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I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.
I worked at Amazon as an intern in 2005 and recall a talk on fake reviews. There were groups of people who wrote fake positive reviews for each other's books. Today I have friends who sell on Amazon and they write fake reviews for each other's products.
I am much more wary about buying from Amazon than most of my peers, who easily click and buy on a whim or out of habit. I went to buy a toy at a brick and mortar, and compared the price to Amazon while there - $12.99 in the store and $27.xx at Amazon! I think they've marketed them to be the low price leaders but that's definitely not the case. I'm also concerned about counterfeit products - I don't care as much about…
Was this from a 3rd party seller? I have seen a lot of 3rd party sellers have listings for pretty outrageous prices. I think they're either trying to catch people who don't shop around / don't know what the product is worth, or they are just not managing their pricing well. On a lot of popular products you can see an example of the latter where Amazon themselves will be selling a product for a given price, and then if you look at other offers you'll see the same thing being sold by other sellers for double or triple Amazon's price.
I am much more wary about buying from Amazon than most of my peers, who easily click and buy on a whim or out of habit. I went to buy a toy at a brick and mortar, and compared the price to Amazon while there - $12.99 in the store and $27.xx at Amazon! I think they've marketed them to be the low price leaders but that's definitely not the case. I'm also concerned about counterfeit products - I don't care as much about…
It's not in the interests of Amazon to be on a crusade against fake reviews. Mass fake reviews are the driving force of revenues.
AMZN will always maintain the balance between public outcry and absolute minimal effort to show that they're doing something against spammers.
From my side I maintain the right to buy the product and then write "not as described" as a reason for free return for full refund with free pickup.
Quite often vendor/seller will give you refund without requiring you to return merchandise.
I don't feel like I been abused too much by fake reviews as long as I can "abuse back" with my free return.
If they're not going to do anything about fake stuff, why should they care about fake reviews? As it is, they're trying to make it so you don't know what you're buying or who you're buying it from, or even be entirely sure what the price is going to be, or who is going to be delivering to your door, so why should they care about reviews?
Amazon is starting to feel more and more like eBay. The same product sold by multiple vendors under different names, questionable reviews, clearly fraudulent sellers and so on. I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.
Social proof via reviews (of products, restaurants, anything) is a great idea if you can assume good intent. Back in the good ol' days of the Internet this seemed plausible for some reason, but now there's real money to be made and that's out the window. Amazon and Yelp and the like may be better or worse at stemming the tide of fakery, but asking them to be better isn't going to fundamentally help. The whole idea is…
Currently you have a bevvy of brands for China sourced goods. The brands are obviously made up without much thought. Something like "Scarvast" trekking pole. "Vargus" flashlights, "Zukil" wireless speakers. "Brikor" dehumidifiers.
And often times the same seller will have multiple "brands". This is what makes it unreliable and untrustworthy. It's like they live A/B test products on AMZ.
Amazon is starting to feel more and more like eBay. The same product sold by multiple vendors under different names, questionable reviews, clearly fraudulent sellers and so on. I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.
eBay product reviews (not vendor reviews) are actually pretty good. Have you looked? They report fake/defective stuff in them.