Can You Trust Online Reviews? Fake Reviews, Incentives and the Search for Genuine Feedback
Originally published several years ago. Updated October 2026.
Online reviews have become one of the most powerful forms of advertising on the internet.
Before booking a hotel, choosing a restaurant, buying an appliance or trying a new coffee brand, many of us instinctively look at the star rating.
4.9 stars.
Thousands of happy customers.
Highly recommended.
Those numbers create confidence.
But how much confidence should we place in them?
Online reviews can be enormously useful, particularly when they come from genuine customers describing genuine experiences.
Unfortunately, the commercial value of reviews also creates an obvious incentive to manipulate them.
And once that happens, the humble customer review starts becoming something quite different.
From Social Proof to Social Engineering
The internet has always rewarded popularity.
Follower counts, likes, ratings and reviews all provide what marketers call social proof.
If thousands of other people apparently like something, we instinctively assume there must be something good about it.
Businesses understand that.
Platforms understand it.
Consumers understand it.
And inevitably, people have found ways to manufacture it.
Fake followers and purchased social-media engagement have existed for years.
Fake reviews are potentially much more damaging because they can directly influence a purchasing decision.
A customer isn't merely thinking:
This brand looks popular.
They are thinking:
Thousands of people bought this product and apparently loved it.
Those are very different propositions.
Fake Reviews Aren't Just Bad Marketing
In Australia, businesses cannot legally create fake or misleading reviews or arrange for others to create them.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission also warns businesses about manipulating reviews, including suppressing genuine negative feedback or failing to disclose relevant commercial relationships.
So this isn't simply a question of marketing etiquette.
Reviews form part of the information consumers use when deciding where to spend their money.
If that information is deliberately distorted, consumers are being misled.
Not Every Five-Star Review Is Fake
This is where the conversation can become unnecessarily cynical.
A business having thousands of excellent reviews doesn't automatically mean anything improper has occurred.
Large businesses sell large numbers of products.
Loyal customers often genuinely enjoy what they purchase.
Review platforms also make it increasingly easy for legitimate customers to leave feedback after an order.
The number of reviews alone therefore tells us very little.
What matters is how those reviews were generated.
Was the reviewer actually a customer?
Were they offered something in return?
Was the incentive disclosed?
Were happy customers encouraged to review while unhappy customers were quietly diverted elsewhere?
Those questions provide far more information than the star rating itself.
The Problem With Incentivised Reviews
There is an important distinction between asking for a review and buying a favourable opinion.
Businesses routinely send messages asking customers to review their purchases.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
The problem arises when the customer is offered a reward specifically for providing positive feedback.
A discount.
A gift.
A refund.
A free product.
Entry into a competition.
Or some other benefit tied to leaving a favourable rating.
In Australia, incentives associated with reviews need to be offered regardless of whether the review is positive or negative, and the incentive should be disclosed.
Major marketplaces impose their own rules as well.
Amazon, for example, prohibits sellers from offering compensation, discounts, refunds or other benefits in exchange for reviews or attempting to influence whether a customer leaves positive or negative feedback.
The underlying principle is simple:
The customer should be reviewing the product, not reviewing the reward.
Review Gating Can Distort Reality
There is another practice that is less obvious.
Imagine a business automatically asking customers:
Were you happy with your purchase?
Customers selecting "Yes" are sent to a public review platform.
Customers selecting "No" are directed privately to customer service.
From the business's perspective, this might look sensible.
Solve unhappy customers' problems privately and invite happy customers to share their experiences publicly.
But it also creates a distorted review population.
The public sees a disproportionately positive sample of customers.
The unhappy experiences haven't disappeared.
They've simply been diverted away from the rating.
This is why the process used to collect reviews matters almost as much as the reviews themselves.
Verified Purchases Are Useful — But Not Perfect
Some review platforms identify whether a review came from somebody who actually purchased the product.
That's helpful.
It removes one obvious question:
Did this person actually buy it?
But verification doesn't necessarily answer everything.
A verified purchaser can still have received a discount.
They can misunderstand a product.
They can review something immediately before they've really used it.
Or they can leave a poor rating because a courier delivered the parcel late.
That doesn't make their opinion illegitimate.
It simply means reviews need context.
When the Courier Gets Reviewed Instead of the Product
Online retailers know this problem extremely well.
A business can roast, pack and dispatch an order perfectly.
The parcel then enters a third-party freight network.
If delivery is delayed, damaged or misdirected, the customer may leave a one-star product review.
From the customer's perspective, the whole experience was poor.
That's understandable.
From the merchant's perspective, the review may say almost nothing about the actual product.
This is one of the limitations of compressing an entire customer experience into five stars.
Was the product bad?
Was the shipping slow?
Was the website confusing?
Was customer service poor?
Was the customer simply having an awful day?
The star rating doesn't tell you.
The written review sometimes does.
Which is why I generally find specific reviews much more useful than ratings alone.
Look for Detail, Not Just Stars
The ACCC suggests consumers look for warning signs including sudden bursts of highly positive or negative reviews, generic comments, very similar wording and suspicious patterns among reviewers.
Those are useful clues.
Personally, I also prefer reviews that explain why somebody liked or disliked something.
Compare:
"Amazing coffee. Five stars."
with:
"I use a Breville dual-boiler and found this blend chocolatey, heavy-bodied and forgiving when making flat whites."
The second review tells another coffee drinker something useful.
Specificity is difficult to replace with a simple star.
Coffee Is Especially Difficult to Review
Coffee has another complication.
Taste is subjective.
One person's wonderful dark, rich and earthy espresso is somebody else's nightmare.
One customer wants acidity, florals and fruit.
Another customer wants chocolate, body and sweetness.
Another wants coffee strong enough to survive a large mug of milk.
They can all be describing the same coffee honestly and reach completely different conclusions.
That is why a three-star coffee review isn't necessarily evidence of a mediocre coffee.
It may simply represent a mismatch between the product and the customer's preferences.
For consumers, reading what the reviewer actually tasted is much more valuable than looking only at the score.
The Coffee Capsule Review Explosion
Coffee capsules became an interesting example of review culture during the enormous expansion of online shopping.
New capsule brands could appear remarkably quickly with websites displaying large quantities of glowing customer feedback.
That doesn't prove the reviews were false.
But it demonstrated how powerful review volume had become as a marketing device.
A new customer arriving on a website with ten reviews reacts differently from one arriving on a website displaying ten thousand.
The number itself becomes part of the sales pitch.
That is precisely why review collection needs integrity.
If review volume becomes something companies feel they have to manufacture simply to compete, everybody eventually loses trust in the system.
Negative Reviews Aren't Necessarily Bad
This may sound strange coming from a business owner, but I don't think a perfect review score necessarily creates more confidence.
Real businesses occasionally make mistakes.
Parcels disappear.
Products aren't suitable for everybody.
Customers misunderstand instructions.
Staff have bad days.
Machines fail.
Coffee tastes different from what somebody expected.
A review profile containing thoughtful criticism alongside positive feedback can actually appear more believable than an endless wall of identical five-star enthusiasm.
The important question is how the business responds.
Was the complaint acknowledged?
Was the customer treated respectfully?
Was a reasonable attempt made to resolve the problem?
That tells me far more about a business than perfection.
Why We Stopped Chasing Reviews
At myCuppa, we've used automated review-request systems in the past.
Eventually I became uncomfortable with the entire process.
Customers already receive enormous amounts of email.
Order confirmations.
Shipping notifications.
Marketing messages.
Abandoned-cart reminders.
Promotions.
Then, after they've finally received the product, another email arrives asking them to rate it.
And sometimes another reminder arrives after that.
At some point, supposedly improving "customer engagement" starts feeling suspiciously like pestering people.
So we made a deliberate decision not to obsess over extracting a review from every transaction.
That probably means we collect fewer reviews than businesses using aggressive automated campaigns.
I'm comfortable with that.
I'd rather a customer buy our coffee again.
Repeat business is a fairly persuasive review in its own right.
Reviews Should Be One Signal, Not the Signal
When researching an unfamiliar business, reviews remain useful.
But I wouldn't use them in isolation.
Look at how long the company has existed.
Read its website.
Check whether contact information is clear.
Look at reviews across different platforms.
Read both positive and negative comments.
Look for detailed customer experiences rather than merely counting stars.
Consider whether the business responds professionally when something goes wrong.
And most importantly, apply some common sense.
Reviews are evidence.
They are not mathematical proof.
Final Thoughts
The problem isn't online reviews themselves.
The problem is treating an easily manipulated metric as unquestionable truth.
Authentic customer feedback is incredibly valuable.
It helps consumers make better decisions and helps businesses discover what they're doing well — or badly.
But reviews only work when people trust them.
Businesses therefore have a choice.
They can chase the largest possible number, the highest possible score and the appearance of universal approval.
Or they can accept that real customers have different opinions and allow those experiences to speak for themselves.
I'll take the second option.
The stars might not always look quite as pretty.
But at least they mean something.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are fake online reviews illegal in Australia?
Businesses must not create fake or misleading reviews or arrange for other people to create them. Online reviews form part of the representations businesses make to consumers and are subject to Australian Consumer Law.
Can businesses offer incentives for customer reviews?
Incentives can create legal and platform-policy issues if they are used to influence the review. Australian consumer guidance says incentives should apply regardless of whether a review is positive or negative and should be clearly disclosed.
Can businesses remove negative reviews?
Businesses should not suppress genuine negative reviews in a way that creates a misleading impression. Reviews that are demonstrably false, abusive or violate a platform's rules are a different matter and can generally be reported through the platform's moderation process.
What is a verified-purchase review?
A verified-purchase review generally indicates that the platform has evidence the reviewer purchased the product through that platform. It provides useful context but doesn't necessarily guarantee that every aspect of the review is accurate or unbiased.
How can I identify suspicious online reviews?
Look for unusual bursts of reviews, repeated wording, vague comments, similar reviewer profiles and ratings that don't match the detail in the written reviews. Reading reviews from multiple sources can also provide a more balanced picture.
Are negative reviews always bad for a business?
No. Genuine criticism can provide useful information to customers and businesses. A realistic mixture of experiences, accompanied by professional responses from the business, may be more informative than a supposedly perfect rating.
