How To Spot Fake Reviews, Get Better Value for Your Money, and Why It Matters.
By: Aryan Khemka
Tags: Online Shopping, Money Management, Students, Saving Money, Fake News

How To Spot Fake Reviews, Get Better Value for Your Money, and Why It Matters. Aryan Khemka Jul 22·7 min read

Have you ever come across products or services that have been rated very highly on online platforms but weren’t up to the mark when you used them? Did it ever happen to you that right after you bought something online, the price reduces afterward?

Such things could happen with any one of us at any time. It can ruin your online purchasing experience, especially if you are new to it. It can cause additional discomfort and loss of money when you can avoid it.

During the lockdown phase, many new people started using online platforms to shop for their daily needs. Delivery services have shot up, and we saw a much more significant inflow of people who were shopping online for the first time.

Not only that, but during this phase, a lot of us are also going through harsh financial conditions. When you get overcharged for products or services online, it increases the financial burden on the whole family. Knowing the right ways to save up and avoid spending extra will help you immensely, especially as a student. So it becomes very important to know the answer to the question, how do we save money online without getting ripped off?

Whenever we need any electronic gadget or any other product, we go to our favorite shopping app and search for the item we need. One of the most significant factors that help us decide what to buy is the reviews and ratings. We all essentially rely on reviews and ratings for most of our purchases. Even the top results in search are the products that have good ratings and are bought by many people. We often don’t prefer to purchase something with very little to no rating, and very few of us would ever go to the following pages of the search results.

The competition amongst online sellers is very high. So many people are trying to sell you the same thing, and not all of them can make the sales big. Sometimes, few sellers or place owners tend to get higher ratings for their products/services by unnatural means.

Few sellers have adopted various means of increasing their ratings. They sometimes offer freebies or rewards in exchange for good ratings or even buy paid reviews in bulk from 3rd party services.

Sometimes on place listing sites, you will find fake reviews and ratings. Even if the business may be good, still purposefully adding biased reviews to stand out from the crowd is unethical and wrong. It leads to false assumptions and hopes about the place, which often turns out to be wrong when visited by the customers.

How do you spot fake reviews?

Luckily, there are a few online extensions that will help you find fake reviews. Fakespot is a fantastic way of dealing with fake reviews online. It supports desktop browsers such as Google Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Android, and IOS. You have to add their extension on the desktop browser or download their mobile app. Once installed, whenever you visit one of the above websites, Fakespot will automatically analyze the pages and the products for you and give you a suitable rating.

Example of how Fakespot works

As of 2021, Fakespot has support for the following websites:

Amazon TripAdvisor Best Buy Sephora Steam Walmart Yelp

This grading of the products given by Fakespot determines the reliability of the reviews. For example, if the grade of a particular product is “A,” then that means that the overall reviews for that product are very genuine. This does not necessarily imply that the product is good, but it tells you that whatever the reviews are, most of them are reliable. They also give a ‘Fakespot Adjusted Rating,’ which is the new rating determined by Fakespot after removing the less reliable reviews. They also provide ratings to the sellers, and if the seller has too many complaints, it suggests an alternative seller for the same product.

Additional discounts for students

Did you know that Air India provides a concession of 50% if you are a student and traveling between hometown and college? This is a very lesser-known fact that not a lot of students know. Other airlines too offer up to 10% discounts and additional luggage weights up to 15 kgs. This can prove to be very helpful and help you save a lot more. Below are some more places where you can get an additional discount if you are a student.

laptops:

Brands like HP, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Samsung, Microsoft, etc., offer great student discounts. Just check out their official sites for student discounts.

Software:

Grammarly, Canva, Microsoft Office, GitHub Pro, etc., offer their premium version free to students. You can apply for Financial aid and get free Coursera courses.

YouTube Premium, Adobe Suits, Spotify, Apple Music, Wix, Evernote, Amazon Prime, Nytimes, etc., offer huge discounts for students.

Check out an extensive list of discounts and offers provided by various platforms through GitHub Student Developer Pack.

Fashion:

Nike, Only, Crocs, Ericdress, Belacci, Lakme, and a few other fashion brands offer discounts exclusively for students.

Food:

Restaurant chains such as Barbeque Nation offer student discounts at certain times a year at specific locations. Do not forget to ask for a student discount the next time you visit any fancy food outlet!

Student offer from barbeque Nation

These were some of the benefits you can avail of if you are a student. Often a lot of businesses will offer student discounts without publicizing them. Next time when you think of buying any product or opting for any services, do not forget to ask for a student discount!

How to always get products online at the best price?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could track the price of anything that you want to buy? Some tools let you track the cost of any product. These tools keep track of the price history of items available on the online marketplace. This will give you a clear idea of how the price of any product changed over the past few months. It will show you the lowest price for which the product went for sale, and similarly the highest. It will also notify you of price drops, and you will know when the right time to buy the product is. These work best as browser extensions and maintain price records of billions of products available through popular online stores such as Amazon. Below are some price tracking tools and websites.

Keepa is one of the best price tracking tools available for Amazon. Their browser extension is supported on Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera. On mobile devices, the extension is supported only on Firefox for Android. You have to install their extension on your browser. Once installed, every time you visit Amazon through your browser, you will get a detailed Price history chart below the product’s photo, showing you the price variation of the product for the past few months.

This is a sample price history chart for a product available on Amazon India. You can see how the price of the product has changed over the past three months. Most of the time, the price remains at Rs.600, but sometimes it reduces to as low as 500. The red circular bars on the right end of the graph indicate the price listed in the lightning deals. This whole graph gives you a much clearer idea as to how the price changes. Better decisions can be made to opt for the deal or not with the help of this chart.

Like Keepa, PriceHistory is a website that keeps track of products from Amazon and Flipkart, and other online stores available in India. Below is the price history chart of a product available on Flipkart. It shows price variations for previous few months. You can also set price drop alerts, so you get notified the next time there is a price drop.

It’s made in India and has support for the following E-commerce stores:

Amazon

Flipkart

Myntra

Tatacliq

Paytmmall

Snapdeal

Ajio

Jabong

Koovs

Croma

I have also written an eBook called ‘Shop Like a Pro’ that is available on Amazon. A lot of effort has gone into making it. I talk about a lot more methods and tools to become much better at shopping online. It has everything you need to become a pro at spending money online. The aim is to spread awareness amongst as many as possible on such malpractices and ways to avoid overspending.

With the right tools and techniques, you will be able to save while not getting exploited online. A better presence of mind will help you in getting a smoother and richer online shopping experience. The aim is to make you smarter and much better at shopping online. I hope this knowledge would have helped you somehow or the other and that you learned something new. Stay safe and healthy!