It happened to the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, Google Reviews, Amazon Reviews. If you google random products + reviews, you’ll get limitless “review websites” with the product you are looking at, with lots of suspicious “affiliate” links.
All reviews on the internet are BS. In the past, Consumer Reports was seen as legitimate, it’s the only one who might be legit now.
My old job bought reviews. We had apps with millions of downloads, and at least half of the reviews were purchased. We’ve had thousands of five star reviews to our brick and mortar stores, all paid for to boost our presence.
Whenever we launch a new thing, we’d have hundreds of reviews ready. Kinda like leaving a few dollars in a tip jar to get the energy going.
Welcome to modern day business practice.
Not all reviews are BS–all review sites are BS. Plenty of real people post real reviews mixed in with the fake ones.
The Better Business Bureau was always a protection racket. Businesses pay (a lot) for membership. If you aren’t a member you can’t respond to complaints and it impacts your business negatively. Members can respond to a complaint and no matter what the response is, or if the customer is satisfied, the complaint gets marked as resolved.
