Scam Watch · Hanna’s guide to not getting ripped off
By Hanna Deen (The Price Mistake Queen)
I’ve been hunting deals for about twenty years, and I’ll tell you a secret from the other side of the shopping cart. The star rating on an Amazon product is the single most gamed number on the internet.
Not always. Most products with great reviews earned them. But enough listings are propped up by fake praise that I never, ever buy on stars alone. Last week I was looking at a $22 cordless vacuum for my kids’ craft-glitter disasters. 4.7 stars, thousands of ratings. Looked wonderful. Thirty seconds later I closed the tab. I’ll show you exactly what I saw.
You may have heard of free review-checker websites over the years. Most of the big ones have shut down or gone stale, and honestly, you never needed them. Everything a checker did, you can do yourself with your own two eyes. Here’s my method.
Step 1: Sort the reviews by “Most recent”
This is the big one, and almost nobody does it.
Scroll to the reviews and look for the sorting option (it usually says “Top reviews”). Change it to “Most recent.” The default view shows the reviews Amazon thinks are most helpful, which are often the oldest and shiniest. “Most recent” shows you what the product is like right now.
Why does that matter? Because of a trick called listing hijacking. A seller buys or takes over an old product page that has years of glowing reviews, then swaps in a completely different product. The stars stay. The product underneath changed.
On my glitter vacuum, “Top reviews” was all sunshine. “Most recent” was a wall of one-star reviews from the past two months saying it arrived broken or died in a week. Same page, two different products, in effect.
Step 2: Read the 1-star reviews first
I know, it feels backwards. But the 1-star column is where the truth lives, because nobody pays for fake bad reviews of their own product.
You’re looking for a pattern, not a single grump. One person saying “arrived late” tells you nothing. Fifteen people saying “stopped charging after ten days” tells you everything.
Two more things to check while you’re there:
- Do the bad reviews describe a different product than the listing? If people are reviewing a phone case on a page that sells slippers, that’s listing hijacking. Walk away.
- Do the bad reviews mention bribes? Look for phrases like “seller offered me a gift card to change my review.” That seller is buying their rating. Walk away.
Step 3: Give the 5-star reviews the smell test
Real reviews sound like real people. They mention specifics: “fits my kitchen drawer,” “my husband stole it,” “the blue is darker than the photo.” Fake reviews sound like ads. Here’s what makes my nose twitch:
- Generic gushing. “Great product! Works perfectly! Highly recommend!” with no detail about actually using it.
- The product’s full name repeated over and over. Real people say “this vacuum.” Fake reviews say “the ProMax Ultra Cordless Stick Vacuum 9000” because it helps the listing in search.
- A pile of 5-star reviews all posted within a few days of each other. Real praise trickles in. Purchased praise arrives by the busload.
- Reviews for the wrong product in the 5-star column too. If glowing reviews mention honey or socks on a page selling a phone charger, the seller carried over old reviews.
- Odd, stiff English on every single review. One awkward review is a real person doing their best. Fifty identical awkward reviews are a review farm.
And a small green flag to look for: the “Verified Purchase” label means the reviewer bought the item on Amazon at full-ish price. It’s not bulletproof, but a 5-star pile with barely any verified purchases is a bad sign.
What about the photos?
Customer photos are one of the most honest corners of a listing. Fake reviews rarely include real snapshots of the product in a normal messy house. If the customer photos look like professional studio shots, they may have been planted. If they look like they were taken on someone’s counter next to the toaster, that’s a real person.
Do this right now
- Open the last product you bought (or are about to buy) on Amazon and sort its reviews to “Most recent.”
- Read five 1-star reviews. Look for one complaint repeated over and over, or reviews describing a different product entirely.
- If the recent reviews and the star rating tell two different stories, believe the recent reviews and find another product. There is always another product.
The rule to remember
The star rating is the seller’s first impression. The recent reviews are the neighbors telling you what it’s really like to live there. When they disagree, trust the neighbors.
None of this means Amazon is a bad place to shop. I buy there constantly, for my house, my kids, and my mother when she stays with us and decides she needs a new reading light at 9pm. It just means the stars are a starting point, not a verdict. Thirty seconds of looking keeps you out of ninety percent of the junk.
Share this with someone: If you know anyone who shops by stars alone, send them this. The “sort by Most recent” trick alone will save them money this month.
Hanna Deen is The Price Mistake Queen. She’s been catching too-good-to-be-true prices (and too-good-to-be-true reviews) for twenty years, and she checks so you don’t get burned.
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