Amazon Review Hijacking: How to Tell If Reviews Belong to a Different Product

On Amazon, related products such as different sizes or colors can share one listing and one pool of reviews. That's useful when the items really are the same product. It becomes deceptive when a seller attaches an unrelated or brand-new product to a listing that already has thousands of good reviews.

How Review Hijacking Works

• Variation merging: a new product is added as a "variation" under an established listing, so it displays that listing's rating and review count.
• Listing repurposing: the title, photos and description of an old product page are replaced with a different product, while the old reviews stay.

Either way, the new product starts life with a rating it didn't earn, and sometimes with badges too.

The FTC's First Review Hijacking Case

In February 2023 the FTC charged vitamin and supplement maker The Bountiful Company with "abusing a feature of Amazon.com" so that new supplements appeared to have more ratings, higher averages and "#1 Best Seller" and "Amazon's Choice" badges. The FTC called it its first law enforcement action challenging review hijacking. The company agreed to pay $600,000, and in March 2024 the FTC sent more than $527,000 in refunds to affected consumers (FTC).

The UK goes further: the DMCC Act, in force since April 6, 2025, prohibits presenting reviews in a misleading way, which can include merging reviews of materially different products (CMS).

4 Ways to Check a Listing for Hijacked Reviews

1. Read the Variant Label Above Each Review

Amazon usually prints the size, color, flavor or style the reviewer bought just above the review text. If most 5-star reviews are for a variant that isn't the one you're buying, the rating may not apply to your item.

2. Look for Reviews Describing a Different Product

Search the reviews (use the search box in the reviews section) for words that don't fit, such as a different material, a feature the product doesn't have, or a different product category entirely. Hijacked listings often have reviews praising things the current product doesn't do.

3. Compare Review Dates With "Date First Available"

Scroll to the product details. If the item was first available last month but the listing has reviews going back years, the older reviews were written about something else.

4. Check the Oldest Reviews

Sort or scroll to the earliest reviews. If they describe a noticeably different product, or a different brand, the listing has likely been repurposed.

How FakeFind Catches Hijacked Reviews

Reviews about a different product are one of the strong warning signs in FakeFind's Trust Score, and FakeFind also tracks ratings and reviews that disappear between checks. It does not see a listing's edit history, so on expensive purchases the four checks above are still worth a minute. Paste any link into the free FakeFind checker to start.