Samsung admits to posting fake user reviews on the web

Shawn Knight

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Officials in Taiwan are investigating claims that Samsung paid people to post favorable reviews about their products online while at the same time offering up negative feedback on rival HTC’s products. The investigation launched after the Fair Trade Commission received numerous complaints on the matter.

TaiwanSamsungLeaks posted documents allegedly showing Samsung hired a marketing firm to catalog different posts made on local gadget forums last year. Some of the post topics include a user complaining that his girlfriend’s HTC One X suffered from repeated crashes while the Galaxy Note was much better than the HTC Sensation XL. Individuals also posted benchmark results that show the Galaxy S3 outperforms the HTC One X in the graphics and battery life department.

PC Advisor points out that Samsung has not yet received anything from Taiwan’s FTC but admit that the “unfortunate incident” did happen. In a statement released on the matter, Samsung said they have ceased all marketing activities that involve the posting of anonymous comments. Furthermore, the company said they adhere to transparent and honest communications with consumers and will work to prevent it from happening again in the future.

HTC said they wouldn’t rule out taking appropriate action to protect their consumers and the company but perhaps the bigger issue here is this: if Samsung has been using these tactics against HTC, are they also engaged in similar marketing techniques with other rivals?

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Is HTC paying guest to say that Samsung is the only one doing it? O.o

Anyway, I have a feeling this is nothing new in the industry. It's just rare that someone gets caught doing. I can't imagine it's a very effective marketing ploy.
 
Shame on Samsung. Don't know why there is so much hype over this company products. There are far better from SONY,Canon, Panasonic and Motorola. .
 
Speaking of HTC, I have had nothing but problems with their phones that I would never consider going back.
 
I have thoughts about this but they vary greatly on whether or not they wrote negative reviews on HTC products. Are they admitting to the part about false negative reviews of HTC products? False positive reviews of a company's own product is not something I take great offensive of. It would be like taking offense to the sun shining and the wind blowing. They're going to do that.
 
Well. They've got nothing negative to say about Apple since they've copied everything Apple's done. To say something negative about Apple would be knocking themselves down at the same time.
 
All HTC's base are belong to Samsung! Samsung product at best over HTC product. HTC product are breaks easily and badly. Samsung product are fastly and quickly, high GPUs cycles. The Samsung product are best battery. I love all Samsung product and I hate all HTC product!!
 
I do now understand why I bought 2 Samsung's monitors very well noted by users and feel now very disappointed.
"Very good image" they said...
 
This is nothing new, there was a convention a few years ago for Major Resorts held in Costa Rica and one of the Speakers said he had hundreds of qualified and trusted posters waiting to make comments for a price.

I happened to post this along with a link to the CNBC report on Trip Advisor, and it was deleted within hours, now why do you think it was deleted? Are some of their Destination Experts on the payroll?
 
See the sad part about all of this is that ppl will showroom a retail store then go online and purchase the product off of the reviews that they read online. Now ppl have to question their online purchases. Was that review that they based their purchase on real or fake? How many times have ppl made purchases because of a review they read? Thats the problem with online purchases, if all your going on is what someone wrote and you read, then it falls on the consumer. The consumer would have in essence taken the word of someone they dont know and trust, and now you get to add on fake reviews. Which means the consumer would have purchased a product because of a out right lie. Kinda sad that Samsung would have to do this.
 
This is why I don't trust user reviews anymore. This, and also because there's a lot of legitimate customers who will give a product a negative review because their own incompetence caused a bad experience.

Now I only trust editorial/non-sponsored reviews by the likes of Linus/Slick, Logan/Wendell, and a few highly regarded editorial tech review sites.
 
This is why I don't trust user reviews anymore. This, and also because there's a lot of legitimate customers who will give a product a negative review because their own incompetence caused a bad experience.

Now I only trust editorial/non-sponsored reviews by the likes of Linus/Slick, Logan/Wendell, and a few highly regarded editorial tech review sites.
Still yet reading consumer reviews can give insight to things that may have been missed by "highly regarded editorial review sites". I don't know about everyone but I can usually spot a comment made by incompetence as well as, over-hype to the point of trying to sell a product.
 
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