Of late, I have been receiving WhatsApp messages from various unknown numbers asking me to earn money from home. They want me to give a five-star rating to the products they would send me through links. Once I have done my rating, I have to send them screenshots as proof. Once done, they would pay me Rs 150! I had to block the numbers one after another since they were too persistent to understand NOT INTERESTED as a reply. I wonder if this is a reality or any other scam. If it is really a business, what’s the credibility of reviews on Google, Amazon or any other platform for that matter? How would we assess the correctness of reviews online?

While purchasing online products, if not already familiar with them, a customer has mainly two choices to perceive how good it will be. One is of course the description written by sellers themselves. Although it is written with a clear intention to promote sales of their own products, it gives you very authentic information. Discounting for false claims by the sellers, such descriptions mostly serve as the first authentic source of information. The second useful detail comes from the product reviews given by third parties, mainly customers who have purchased and used them. They give stars and reviews on platforms. Any new customer would go by a number of 5-star ratings and also overall stars received by the product. I am certainly not naive to believe that earlier there were no fake reviews, but now if we have reached a stage where unknown people are contacting you to write reviews for a product you have never used or perhaps not even heard of, what is the authenticity of any review?

Sales and marketing are at an aggressive stage where genuineness and credibility hardly matter to many companies. they are willing to increase sales in any possible way. But I would say that paid reviews are the worst form of misleading any customer. Any kind of advertising is still better because in that case, we all know it’s only an advertisement, and therefore there would be exaggeration. But beware, now even reviews may be advertisements. And it’s more misleading than paid publicity or product adverts. However, hopefully, it has still not reached a level where fake reviews outnumber genuine ones, but next time you surf online for shopping and read reviews, be mindful that they may be just another advertisement by the seller.

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