Tech & Biz

Belkin accused of buying favorable Amazon reviews

by TDH | January 19, 2009 at 09:32 am

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A Belkin employee has been accused of offering to pay consumers for favorable reviews on Amazon.com. Employee Michael Bayard apparently offered $0.65/favorable review posted on Amazon.

The ad stipulated that the review must use US English and proper grammar, always give a 100% rating, and be written as if the user owns and uses the product. Another stipulation was down rating any negative reviews of the product on Amazon as not helpful.

Belkin is claiming to be unaware of the situation and has posted a public response.

"It was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turkwebsite inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment."

Belkin says that it has removed all postings from the Mechanical Turk system and is working with its channel partners to ensure that any reviews posted due to the ads have been removed. How exactly they will determine if the reviews are legit or not remains to be seen.