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Amazon's Fake Review Problem

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Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#151

Post by defgeneric »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #129

Amazon does do a lot to detect bribed reviews automatically. However, in the long run, this may be an arms race that Amazon will lose. One issue with detecting fakes with identical phrases is that many real reviewers will take phrases from the product description or from other peoples' reviews either consciously or unconsciously. This also matches up with a common bribed review technique of giving people canned phras…

> smart reviewers salt their reviews with the occasional negative one (generally for people who aren't bribing them)

This is exactly the problem with the "consumer protection" racket--companies like Consumer Affairs will curate a negative presentation of your company or product, then call you up offering a $2,500/month subscription which basically allows you to remove old negative reviews and prevent new ones from appearing on their site.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#152

Post by j79 »

pogue wrote: post #148
ecommerceguy wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, Amazon will remove reviews at merchant request when the review is about FBA shipping. Generally, these are bad reviews. A merchant would not want to remove a good review when the subject is shipping. "This came really fast!" 5 Stars is not a product review, however a merchant would not want to remove it. "The box was completely damaged and destroyed the product!!" 1 Star - will be removed by request if s…

Sorry, FBA = ?

Fulfillment By Amazon

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#153

Post by brazzledazzle »

jlarocco wrote: post #60
ajmurmann wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I've had to explain this to several non-technical people. Amazon is trading their hard earned trust away.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#154

Post by slantyyz »

nasredin wrote: post #139
jacek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brand is Bluedio. They have pretty good reviews considering the price. I have used Xiaomi before and was amazed by quality/price. I was hoping Bluedio, which is another Chinese brand would be also good. I was wrong. EDIT: Here's the fake review analysis for the headphones: https://www.fakespot.com/product/bluedio-f2-faith-active-noi...

>Bluedio Sorry to be a bit of an asshole. Do not buy Chinese crap. It's a lottery. My Sennheisers (made of plastic BTW) have been in use since 2014. My previous Sennheisers broke (just the headband) after a couple of years. Bought $30 Taiwanese headphones, good Amazon reviews, but the headband is too small. And the microphonics is terrible. Sigh. Recently bought boots, Made in China. Size is about 1.5 units off. For…

>> Do not buy Chinese crap. It's a lottery.

Most of the problematic products as they relate to reviews on Amazon are Chinese products. When I used to do incentivized reviews, all but one single company who approached me for a product review (this does not include eBook authors) was not Chinese.

>> For a certain class of goods and for reasonable price points, you do get what you pay for.

This is 100% true, but I find a lot of Chinese products punched above their weight. During my time reviewing, I turned down the cheap sketchy products and focused mainly on stuff that I wanted that looked like they were well made. And you know what, a lot of the products I got were actually fantastic relative to their selling price.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#155

Post by nasredin »

mc32 wrote: post #18
jccooper wrote: post #6

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…

I wonder if it will come back to a more distributed CR type of system. Also branding and maintaining the integrity of a brand. 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". T…

The sellers are not really to blame here though.

Often they are just Chinese-speaking American entrepreneurs. The problem is the lack of IP protection in China. And lack of any interest in branding and brand differentiation, hence you got "brands" that sounds like they were picked via /dev/rand. And of course everything is probably manufactured in the same 3 or 4 factories.

Lev Andropov: It's stuck, yes?

Watts: Back off! You don't know the components!

Lev Andropov: [annoyed] Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!!!

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#156

Post by xbkingx »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #85
jacek wrote: post #39

The fake review problem on Amazon is much bigger than people think. Here are my two anecdotes: 1. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review. Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That manipulation technique wasn't enough…

> When I need a cable or something similar, I resorted to buy only Amazon Basic cables for the PC/monitor/TV and Anker cables/charger for the mobile phones. It is not the cheapest option but you still get high quality for a low price and you don't have to deal with any shady shops.

Monoprice also sells through Amazon and most, if not all, of their items qualify for Prime (something like 1000' cable spools might not qualify, but the everyday consumer stuff generally does). Never had a problem with any of their wires.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#157

Post by nasredin »

jacek wrote: post #143
nasredin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bluedio Sorry to be a bit of an asshole. Do not buy Chinese crap. It's a lottery. My Sennheisers (made of plastic BTW) have been in use since 2014. My previous Sennheisers broke (just the headband) after a couple of years. Bought $30 Taiwanese headphones, good Amazon reviews, but the headband is too small. And the microphonics is terrible. Sigh. Recently bought boots, Made in China. Size is about 1.5 units off. For…

That's true. Buying Chinese electronics is a lottery (usually). I would, however, recommend some Xiaomi products. They are really excellent considering the price. BTW I actually ended up buying Sennheiser headphones after I returned the crappy ones.

Well the actual driver inside should last you a lifetime, the plasticky headband on the other hand...

---

Also related:

The Sennheisers branded ear pads or Brainwavz (IIRC) ear pads are a bit expensive ($20+).

You can get generic "memory" foam ones on AliExpress for $4.

It's not actually memory foam and they might send you the wrong type, and it's a tight fit (just remember to breathe !?) but they work.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#158

Post by dogruck »

rconti wrote: post #63
jacek wrote: post #39

The fake review problem on Amazon is much bigger than people think. Here are my two anecdotes: 1. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review. Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That manipulation technique wasn't enough…

Huh. I've never really had an issue because I chalked it up more to people buying cheap crap and expecting it to be good. But $65 for a pair of headphones isn't exactly cheap. Was it a familiar brand but maybe a counterfeit? Or was it a brand you've never heard of, but the price is justified by very positive reviews? I'm curious.

Yeah, where I’m reading online reviews and sold statistics, I always have to mentally normalize for the fact that most people just buy the cheapest item.

I wish sites like Amazon had a feature such as “people who buy similar quality items to you, also bought this...”

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#159

Post by 50CNT »

nasredin wrote: post #139
jacek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brand is Bluedio. They have pretty good reviews considering the price. I have used Xiaomi before and was amazed by quality/price. I was hoping Bluedio, which is another Chinese brand would be also good. I was wrong. EDIT: Here's the fake review analysis for the headphones: https://www.fakespot.com/product/bluedio-f2-faith-active-noi...

>Bluedio Sorry to be a bit of an asshole. Do not buy Chinese crap. It's a lottery. My Sennheisers (made of plastic BTW) have been in use since 2014. My previous Sennheisers broke (just the headband) after a couple of years. Bought $30 Taiwanese headphones, good Amazon reviews, but the headband is too small. And the microphonics is terrible. Sigh. Recently bought boots, Made in China. Size is about 1.5 units off. For…

Its a lottery you can throw with research.

Say you want bookshelf speakers. Going with the budget pick I might get Pioneer SP-BS22-LRs, but they're around 4500RMB here in China. Other reputable brands come in around 10000RMB, which is so far outside my budget its not even funny. But most of these speakers are made in China anyways, so you start sleuthing. K, i find a post on an Audiophile forum that tells me that HiVi(/Swan) makes the drivers for most upscale Audio equipment. Let's check what HiVi has. Ahh, they've got a bloody gorgeous pair of speakers for 1699RMB[0], and a passable one for 699RMB, and an official Taobao store. And they'll do.

Boots I would not buy from China, in China, you can return them and test.

For budget headphones, Senneheiser is what I get in Germany, Tascam if you're in the US, JVC for Asia. Don't know any Chinese brands of note there.

For smartphones Xiaomi is blowing it out of the water right now. Their Redmi（红米） line is incredible value. Then there's Huawei, Meizu, OPPO, Honor, and whatever Hammer(Chuizi) is.

[0]https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id=542718449070&ns=1&abbuc...

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#160

Post by xbkingx »

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.

EBay started at the opposite end of the spectrum, but they converged to the same problem.

Amazon "I'm buying from a reputable company, so I can trust that the seller is accurately representing the item." turned to "I thought I was buying from an established company, but instead I'm buying from a questionable person that is using Amazon as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."

EBay "I'm buying from a random person that I don't trust and may be misrepresenting the item, but it looks like they've described all the problems and got the same use from the item as I would like to get, so I'm comfortable with taking a chance." turned to "I thought I was buying from a random person, but instead I'm buying from a questionable company that is using Ebay as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."

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