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Amazon's Fake Review Problem

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Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#171

Post by DanielleMolloy »

ethbro wrote: post #164
DanielleMolloy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening is extremely subjective though. Headphone types can be better / worse for certain listening habits (there are people out there who don't think great bass makes great music, folks), and for different ears. Music taste itself is extremely subjective. Best thing is still to get to a trusted hifi store nearby with your own, known music in best quality and your current best headphone model and test through candi…

My current earbud benchmark is the Panasonic ErgoFit line. [1] To be fair, I don't use an external DAC or source high quality sound on the road. But for $10 and tolerable, good enough for travel. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E4LGVUO/

Can confirm - for everyday in-ears, these Panasonic in-ears are indeed good and durable.

Cheap but surprisingly good end: Superlux HD668B (20-40$, as they got popular you may need to watch out for counterfeits). IMHO they are on par with some popular 200$ - 300$ Beyerdynamic / Sennheiser / AKG models. You may want to follow one of the online guides to replace the ear cup plastic with velour.

Fakespot: A (90%)

Expensive end: AudioQuest Nighthawk, 1st model. Their sound is unique and "purist audiophiles" may not like it, but they work pretty well with my listening habits; the experience has been pure joy so far and they are very comfortable.

Fakespot: A (90%)

Listening habits: Metal (symphonic-, power-, progressive-, i.e. complex and with classical music elements; e.g. Blind Guardian) and some Depeche Mode

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#172

Post by rdlecler1 »

Amazon reviews system is broken. It seems to favor the cheapest functional product but not everyone wants to buy the cheapest thing. Sometimes they want the best quality item and it’s hard to interpolate this from the review system. Reviews really need to be weighted to the kinds of purchases people make. Someone buying the top of the line OLED TV is going to have a different set of preferences than someone who is buying a no-name 65” LCD.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#173

Post by diebir »

Could somebody explain the mechanism for creating "verified purchase" fake reviews? Somebody actually bothers to go through trouble of doing a purchase and creating a fake review? Anybody has any factual examples? Any pay for services that can be used? Seems like an area just waiting to be investigated by a media outlet...

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#174

Post by Someone1234 »

minedwiz wrote: post #135
Someone1234 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. - Search - Pick a category - Select "Amazon.com" as the seller

Does that also filter out stuff sold by vendors, but fulfilled by Amazon?

It is only items sold by Amazon.com, so yes.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#175

Post by naner »

diebir wrote: post #173

Could somebody explain the mechanism for creating "verified purchase" fake reviews? Somebody actually bothers to go through trouble of doing a purchase and creating a fake review? Anybody has any factual examples? Any pay for services that can be used? Seems like an area just waiting to be investigated by a media outlet...

As long as the item isn't prohibitively expensive the company paying for the review could just provide you the money to purchase the product.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#176

Post by kordlessagain »

nasredin wrote: post #141
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.

>I wish that Amazon could split the market place off. Recently Amazon made it much harder to select sellers. Now on some products, the page is so confusing that you don't know is it "Fullfilled by Amazon" or you are buying from someone in China. Race to the bottom and all...

The "fulfilled by amazon" part is pretty obvious on the page, so I wouldn't say it's hard to figure out. If they have it in one of their warehouses, they'll ship it to you and will refund you directly without getting the seller involved if they did and there is a problem with it - sometimes without even verifying you returned it (this has not happened to me but I've seen it happen to another person). If you chose to buy something that isn't in one of your warehouses, your mileage will vary.

Recently I got them to refund me after showing I returned the defective item (tracking number + signed by an employee) the SAME day it was returned to the seller's location. Granted, the seller and I had a dispute (which was that the seller refused to acknowledge the device spit out a fair amount of magic smoke when powering a small charger).

Again, it's effort in and effort out. If you buy something off Amazon, make sure it's being shipped to you by Amazon!

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#177

Post by pilsetnieks »

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…

> My previous Sennheisers broke (just the headband) after a couple of years

Let me guess, HD280 Pro? It seems they've fixed that for HD380s.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#178

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

coredog64 wrote: post #92
pwaai wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wouldn't this be a classic use case for block chain technology?

Of course not. It's not a distribute problem (Amazon is centralized) it doesn't require trustlessness (Amazon trusts itself), but it is something where you want an auditable ledger. Say, an append-only database.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#179

Post by z3t4 »

I try to do my purchase's based on scientific research methods. There needs to be benchmarks that you can use to compare the products. That is however problematic for some products, such as books.

What's even worse then fake reviews is fake bad reviews where competitors give your products a low rating. If your first review ends up bad you are screwed, unless you get 100 good reviews to compensate.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#180

Post by sogen »

I rated a book poorly (1-2 stars). This book only had 3 reviews after one year since it was published.

Crazily enough, after my review appeared, two days later this book had over TWELVE glowing reviews, all of them Five-stars

...

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