A discussion on negative reviews and reviewer integrity

[Relampago]

I don’t trust Amazon reviews, that’s why I came to this Forum. Between the Forum and YouTube I find suitable information for successful purchases.

[ToyKeeper]

@DavidEF

But I’m sure you know that, hence the $6000 synthesizer request.

Yup, can’t risk having anyone actually take me seriously.

[wle]

@xevious

Recently I was contacted by a fairly new member (only a few weeks old) with a Chinese name, and asked me if I’d like to review their flashlights. They sent me links to two Amazon product listings. The light brand is new to me (NiteNumen), but the specs and design look interesting. A little pricey for what you get, relative to well established brands. You expect a no-name to be priced a good bit less as they try to establish brand recognition.

Anyway, the person said that they’d send me the first one and if they thought the review fair and well written, I would then buy the 2nd one and they’d reimburse me after I posted the review. I sent them a pretty good example of one review I did for Olight and she said it was very nice. But now… she’s asking me to purchase both flashlights and that she’d reimburse me after the reviews are posted. Her profile is completely absent of any identifying information and there’s no company signature either. At least with Olight, it was an official Olight username and she included a company style tag line in her signature. I never had to buy those Olight flashlights I reviewed either.

A friend of mine here mentioned about this, the “bait and buy” thing and that I should avoid that. He’d heard of cases where someone does a review and then they never get reimbursed. The username just goes defunct.

Has anyone here experienced this?

i did a couple of ‘bait and buys’
they did pay
the lights were OK and i said so
wuben
thorfire
a bike light i don;t remember the name of that has 2 LEDs and i am still using

your deal could still be shady

though you would think they would have the most to lose
you could always change their review to something bad and even post it elsewhere, savage them any way you wanted to and anywhere
so it isn;t really that likely to be crooked

wle

[LumenMax]

Also ask the rep for conditions, including possible bad review. Some companies accept a direct email for bad reviews (you don't post it on Amazon). If they cannot accept anything less than 5 stars, don't accept the offer to review the light.