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Amazon's Fake Review Problem

brianbien.com

21–30 of 336 posts

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#21
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay product reviews (not vendor reviews) are actually pretty good. Have you looked? They report fake/defective stuff in them.

I don't trust them because I don't think anybody at eBay is checking whether the product being sold right now is the same the review was for.

That's a given because vendors list whatever they want. However, if they list wrong, that's a SNAD case waiting to happen.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#23
post #3

I don't care much about the reviews, but I care a lot about the fake / phony / not-as-described merchandise: http://seliger.com/2017/01/09/tools-continued-careful-buy-am... . I've actually changed behavior and tried harder to buy from the original maker, if possible.

That's the behavior that I would like to see Amazon encourage as a solution.

Tracking the product back to it's actual origin of manufacturer (and showing us the consumer).

Where, exactly, was the factory? The lot number and date of manufacturer? Official model and revision number?

Requiring these things will give buyers better hard data to detect and exclude middle-level-marking shenanigans as well as combat 'bait and switch' (even if not intentional) changes to product configurations sold under the same general marketing moniker.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#24
post #11

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.

Same here. I used to buy everything off of Amazon, but now I have to scrape the Internet for reviews to make sure that I can trust the thing I'm buying is actually going to be of good quality.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#25
Generally I always go to review sites first like wire cutter to see what are the best stuff, then I would see the little details, mostly what bad reviews say about it to contradict. A lot good reviews I can sniff out as fluff with a 5 star label. The bad thing is that when I see an avg of 4.5 stars with 100+ reviews, there is a slight bias inside me for this product. Amazon could do a better job to weight the avg stars.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#26
post #15

>> Amazon – who has some of the world’s most advanced ML – really needs to step up its review fraud detection game. 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 rig…

I don't understand your argument. How do reviews drive revenues? If all fake reviews were taken down, wouldn't buy less stuff from Amazon.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#27
There are groups that do both: buying the first batches of products and writing nice reviews, then the seller will pay for what they have done, it's a mature business these days: you hire a team to market you at Amazon by faking reviews after "real" purchases(will be compensated or rewarded under the counter afterwards). This is very hard to detect indeed.

Maybe Amazon can have some AI algorithm, that is for any newly arrived products with non-sales yet, monitoring the activities on them closely,the fake purchase and review must have some common pattern(same address, same ID, same IP,etc).

But then, why does Amazon want to do that? it will decrease its own profit.

So yes, customers will be the one got screwed up no matter what.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#28

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…

This is happening because people now assume Amazon's prices are the best - always. But, that is not the case. There are times where people are knowingly listing a product about market prices to catch people who are caught unaware.

Once upon a time, I bought two boxes of Ener-G. It was only later I found out I have paid 100% markup on those boxes. I felt stupid that I hadn't verified the prices on the manufacturer's site.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#29
I tried to buy my son a remote control car on Amazon a few weeks ago. I gave up after wading through 2 pages of 5 star reviewed products where the reviews all looked the same, all had the same structure. Many referenced "my 11 year old son", or the name of the company. This seems like something that can be weeded out using ML sentiment analysis. If too many reviews have the same structure, your posting gets demoted. If I could have found one legit looking review I would have bought that car, instead I gave up and went to The hobby store.
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