Those five-star headphones you’re eyeing up on Amazon could actually be nothing of the sort. That’s because lots of top-rated headphones include reviews of completely unrelated products, an investigation has found.
As reported by the BBC, consumer group Which? found that nine of the 10 best-rated Bluetooth headphones on the retail site include reviews of products including cuddly toys, umbrellas and shower curtains.
Sellers were able to exploit a loophole in Amazon’s reviews merging policy. This lets them merge reviews from multiple versions of the same product – so you see the same reviews for a white pair of wireless headphones as you do for the same pair in blue, say. But, merging reviews from an unrelated product is against Amazon's terms and conditions because it can be used to artificially inflate a product's overall rating.
Most of the brands featured in the Which? report are not household names, and all are sold by multiple sellers on Amazon. Hence it’s tricky to know whether the brands themselves were guilty of this fraudulent practice.
To get an idea of the scale of the problem, the highest-rated pair of Bluetooth headphones in the Which? report had an Amazon’s Choice badge, along with 40 rave reviews. But these reviews weren’t for the headphones themselves, but cuddly toys.
"Unscrupulous businesses are exploiting weaknesses with Amazon's review system, leaving shoppers at risk of buying products boosted by thousands of bogus five-star reviews," said Rocio Concha, Which? director of policy.
"We have now taken appropriate enforcement action against the product listings and sellers in question,” they said. "We have clear guardrails in place to prevent products from being incorrectly grouped, either due to human error or abuse.
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