deliberately do nothing about.
Every single time a person submits an Intellectual Property infringement notice to one of these companies, those scumbags narrow the request down to the one "piece of content" that was flagged and allow related content that they know fully well are part of similarity clusters of images/videos/audio to go completely free.
As an artist, going to every single instance and trying to report it to those idiots to take it down is frustrating and a complete waste of my time. By the time someone gets around to it, the content has already reached 90% of lifetime possibility and makes little difference to be taken down, while a new version sprouts up for more redistribution.
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#119Maybe a silly question, but is there a special way to report fake reviews, or is it just the normal site? [0] I was semi-scammed (they delivered what was promised, but the quality was awful) by a specialized goods dealer. A few years later, I see the business has attempted to whitewash its Google reviews with recent stellar feedback from obviously-fake people (e.g., "Matthew McConaughey"). I reported them to Google,…
Can't answer your question, but give advice. Get good with Amex or Chase, and buy everything with a credit card. Anymore I don't even worry about such scammers, I just get my money back and move on.
Is it much of a hassle to get your money back or is it a single paper to file?
Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't answer your question, but give advice. Get good with Amex or Chase, and buy everything with a credit card. Anymore I don't even worry about such scammers, I just get my money back and move on.
Is it much of a hassle to get your money back or is it a single paper to file?
I call Amex, tell them my story, get money back immediately 'pending investigation', and never hear another thing.
Don't abuse it, they have top notch investigation. When you spend on a credit card, it's not your money they're stealing.
I've used it probably 5 times in 10 years, and never had a problem.