Brilliant Marketing Technique or Unethical and Misleading?

[Imzadi]

My sister and I both agreed that it's hard to get the brush into and out of the case. You have to really push and pull hard. I never write Amazon reviews, but if I did I would give the product 4 stars, not 5.

You could be just as unethical. Post the 5-star review raving about how well it picks up fur. Leave off the part where it's hard to push & pull it in and out of the case. After your $10 gift card arrives, amend your review, bringing up the fact that you and your DSis realize how hard it is to push in the case and you have to drop your review down to 4 stars.

Just kidding. Personally, I wouldn't bother to leave a review either. But, since you did buy it partly because of the reviews, do report them to Amazon.

 

[tony67]

As others said - its completely wrong and far too common.

Several times I've been offered a full refund (and keep the product) to remove a bad review.

Any time I see reviews where its a "verified purchase" and the people say they got it for free to write the review I take it with a grain of salt. It's like all the theme park influences who have nothing to say but positive things about Disney.

I don think you can honestly review something you got for free.

 

[TippyThomas]

Quite the marketing blunder in my opinion.

 

[Deanna Lamz]

I’ve had a few similar experiences with products where the reviews seemed too good to be true, and later I wondered how many were incentivized. It feels pretty shady to ask for a 5-star review in exchange for something like a gift card, especially when the product doesn’t fully deserve it.

I've noticed that this kind of practice can really make you question the authenticity of online reviews in general. It’s not just on Amazon either.

Even in social media marketing, there are ways people boost their online presence using services like https://justanotherpanel.com. You always have to be careful and trust your own judgment over inflated numbers or glowing reviews that don’t tell the whole story.

 

[_19disnA]

Getting any sort of 'incentive' to write a positive review is dubious marketing. On Amazon there is a place that indicates 'verified buyer' which hopefully means they actually purchased the item being reviewed. Clearly if you get some incentive to write a review, they have the expectation you will say something positive about the product.