Occasionally, I purchase things online. I search for them, read about them, decide if those things are what I am looking for, and then I start to read the ratings. They may be 4.5 out of five or 2.3 out of five. I then wonder if any of the ratings are true to their words.
Well, guess what? There are some, and maybe many, false reviews. The Guardian, TheGuardian.com, says that some sites “offer services to the UK and the US, among a plethora of other countries, adding that their service is manual, with no bots, and they will even upload photographs to ‘make it look legit’ for evaluations of products.” There are plenty of fake reviews online. How do you tell the difference?
Well, I would suggest a site I have used that I believe is very helpful. It is fakespot.com, which is a website that helps online shoppers avoid fake reviews, unreliable sellers, and counterfeit products. It uses AI (artificial intelligence) to analyze the reviews of a product on online retail sites and give each product a rating. The rating indicates how trustworthy the reviews are and how likely the product is to match the description and quality.
You can go to the site and install the Fakespot Chrome extension, which will automatically show you the Fakespot rating for any product you browse on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, and more. You may also install it on most any browser, including Firefox and Edge. There is also a Fakespot mobile app, which lets you scan barcodes or search for products and see their ratings. Alternatively, you can visit the Fakespot website, paste any product URL into the analyzer, and get an almost immediate valuation online.
Fakespot is free for basic features such as analyzing products and seeing ratings. However, if you want to access more advanced features, such as price tracking, deal alerts, seller ratings, and personalized recommendations, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan. Fakespot offers three plans, which range from $1.99/month to $9.99/month for the Premium features. Cheap Ron uses the free features, and that is all I need.
The Basic plan allows you to analyze up to 50 products per month and gives you access to seller ratings and price tracking. I believe this is much more than I will ever need, so this is the “free” plan I choose. The Plus plan allows you to analyze up to 250 products per month and gives you access to deal alerts and personalized recommendations. The Premium plan allows you to analyze unlimited products per month and gives you access to all features. If you would like, you can compare the plans and their benefits on the Fakespot website.
One of the questions that many online shoppers have is: How accurate is Fakespot? The answer is not straightforward, as Fakespot does not guarantee that its analysis is correct. Fakespot uses an algorithm that looks for patterns in reviews that indicate suspicious activity, such as mismatched dates, grammatical errors, repeated phrases, or unnatural language. However, these indicators are not always reliable, and there may be cases where genuine reviews are flagged as fake or vice versa. Additionally, Fakespot’s analysis is limited to written reviews and does not take into account other factors such as product quality, customer service, or shipping time.
Fakespot should be used as a general tool that helps you identify reliable customer reviews, but not as the sole source of information about a product. Use your brain and experience to really evaluate the products. And remember, “Let the buyer beware.”