The email arrived before the product did. That’s how you know you’re being asked to post fake Amazon wig reviews before you’ve even touched the thing.
If a brand contacts you to ask for a five star review before you’ve received the item, before you’ve opened it, before you’ve put it on your head and lived in it for a bit and formed any kind of actual opinion, what they’re asking for is not a review. They’re asking for marketing copy. Five stars with your name on it, and the sequence is designed so that the social obligation to follow through is already sitting there before you’ve experienced a single thing.
I get emails like this regularly. I usually ignore them. But this time I didn’t.
The brand: Feshfen Hair, also known as Sofeiyan
The email came in from Feshfen Hair, which also operates under the name Sofeiyan on Amazon. Here’s what they asked for, word for word:
“We need a 5 star amazon review with wearing pictures or mini video + seller store feedback. Since we need the verified purchased amazon review, so you should buy on amazon first. After review live on amazon, we will arrange refund via Paypal or amazon gift card.”
Let’s just sit with that for a second.
Buy it yourself first, so it registers as a verified purchase. Post a five star review with photos or video. Leave store feedback too. And then, only after all of that is live on Amazon, they’ll refund you. Via PayPal or gift card, off platform, so there’s no trace of it in the transaction.
That’s not a gifting arrangement. That’s paying for reviews. Specifically structured to create verified purchase reviews, which carry more weight on Amazon, in exchange for money back after the fact. Amazon’s own policies explicitly prohibit this.
But I had a question. What if I received the product and it wasn’t five star material?
“customer should buy on amazon first, then after get the product could try it first. if you like, you could help us write a 5 star amazon review. If you don’t like or product have some problem, you could contact us first, then return the product to amazon”
So I pushed further. What if I buy it and give it four stars or three?
“actually, we only need a 5 star amazon review if the product doesn’t have any quality problem.”
So. To translate: if the product is fine, they want five stars. If it’s not fine, return it. At no point did anyone suggest that three stars, or four stars, or any honest reflection of a mixed experience, was an acceptable outcome. An actual review was never part of the arrangement.
Who is actually behind Feshfen?
Public trademark records show FESHFEN is owned by Xiamen Kuangyuan Trade Co., Ltd., a Chinese export company operating since 2012. The same company also filed another hair brand trademark, HALOO, in 2021.
Sofeiyan appears alongside FESHFEN products on Amazon, and the email contacting me came from Feshfen Hair. One company, multiple brand names, all selling hair on Amazon. This is an extremely common setup. It means that if you’ve had a bad experience with one brand name and swear you’ll never buy from them again, you might not realise you’re buying from the same company under a different label.
Why fake Amazon wig reviews are an Amazon-wide problem
Feshfen aren’t uniquely terrible. They’re just unusually transparent about it. The practice of paying for fake Amazon wig reviews, structured as a buy-then-refund arrangement to generate verified purchase badges, is absolutely rampant in the alternative hair space and has been for years. I could show you a folder of emails that follow exactly the same pattern.
The issue is that you, as the person trying to decide whether to spend £40 or £80 or £150 on something for your head, cannot tell from the Amazon reviews which is which. You don’t know if those 4.7 stars represent genuine experience from genuine buyers. You just see a lot of stars and a lot of “great quality, fast shipping” and make a decision based on that.
And sometimes you make the wrong decision. Because the stars were bought.
Where to find Amazon wig reviews you can actually trust
Reddit. Genuinely. r/femalehairloss and r/wigs are full of people who bought things with their own money and are telling you exactly what they think with no incentive to be anything other than honest. Nobody’s being offered a PayPal refund to post on Reddit.
Instagram and YouTube. Look for creators who have been posting consistently about alternative hair for a while. Check whether they disclose when something is gifted. A creator who clearly marks gifted products and has a history of honest, including negative, reviews is a much more reliable source than a product listing with hundreds of five star reviews and suspiciously similar phrasing.
Facebook groups. The hair loss and alternative hair Facebook groups are another solid source of real-person reviews. People post photos, ask questions, share experiences. Not curated, not incentivised.
How to spot fake Amazon wig reviews on the listing itself
Filter for verified purchase reviews only. Read the one, two and three star reviews, not just the fives. Look at whether the critical reviews describe the same issues repeatedly – that tells you something real. Check if the brand has multiple listings under slightly different names. There are also browser extensions like Fakespot that analyse Amazon review authenticity.
Do the extra bit of research. Check Reddit. Find a creator who paid for their own stuff. Read the critical reviews. It takes an extra ten minutes and it will save you from making a decision based on stars that were bought before the product even shipped.
Brands I personally use and trust are listed at neveenwood.com/discount-codes. And my full guide on what to watch for when buying alternative hair covers the broader red flags beyond just Amazon.
FAQ
The questions people keep sending me after reading this one.
Is Feshfen Hair the same as Sofeiyan?
They’re connected, yes. Same products, same email address contacting me as “Feshfen Hair,” but Sofeiyan is the name that actually shows up on the Amazon listing. Trademark records point to both belonging to Xiamen Kuangyuan Trade Co.
How can I actually tell if Amazon wig reviews are fake?
Filter for verified purchase and then read the one, two and three star reviews properly, not just the glowing ones. If several critical reviews describe the exact same problem, that’s real signal. A pile of five star reviews all saying “great quality, fast shipping” and nothing specific is the tell.
Is it illegal for brands to ask for reviews like this?
It breaks Amazon’s own terms of service, which can get a seller’s listing or account pulled if Amazon catches it. I’m not a lawyer so I won’t call it illegal outright, but it’s absolutely against the rules of the platform they’re doing it on.
Where should I go for trustworthy wig reviews instead?
Reddit, genuinely. r/femalehairloss and r/wigs are full of people who paid with their own money and have zero reason to lie to you. Instagram and YouTube creators who clearly disclose gifted items are the next best thing.
Should I still buy from a brand that’s done this?
That’s genuinely your call, not mine to make for you. What I will say is once I know a brand’s stars were bought, I can’t trust the rest of the listing either, and that changes how much research I do before I’d spend my own money there.
