So imagine you're Michael Bayard, Business Development rep at Belkin. You've got this network router that just can't seem to get any love (an average 1.5 star rating out of 5 on Amazon.com). The product elicits such enthusiastic comments as "hard to use" and "does not work with Mac" and perhaps my favorite: "Don't buy it. Don't. Seriously. Don't."
So do you pull the product from the market and send a memo to R&D saying "we can do better?" No, you post an offer on Amazon.com's "Mechanical Turk" web site offering to pay people to write glowing reviews of the product, whether they own it or not. And, while you're at it, you encourage them to vote against any of the negative reviews that are already posted on Amazon from actual product owners.
Kudos to Arlen Parsa of The Daily Background for spotting this. Check out his original blog post for details on his discovery and investigation process and its repercussions. Looks like Michael's offers on "Mechanical Turk" have all been deleted. Damn, I wonder if I'll still get my 65 cents!
By the way, here's Belkin's response to the allegation.
