FairTax Opponents Spamming Amazon Reviews
Just got this news tip from Lee:
Someone is posting dozens of duplicate negative reviews on Amazon’s site for the FT Book. Not only are the breaking Amazon’s rules by reviewing multiple times under fake accounts, but they’re copying and pasting the latest manifesto of lies by everyone’s favorite idiot idealogue, Lawrence Vance. Write Amazon.com and voice your displeasure. If they don’t hear it loud, they won’t do anything about it.
I checked Amazon, and Lee’s right. Currently, three of the four “customer reviews” for the FairTax Book are simply copied and pasted from Lawrence Vance’s miserable review of the FairTax Book for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
5 Responses to “FairTax Opponents Spamming Amazon Reviews”
It was just yesterday when I went through about the 6-7 newest pages of reviews and clicked the “no” button for “Was this review helpful” and also used the link to report these posts to Amazon.com
We need a concerted effort to go through these and rate them not helpful, and report them to Amazon.
I’m really surprised Boortz and Linder haven’t gone to Amazon upset about this. This is a very unreliable review system if people can so easily make up a fake account JUST to slam the FairTax without even talking about the book. Amazon.com is supposed to be a pretty good authority on books but they allow this kind of garbage to happen.
Tom
Tom –
Actually, Boortz and Linder are very aware of how to get reviews deleted from Amazon. In the first week the book came out, they managed to get many negative reviews deleted, some of which were bogus, but others of which were clearly legitimate criticisms of the book and the FairTax. By getting the negative reviews deleted, they were able to artificially boost the book’s Amazon stars ratings for the critical initial sales period. Books like this, which are heavily hyped by the authors, tend to make a big splash initially, then sales quickly drop off. They had a big run as a NYT best seller. So, at this point, I doubt they really care whether their book is spammed or not. They got their money.
I certainly do not
Hayden,
The book may not be a #1 Best Seller anymore or even a top 10 Bestseller but it is still selling on Amazon.com and regardless of whatever amount Amazon deleted initially there are still MANY MANY of these false negative reviews. They give it one star, blast the FairTax (not even the book), and clearly make a new account and do it again.
This is a serious issue as it’s caused an unfair rating of the book. There is no such thing as an “artificially high” rating when the stars are based off LEGIT reviews. There are benefits to being rated higher. The book will turn up quicker when people search for books by ratings, and first timers to the Book and to the FairTax will not blow it off because of the lower rating. You should care, I certainly do and believe Boortz/Linder do as well since they’re not doing this for money.
Tom Leser
IN Asst. State Director
FL-15 District Director
www.FairTaxIndiana.net
www.FLFairTax.net (coming soon!)
I’ve seen numerous items on Amazon, books to dvds, that’ve been reviewed before the publication date. Some reviewers even admit they haven’t yet viewed what they’re reviewing (how stupid!). The fact remains that Amazon’s reviewing protocol is far too easy to abuse. If you take a gander at the Fair Tax reviews now, there’s more of the same...more copy and pasted crap, more reviewers who, oddly enough, made throwaway accounts with no previous reviews.
Apparently there was some action taken by Amazon . Out of five different display slots the ” Fair Tax Book ” had only one rating below a Four Star .