Can AliExpress Feedback System be Manipulated?

[Blinxi]

Wonder if anyone can help on this.. or.. if anyone else has noticed same!

My question is this:

Can Suppliers on AE manipulate their OWN feedback? Reason I ask is I was looking through some Suppliers feedback, ones with high rating/positive feedback and noticed a very large amount of Positive Feedback from ‘buyers’ who happened to mostly be in the SAME country (looking at the Flag).

Also nearly all the feedback was very similar, very generic! Sparse, same spelling, grammar! (same spelling mistakes!). ---- One might imagine there to be more mixed reviews (spelling, punctuation etc) considering customers/clients are from all over the Globe!

Also one Supplier has only been on there 3 months and is one of the ones with a stash of Positive feedback of the generic comment variety, same written English etc. Extremely bland, not much written about the product but emphasizing the positives about the Seller... which is somewhat unusual (that they are ALL like that I mean).

I smell a rat! Sooooooo….. Considering I am thinking of using some of these Suppliers due to their 5 star feedback!.....(but not if its been self awarded!)…… . so…. Can AE Feedback/Reviews (on the AE site) be faked? (manipulated).

And has anyone else noticed this as I've noticed it on more than one Supplier.

P.S.

I searched this Forum before posting to see if there was a similar topic already on here but nothing showed up in search results, hence my post.

 

[Mar]

not much written about the product but emphasizing the positives about the Seller.

It is really suspicious. If a buyer give a feedback, it would be about the product, not the seller. Regular buyers are not particular of the sellers. If the feedback is all about the seller, it is made by the seller who don't have much common sense.

 

[Blinxi]

It is just that one of the recommendations by Yaros here (in helping to choose a reliable Seller) is to check the Feedback/Reviews, but it doesn't appear foolproof! #annoyingly

It therefore seems very hard to find reliable Sellers/Suppliers on there, if the system is open to abuse/manipulation. It seems the same with some of the Top Brand stores as I noticed some of these have the type of Feedback/Reviews I referred to above.

Yet according to AliExpress themselves:

"Top Brands are top-rated stores on AliExpress. When you're shopping at these stores, you're either directly buying from the brand itself or from an authorized reseller."

Some of them are only open 3 months with lots of Positive (only) feedback -- praising the Seller and hardly giving any info about the product, except to say, good or something generic like that.. yet these stores have the Top Brand symbol.

It is hard to know what to do/who to believe!! (in other words how to make a decision.. there is an old saying .. if it seems to good to be true.. it isn't!).