It’s not every day you get sued by two of the biggest companies in the world, but on October 28, that’s exactly what happened to Bigboostup.com, a website that sells allegedly fake reviews, which was named as a defendant in separate suits by Amazon and Google.
The suits were filed by Amazon in the Western District of Washington and Google in the Northern District of California. They allege that “the website sold fake product reviews to bad actors to publish on their product listing pages in Amazon’s store and fake reviews of business listings on Google Search and Google Maps,” according to a post by Amazon.
Bigboostup.com was down at the time publication, but an archived version of its homepage from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine offered a plethora of options to buy bulk reviews for not only Amazon and Google but also others, including Yelp and Tripadvisor. Also for sale: TikTok followers. Prices ranged from as low as $8 to as high as $2,680.
Retail Brew sent an email to the contact listed on the archived site seeking comment about the allegations and asking if Bigboostup.com would return, but got a bounceback: undeliverable.
Let it BBB: “We will continue pursuing fake review brokers in order to maintain a trustworthy shopping experience,” Claire O’Donnell, Amazon’s director of selling partner trust and store integrity, said in Amazon’s post.=
In 2023 alone, Amazon said it blocked more than 250 million reviews it suspected were fake and took legal action against more than 150 “bad actors” allegedly attempting review fraud in the US, China, and Europe. (Amazon did not mention whether the bad actors had done any community theater.)
In July, Amazon sued organizers of more than 10,000 Facebook groups that allegedly recruited users to write fake reviews with offers to compensate them financially and with free products.
The same month, Amazon and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) jointly sued ReviewServiceUSA.com for allegedly selling fake Amazon reviews—in the BBB’s case—for fake reviews of its business profiles.
At the time of publication, ReviewServiceUSA.com had been taken down, too.
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