There is increasing concern on the Internet about fake product reviews, and rightly so. Fake product reviews are really advertisements in disguise. Some of these fake product reviews are really convincing and very difficult for most Internet surfers to uncover. It looks like a thoughtful and constructive analysis of a product, but in reality may be a fake product review, thinly disguised as a sales pitch, with phony user feedback.
It’s like watching a health oriented documentary on TV for 10 or 15 minutes before you finally realize the whole thing is an advertisement about a particular health product. It’s not that the docu-commercial is dishonest or misleading or doesn’t give you good information. However, whenever you receive information, regardless whether that source is a product review or television documentary or financial advisor, you need to understand if that person has a potential bias that could affect your decision. In fact in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission requires bloggers and websites to prominently display whether they receive any fees from manufacturers.
If you want a lasting relationship with your customers, as we do here at ReviewMOZ, then telling your customer of any potential bias, whether real or perceived, is a way to demonstrate full transparency, honesty and openness Unfortunately, most bloggers and websites on the Internet do not display such a disclaimer. They want you to buy a particular product to get a commission paid to them by the manufacturer, so they probably see the disclaimer as a possible distraction to convincing you to buy. That’s just being short sighted, and potentially greedy.
If their website is providing a product review for just one product, or maybe just a handful of products, you need to be very diligent. Remember, there are honest, thoughtful reviewers out there, including ReviewMOZ. But there are also a lot that are not. The worst offenders often provide overly positive reviews of the product or only a few short sentences of product review. Some throw in some minor “cons” to give the impression the review is balanced. Others, with review sites covering only 3 or 4 products, sometimes deliberately skew the results so that the one product they really want you to buy is the top rated. Some even include fake user reviews, or user reviews that were paid for, to make it all seem less fake. Their primary objective is to have you buy that particular product so that they can receive a fee from the manufacturer. Any fee they receive will not increase the price you pay, so that’s not your major concern: you really want to know if they have a bias.
No one is going to go through the expense of creating a website to offer their opinion of a product without some strings attached. Something, or someone, has to pay for the cost of operating the website. So be very careful if any product reviewer has not disclosed that they receive (or don’t receive) payment for promoting the product. If they are hiding that fact, maybe they’re hiding a lot of other information from you as well. You don’t want to be scammed into buying a product that isn’t right for you, or worse, being unable to get your money back if the product is a dud.
At ReviewMOZ we provide product reviews on hundreds of products, not just a couple, so you can conduct product comparisons. Our goal is that the information we provide will help you to decide on the right product for you, and more importantly, that you’re satisfied afterwards with the purchase and you’ll revisit our site for additional recommendations on other products. Regardless which product you buy, we will receive a fee, so doesn’t it make more sense for us to help you buy the right product, and have you want to come back later to buy another and another? It does to us.
ReviewMOZ product reviews are written by third party product reviewers. They first review all the information on the product manufacturer’s website to understand the manufacturer’s claims and promises. In most cases, we also provide the product reviewer a copy of the actual product so that they can install, use and provide personal feedback on their experiences. Most importantly, we ask them to scour the Internet for comments from actual customers, both positive and negative. This can be very difficult to do since many of the reviews that you find are really potential fake reviews, written by affiliates, and not by actual customers. We ask them to reveal any customer feedback, whether positive or negative, in their review. If the customer feedback is negative or positive, it will be reflected in the review and the product rating. If the customer feedback was unfair, then they will note that in the product review and try to put it into perspective. Finally we ask our third party product reviewers to give a rating for the product, including pros and cons, so that a reader can better evaluate whether the product is right for them or not. Everyone is different. I’ve seen customers buy 3-rated products and be very satisfied. I’ve also seen customers buy 5-rated products and return them. So read the reviews carefully. A particular pro or con reported by our product reviewer may not be that relevant to your particular situation. Any product with a rating of 3.5 or higher is worth your serious consideration.
We always try to identify the most popular products before giving them to a product reviewer for creation of a product review. However, as a result of the product reviewer’s research, the product reviewer may rate the product as” not recommended” or with a low score. You’ll find a number of these on the site, with the reasons for the product reviewer rating within the product review.
All the products on ReviewMOZ carrier a return warranty and well over 95% of them have been confirmed to be a no-hassle return warranty for 60 days. The product review highlights which products have reliable warranties, and how to successfully return a product without any hassle, in case you are not satisfied with your purchase.
Finally, our ratings are highly impacted by your user experience. The user reviews on this site are from real people. Some of those user reviews are pretty negative, and as result, we may lower the product review rating of the product. There are a lot of user reviews that are very positive, so we may increase the product review rating accordingly. We also try to monitor product return rates from unsatisfied customers. Although this can be difficult to do, if we see a higher than normal product return rate, or if we see a lower than normal product return rate, we will adjust the product rating accordingly.
At ReviewMOZ, we want to be your first choice for real product reviews. Yes, we do earn a fee if you end up buying the product from the manufacturer. But hopefully, we’ve earned your trust by describing how we create those reviews. We strive to provide you with extremely useful information about each product, plus real user feedback that can help you make a personal, informed decision. If after all this you are not happy with the product that you buy from the manufacturer, you should be relieved to know that most of the products on ReviewMOZ come with a no hassle return warranty.
We want you to be so satisfied with whatever purchase you make, that you will return to our site again and again! We really hope that you will leave a user review of any product you ended up buying. Your participation will make ReviewMOZ an even better resource for all of us!
