“Unveiling the Deceptive Side of Trustpilot: Are Those Glowing 5-Star Reviews a Mirage?”
A good way to spot fake five-star reviews is to see how many are posted in a very short time-frame, and some of them a very short time after a company has launched their website, before they’ve had time to perform all of those services for an author. Some of these so-called publishers aren’t even listed on Amazon as having published any books…yet they have 5-star reviews from authors on Trustpilot and other sites.
Almost without exception, these fraudulent “publisher” sites contain stolen book covers (from books they did not publish, which is copyright infringement) or “covers” for books that were never published (fake covers), bogus reviews/endorsements/testimonials along with fake customer and employee photos, and fake statistics and awards, such as Google Partner, 95 New York Times Best Sellers, and 10,000+ satisfied customers, along with bogus affiliations with venerated publishing houses like Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette Book Group. And, of course, there are the false affiliations with Esquire, Los Angeles Times, BBC, Fox, NBC, and the like (trademark infringement). Using deception to trick customers into doing business with you is FRAUD, which is a crime.
