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Amazon's Fake Review Problem

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Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#51

Post by pwaai »

mjevans wrote: post #23
jseliger wrote: 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 an…

How would you go about tracing the steps? Are there some large database of OEM factories where you can contact them in English (assuming China).

I too would love to know exactly where and who made it, how many middle-men have stepped in with their own markup to finally Amazon.

Because it's clear that Amazon doesn't give two shit about who and what gets sold, they just care about volume. Fixing reviews is not part of that strategy.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#52

Post by zerebubuth »

This is why I subscribe to an independent review and consumer advice service / magazine. Money, even in small amounts, seems to distort reviews. Before I trust a review I want to know where the money that paid for it came from.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#53

Post by petra »

mjevans wrote: post #23
jseliger wrote: 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 an…

I wonder if Amazon isn't particulary interested in solving the problem(which happens mostly in lower end products, higher end use strong brands), since such a solution could be copied by their big competitiors, but instead they think about how to create private labels at scale ? a private label for every product category ?

Because if sucsessful, it would be a huge competitive advantage. And they do already have 34 private labels in varied areas, but i think they are still in the learning phase.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#54

Post by baxtr »

I’m starting to think that amazon might be in trouble, because of

A. Fake reviews, see above

B. Fake products [1]

C. A growing organization, which will be slower and less like on “day 1” [2]

So far, all of this has not affected their top line, but maybe will change soon.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743316

[2] https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-soars-340k-employees-ad...

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#57

Post by timtebow »

on a lot of products you will have 50 five star reviews all done in the same month and year by people with "verified purchase" with an obvious mandarin broken english style of writing, followed by a bunch of one star reviews saying not to trust all the broken english one line five star reviews... i hope it ends soon. i think amazons change where they require you to have at least $50 in prior purchases before writing a review will help.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#58

Post by danbower »

Well the situation does seem quite bad when you see people who leave fake reviews become brazen enough to actually advertise their services on Amazon itself [1]. I reported this review about 10 days ago and it's still up. The email address provided appears on hundreds of product listings [2]. When they can't even filter out nonsense like this I can only assume they put zero effort into tackling fake reviews.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R7J38CTD1MNT0

[2] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:amazon.co.uk+sohant85...

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#59

Post by wybiral »

This may seem off topic but what do we do when bots catch up to our state of the art for keeping them out?

Do we milk the concept of captchas until they turn into some kind of Turing test? Can we even automate a Turing test in a way that machines can't bypass?

Do we basically ditch the concept of privacy and require some kind of systematic provable identity in most places?

Or do we accept the fact that consensus can be faked by bots and try to mitigate the noise by removing the spam as it appears?

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#60

Post by jlarocco »

ajmurmann wrote: post #49
maxxxxx wrote: 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.

I wish that Amazon could split the market place off. I disliked it from the first day they introduced it. I want to buy from Amazon not some company I've never heard of. It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.

> It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.

Out of curiosity, why do you assume people don't realize they aren't buying from Amazon?

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