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Carbonite Stacks the Deck With 5-Star Reviews
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Jan 28, 2009 02:02 AM
from the gaming-that-system dept.
from the gaming-that-system dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "In the aftermath of disclosures that Belkin employees paid users for good reviews on Amazon, David Pogue reports in the NYTimes that Carbonite has gone one better with 5-star reviews of its online backup services written by its own employees. Pogue recounts how Bruce Goldensteinberg signed up for the backup service, and all went well until his computer crashed and he was unable to restore it from the online backup while Carbonite customer support kept him on hold for over an hour. Frustrated, Goldensteinberg started reading Carbonite reviews on Amazon and a few of them seemed suspicious. 'They were created around the same date — October 31, 2006 — all given 5 stars, and the reviewers all came from around the Boston, MA area, where Carbonite is located,' including a review by Swami Kumaresan that read more like a testimonial. 'It turned out that Swami Kumaresan is the Vice President of Marketing for Carbonite. His review gives no indication that he is employed by the company.' Another review posted by Jonathan F. Freidin extols Carbonite without mentioning Freidin's position as Senior Software Engineer at Carbonite. 'It doesn't matter to me that Carbonite's fraudulent reviews are a couple of years old,' writes Pogue. 'These people are gaming the system, deceiving the public to enrich themselves. They should be deeply ashamed.'"
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Hardware: Belkin's Amazon Rep Paying For Fake Online Reviews 369 comments
remove office writes "I recently discovered that Belkin's lead online sales rep, Michael Bayard, has been secretly paying internet users to review his company's products favorably on Amazon.com and other websites like Newegg, whether or not they've ever used the devices. Bayard instructed the people he was paying to 'Write as if you own the product and are using it... Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once you post yours.' Ironically, he was using Amazon's own Mechanical Turk service to hire his fraudsters. Did he honestly think he wouldn't get caught? Are Slashdotters aware of other examples of other such blatant astroturfing on behalf of a large tech company like Belkin?"
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Deeply ashamed? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, prosecuted. That is conflict of interest.
Re:Deeply ashamed? (Score:4, Informative)
No, prosecuted. That is conflict of interest.
"Conflict of Interest" is not a criminal offense. You might have a civil case for fraud, but I doubt seriously if any criminal charges would ever be filed, let alone upheld in a court.
Parent
Re:Deeply ashamed? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Conflict of Interest" is not a criminal offense. You might have a civil case for fraud, but I doubt seriously if any criminal charges would ever be filed, let alone upheld in a court.
Alright, I'll bite. As a consumer, how can I start suing them?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Prosecution (Score:5, Informative)
In Australia they would probably be prosecuted under section 52 of the Trade Practices Act, for misleading or deceptive conduct.
I think the U.K. has a similar law.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The reviews are clearly labeled "user" reviews, as you mention, not CEO reviews and not employee reviews.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And what makes anyone think other companies aren't doing this??
I read both the good reviews and the bad ones, and pay no attention to the 'stars' since most people are morons and couldn't properly rate a software package to begin with. I look for patterns in the good and bad reviews to point to areas where there might be issues. If one person whines about usability, it can probably be ignored. If 20 do, then maybe there
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, prosecuted. That is conflict of interest.
Three words: Freedom of Speech.
And here are two more words for you: caveat emptor [wikipedia.org].
It's not a good idea to "prosecute" people for holding opinions, even if they are opinions that they have an interest in. [Of course, in many places in Europe, they put you in jail [bbc.co.uk] for thinking the wrong thoughts, but I digress. Or do I?]
Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you say "Freedom of Prosecution"?
Untruthful, damaging speech is not protected. You can't say anything you want in a commercial venue. Being purposefully deceptive for monetary gain is not protected speech.
--- So how about I sell you a car after telling you how perfectly it runs. When you discover that there is no engine in it remember "caveat emptor" so you not going to sue me are you?
(thank god I'm protected!)
Parent
Not news (Score:5, Funny)
Why is anyone surprised? This happens all the time. Anonymous reviews on the Internet + unscrupulous company + morally-gray bloggers looking for a bit of easy cash = cheap, positive publicity.
So... yeah, my blog is in my profile and, uh, I'm willing to sell a bit of my soul if any companies reading this are interested...
Anon reviews not surprising, but -- (Score:5, Funny)
... only they weren't anonymous. I know this is Slashdot and no one RTFAs, but did you even read the posting?
Cheers,
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
... only they weren't anonymous. I know this is Slashdot and no one RTFAs, but did you even read the posting?
Not anonymous, but incompetent. It is like the pointy-haired-manager's version of an astroturf campaign.
Re:Anon reviews not surprising, but -- (Score:4, Interesting)
At the right time you tip off a friendly blogger. You hit all the reviews with an avalanche of reports. Have all the user accounts closed. Then, right on cue, a contrite email that appears to come from the CEO. By the time anyone knows what the hell happened the real CEO does not want to touch it; the blogger has moved on to the next story and the reputation of a company is tossed in the crapper.
I'm not suggesting that is what happened in this case but there is, IMO, WAY too quick a rush to judgment in these cases.
Parent
nobody is "surprised", it still needs reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is anyone surprised?
Who says that anybody is "surprised"? It doesn't "surprise" me that people murder, steal, and cheat and that companies pollute, evade taxes, and bribe politicians.
I still want to see it reported and publicized.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This behavior is not the exception, it is the standard operating procedure for online retail,
...and yet it remains unacceptable behavior.
The only way to change something that sucks, even if it is "standard operating procedure," is to make a lot of noise, cause the people doing it to lose money/face, and make "standard operating procedure" look a lot less "standard." This is what the people here are doing. I see nothing wrong with them trying to change this behavior.
Re:Not news (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
I'm not surprised... (Score:4, Interesting)
Have you heard their ads? They sound like a scam just from that. Or at the very least, they use the annoying advertising tactic of making other options sound way worse than they are, like an infomercial. I hate that company just from their ads, I'm not surprised they really are shady.
-Taylor
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm not surprised... (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe you're just posting a negative review because you work for the competition? :-)
Haha, crap! Yes, you figured me out! I work for the "Build your own Damn Ubuntu RAID server, damnit!" company!
-Taylor
Parent
Just another kind of spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly I'm surprised to find any useful feedback at all, given the ease for submitting reviews. The only thing keeping
things from going completely insane is that large companies don't want to get caught cheating.
For smaller stuff, I've already noticed that on the digital products (like Kindle books) where the barrier for entry
is much lower, review spam is a much bigger issue.
Re:Just another kind of spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Can't wait till Amazon loses those reviews. (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm sorry sir, but we've had a problem with our online backup service".
Greed (Score:3, Interesting)
You're assuming they have morals.
Sometimes I wonder - how often do good people in a ruthless business environment actually remain good people? Sometimes I wonder whether the ultra-competitive nature of business causes upstanding moral people to turn into greedy fucks who have lost their original principles and instead turned to making money at all costs.
Kinda scares me, what our capitalistic society sometimes forces people to become to survive in business. Assuming, of course, that I'm not just being naïve and that these people were simply without scruples before they started to cheat their customers with shonky reviews and what else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of a philosophical question (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I'm guessing the latter. I mean: does
A) power corrupt formerly honest and nice people, or
B) it's just natural selection at work, at the biggest turds float to the top?
It seems to me more like B, though I can't say I've done a real study or anything.
The thing is, if you have a dog-eat-dog set up, the ones who refuse to eat other dogs (e.g., because of having morals) never make it big in the first place. Either they don't get promoted, or they get their prices undercut by someone who saves by being a bigger fuck, and either go bankrupt or bought.
As an extreme example to illustrate a point, think, say, a third world country where it's not illegal to dump toxic stuff in rivers and safety laws are non-existent. So company A are the nice guys, they don't want to screw over their workers and community. They invest in filters, invest in safe equipment and training, doesn't bribe/deceive/lobby/make backroom deals, etc. So their products are more expensive. Their competitor, company B, are owned and led by a couple of greedy fucks, who just skip all that extra cost and do any tricks in the book to get a goverment subsidy or contract. If it's a big bribe or shady deal that gets that job done, so be it. So their products are cheaper. Do you have any doubts as to who's going to push the other off the market?
(It's not even as much a hypothetical example, because it used to happen in the first world too, in the not so distant past. E.g., back when the Titanic was built, the norm was IIRC to have one dead worker for every million dollars worth of ship built. The Titanic was remarkable in that they only had IIRC 3 dead workers in accidents during building. But anyway, roll that in your head, they actually made statistics and found it acceptable to kill people rather than spend money on safety. It's not a funny thought.)
It's easy to look afterwards at the big resulting conglomerate "B Industrial Corp" and think, "man, all that power corrupted them." But in fact they got to power by not being nice in the first place.
Parent
I don't believe that (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying that there are no unethical businesses, but I believe that most transactions are done in good faith. Maybe it is the field that I have chosen, but most business relationships that I encounter on a day-to-day basis are built on mutual trust and common goals. In fact, if I didn't trust my vendors, I wouldn't do business with them. Period. If I can't rely on the product that they sell me, it is of no use to me. If my company's customers didn't trust the product that we sell, we would go out of business really, really fast. (I work in health care, so people could literally die). If you need a widget to help you perform your core competency, then you make the mistake of buying the cheapest alternative only once. Once you get into big business then having disruptions becomes way too costly to not have vendors and customers that you trust. Even saying that, usually when I run into problems I can more likely attribute the problem to incompetence rather than to malfeasance.
Obviously you have your Enrons, your Madoffs, and your Carbonites, but I think that the these cases are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Parent
Oh man, I worked in a company that did this... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh man, I worked in a company that did this all the time - positive reviews submitted by employees of the company on various sites, posing as customers of the company. It is a successful and respected online company.
The culture of a place can go a long way to convincing employees that this is the normal thing to do, and that it's just a part of doing business in this competitive world. Brings to mind Stanley Milgram's obediance experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment [wikipedia.org]
Many fake reviews are easy to spot (Score:5, Interesting)
Just click on the reviewer and see if they have reviewed anything else and if they have, if it's a diverse range of stuff. I remember seeing a set of self-help books get either really poor reviews or really great ones. I clicked on the 5 star reviews and many of the reviewers were either one time reviewers, or they had a history of favorably reviewing a small circle of self-help books from a specific publisher or author. Often within a tight timeframe rather than anything spaced out between reviews.
I'm sure the reverse is true in circumstances, competing manufacturers giving their competitors' products a poor review. With the same tell-tale signs.
Amazon is very attractive to scam in this fashion although I'm sure sites like epinions and others are becoming targets as well. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if there are much more sophisticated systems in place than the ones uncovered lately with Belkin and all. What we have been seeing seems all very amateurish - and considering that, after price, having a good star rating at one of these sites may bring in or cost thousands of sales - I would think some manufacturers have to have departments hired to fill the internet with favorable reviews on amazon and other sites, as well as writing blogs or recommendations on blogs with some amount of finesse. Where their employees actually become believeable characters with a bit of history and diversity - perhaps reviewing the other odd item here and there, just enough to be convincing. In fact, they could make put these characters on file and have them become year long projects that become bit reoccuring players in the marketing process.
Online reviews are flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
If it is true that fake reviews are easy to spot, then it should be possible to get a computer to spot them too, you might think.
I find that online reviews are usually pretty worthless when there are, say, less than 5 contributors. Either the reviews are so good they must be employees, etc, or they are angry diatribes from disgruntled customers.
Try looking at reviews for almost any electrical item (even items you own and know to be good) - what you usually find is that all the reviews will be negative because the users are so angry when their device fails they are motivated to let out their frustration somewhere. On the other hand, when things tick along as normal then they can't be bothered to contribute to an online review system.
That is, of course, for the company shills...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Many fake reviews are easy to spot (Score:5, Interesting)
If Amazon is so attractive to scamming, how about some counter-examples? Can anyone suggest a site whose reviews they really trust?
I can think of two. First is cpap.com. Sometime after delivery, they send a couple of reminders asking you to rate the products you bought. Since these are durable medical goods whose performance directly and significantly impacts the lives of the users, we tend to want to say what we think, good or bad. I find the reviews on that site very trustworthy, assuming several are posted and you take the time to read them all.
Next up is Newegg.com. For items with a number of reviews, reading all of them is a darn useful thing. I tend to select the option to read all the reviews and then put them in "worst first" order. Often, an item will get a bad review because of a small percentage of DOAs or if it has some particular flaw that may not apply to me. In those cases, I can ignore the bad reviews and purchase with confidence. Generally, lots of reviews == reviews you can trust, but even the products with just a few reviews can, depending on the quality of the reviews, be successfully differentiated. As an added plus, newegg gives me a fun place to watch fanbois rant and rave.
As a postscript, I've been burned in the oddest venues, too. I once watched a conversation develop on a small web site devoted to an arcane shooting sport. Someone said they had specially adapted carrying cases to sell and posted a picture. Someone else chimed in and said they had bought one and loved it. A few were sold and over the course of the next few weeks, a half-dozen people (all known to me, all people I would run into at meatspace gatherings eventually) posted nice comments. So - I ponied up $65 for one. I would have been willing to pay double for high quality. What I got was something I wouldn't have paid $20 for if I had been able to see it in person. The quality of construction was merely passable. The details of the design were sloppy. I finally concluded that in this intimate setting, people were just unwilling to admit they had been (slightly) cheated. They were unwilling to call the maker out in front of his friends. They were unwilling to tell previous posters that their standards were laughably low. Instead, a sort of groupthink/let's not make any waves/we're all friends here vibe took hold and people wound up wasting money. I thought that was weird at first. Then I realized that I was consciously deciding to not post any comments since I didn't want to badmouth an "extended family in the sport" member and start some useless drama.
Funny dynamic, there.
My point, overall, is that reviews and their usefulness are both better and worse than we expect, often at the same time. Generally, the only way to know for sure if the reviews are any good is to have enough subject matter expertise that you don't need to read the reviews in the first place. Damn shame, that.
Parent
Carbonie? (Score:3, Funny)
These guys should really have their assets... frozen.
They should be ashamed! (Score:3, Funny)
They went through the trouble of making fake reviews for their product... and failed because they used their real names... I don't even know what to say to that...
"This post was found to be satisfactory and it was delivered on time in great condition!"
-Vert^H^H^H^HJohny Luser!
How often at slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
I know quite a few people that do that. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a normal operating procedure.My ex-boss asked me to make a 5 star rating for him on one site because his legit (if not state-of-the art) anti-spyware program was listed as an adware/spyware provider.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/pcsafe.com
Take a look at the comments. The users "johnatsearching" and "wright" are the from the guy that owns the company. Looking back, he must have made 20 comments to bump up his rankings on the site. He even got his employees into it.
Only one person there mentioned that they were employed by the company. That's sad.
Which means (Score:3, Interesting)
re: deceiving the public to enrich themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
So? What Pogue has observed is a SYMPTOM of the bigger problem, not the actual problem itself.
This is precisely how American capitalism works. It's utterly Darwinian: any tactic that enriches your survival prospects and doesn't get you drawn and quartered is perfectly fine. I hate to say it, but we made this bed for ourselves with our own particular brands of indoctrination and econo-political dogma. We mixed up a nasty batch of Koolaid and wound up drinking it ourselves. There are hidden costs to this sort of capitalism.
If you really want to put an end to this sort of behavior, we'll have to start by changing our actual collective values and ethics, and then change our messages of indoctrination that we whisper to our children and each other to reflect those new values. We need to get the population sipping a better mix of Koolaid; what we've been drinking for almost a century is pretty toxic. Violent games may not brainwash gamers to become violent, but the sort of subtle indoctrination that every American receives DOES lead to the sort of behavior that Pogue observed.
It will take a true collective effort and consensus in order to end it. Passing a few more kneejerk laws or whatever ain't gonna cure the underlying problem: Darwinian capitalism.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Regulations aren't the same thing as consensus. Regulations are often rammed down the throats of an unwilling and uncooperative populace by a self-interested minority seeking to use those regulations to benefit themselves a bit more than everyone else.
Take intellectual property law and DRM, for instance.
Regulation and yet more laws in a binder already full to bursting is not the solution. Trying to legislate socialistic values leads to something that history has already told us will fail: Communism.
Consumer laws create a level playing field for all (Score:4, Insightful)
Fairness and honesty can hardly be called tenets of communism. Laws that enforce fairness and honesty in business practices foster faith in our capitalist system and provide a level playing field for all those that conduct business within the system.
Without laws protecting consumers, the playing field is very much tilted in favor of those with deep legal pockets. Consumer protection laws also force businesses to compete honestly so that the best product at the best price will succeed in the market.
I highly doubt you will find a majority of any population that actually wants businesses to operate dishonestly. Regulations enforcing fairness and honesty ARE consensus.
I find that most people that protest laws protecting consumers usually are the ones trying to game the system to their advantage at the expense of those who could least defend themselves in court.
It's not communism to keep people honest.
Parent
Shame on the mods! (Score:3, Interesting)
Regulations aren't the same thing as consensus. Regulations are often rammed down the throats of an unwilling and uncooperative populace by a self-interested minority seeking to use those regulations to benefit themselves a bit more than everyone else.
that would be because the regulation known as "fairness doctrine" was removed from news organizations, meaning they no longer have to provide both sides of a story. This has turned the news into a propaganda mouthpiece for whoever has the most money or power in a given argument.
Regulation and yet more laws in a binder already full to bursting is not the solution.
you're absolutely right, optimization is required: get rid of the bloat. You, however, are proposing anarchy--the same anarchy which led to the collapse of our financial system.
Without "cops", the criminals run free. With too many co
Interesting...BBB report... (Score:4, Informative)
I looked up Carbonite on the Better Business Bureau. They are BBB accredited with a B+ rating.... Maybe the BBB should be rethinking their scales?
http://reports-boston.bbb.org/Boston/Public/Reports/RR/Report.aspx?i=17194 [bbb.org]
Who reads positive reviews? (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the negative reviews first. I will read some of the positive reviews but I start at the bottom and if I don't get turned off by them as I work my way up then I will probably buy the item.
3rd Party Reviews (Score:3, Insightful)
Are worthless anyway. If you don't personally know the person, assume its a paid advertisement.
There's a market for this stuff, apparently (Score:4, Interesting)
The company I work at was approached by a guy; conversation went along the lines of "Hi, you look like a good company, but I've never heard of you or seen advertisements" "We find the 'happy customer' approach to marketing works well enough on its own" "That is good. Say, I have possibility to stimulate communities to talk about [company name]. So, I can help you have all your news and services discussed constantly distinctive features spotlighted, etc by independence observers. The number of positive reviews and mentoring of your company will increase in natural way"
Further mails were then directed to /dev/null, but I wonder how many companies would have taken him up on the offer...
Not even needed (Score:4, Informative)
Shows the value of the "MSM" (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course random, unknown people are not trustworthy. While it's trendy to criticize the "MSM" and 'old' media, they do have one essential advantage over crowd-sourced information: MSM publications have a reputation to protect:
1) They are not anonymous. As has often been observed, people are willing to say things anonymously on the Internet that they would never say to anyone's face, or if anyone knew who was speaking.
2) They have an enormous investment in their reputation: Millions (or more) in business, hundreds of jobs, and a reputation that's been built up over decades or more.
3) They have a track record: You know (or can know) the history of their integrity.
Certainly that does not make MSM 100% trustworthy; they are not. But at least when I read David Pogue in the NY Times, for example, I know whom I'm dealing with and I can make a judgment about the chance of and degree to which he might be shilling something.
Re: (Score:3)
There really is a person on this planet named "Jane Q. Public"???
Isn't that kind of, like, overdoing things a bit? It sounds like some sort of pseudonym, but apparently it's your real name, because it says so right over your post.
Re:My God! (Score:5, Funny)
There really is a person on this planet named "Goldsteinberg"???
Typical American prejudice - you think it's wrong just because someone has an Arab last name.
Parent
Re:Not In Good Graces Error Reporting (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to write books, and I hated the fact that you lived and died by the sword of Amazon. And I knew that some authors were gaming their books with better ratings.
While I am not the worlds best writer, I do feel I ok and give my readers some useful information. I don't feel that my books are a waste of money.
Having said that it hurts when your book does really well, and then it is knocked back by the competition. I had a book that hit the top rated, and it was being ranked higher than one of the competition. The competition got some reviewers out and knocked my book back.
I stopped buying at Amazon since I can get cheaper books at a1books.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's really not true. For most books the reviews are quite good. This problem is still limited, though as Amazon seems like it is facing the same problem google did a decade ago. Their reviews are getting influential enough that people game the system. Amazon is going to need to start protecting itself and punishing people who try to game the system.