With online shopping, ratings and reviews are one of the most important factors for many users.

Amazon reviews are one of its best assets andbiggest problems.

But you could’t always trust them, which makes Prime Day stressful.

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However, the problem didn’t go away.

Instead, there areFacebook groupsdedicated to this same jot down of practice.

Plus, we still see these types of reviews that mention the buyer received a promotional price.

Aukey paid reviews Amazon

Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek

Why would a company merge reviews?

That’s bad for consumers.

Unfortunately, many of the reviews were for a completely unrelated product.

Amazon packages stacked on a workbench

Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek

Amazon works hard to remove these, but far too many still get past its defenses.

How Are Amazon Star Ratings Calculated?

So, how are the Amazon reviews and star ratings calculated anyways?

Laptop showing Amazon marketplace

Instead, it uses the age of the review, purchaser status, and several other factors.

Then a machine-learning algorithm comes up with the star rating we all see on the site.

This could be good and bad, but we’re not sure without knowing more details.

The system simply needs images to verify the reviewer has said product.

It just gives other customers a false sense of security.

So, how can you spot when funny business is happening?

Here are a few things to look for while viewing products on the marketplace.

However, remember that many of these elements are also in good, honest, legitimate reviews.

This can include buying bad reviews to make its competitor’s product look suspicious.

Also, Amazon works tirelessly to prevent these reviews, which is a tough job.

Just think about all the items on Amazon and the millions of real (and fake) customers.

There’s a reason the company removes hundreds of millions of reviews as fast as it can.

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s still hard to trust Amazon reviews.

We’ll have to wait and see what Amazon comes up with next.

Or, useReviewMetato evaluate Amazon reviews while you shop.