Carbonite really stinks

“In the aftermath of disclosures that Belkin employees for good reviews on Amazon, David Pogue reports in the NYTimes that Carbonite has gone one better with 5-star reviews of its online backup services written by its own employees. Pogue recounts how Bruce Goldensteinberg signed up for the backup service, and all went well until his computer crashed and he was unable to restore it from the online backup while Carbonite customer support kept him on hold for over an hour. Frustrated, Goldensteinberg started reading Carbonite reviews on Amazon and a few of them seemed suspicious. ‘They were created around the same date — October 31, 2006 — all given 5 stars, and the reviewers all came from around the Boston, MA area, where Carbonite is located,’ including a review by Swami Kumaresan that read more like a testimonial.’ It turned out that Swami Kumaresan is the Vice President of Marketing for Carbonite. His review gives no indication that he is employed by the company.’ Another review posted by Jonathan F. Freidin extols Carbonite without mentioning Freidin’s position as Senior Software Engineer at Carbonite. ‘It doesn’t matter to me that Carbonite’s fraudulent reviews are a couple of years old,’ writes Pogue. ‘These people are gaming the system, deceiving the public to enrich themselves. They should be deeply ashamed.'”