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Amazon's Fake Review Problem

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Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#181

Post by doglet »

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…

We should still be able to ask them to make a reasonable effort, which keeps the fake review economy at bay

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#182

Post by doglet »

pogue wrote: post #150
mc32 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I highly recommend a 30 Day trial subscription on Consumer Reports (CR) online if you're looking to buy a big ticket item. You can put in your CC# & other details and get free 30 day access to CR testing of a lot of products. Then cancel before the 30 days are up. You may end up paying a little more for a top notch product, but you can be assured if CR reviewed it, you're getting what you pay for.

Maybe there's a market for verified customer reviews of popular items - even ones that aren't big ticket. Consumer Reports might grow to cover additional items and perhaps develop a browser extension for subscribers who gain access to trusted reviews.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#183

Post by fencepost »

eric_h wrote: post #111
vladus2000 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had to explain this to my dad multiple times before he fully understood and I consider him to be a smart person. I have no idea how this applies to the general population, but they do not make it that obvious if you are not paying attention. Especially the other sellers that participate in prime shipping.

I try reasonably hard to only by ships from and sold by amazon, but even I occasionally mess up and end up getting a 3rd party seller. Fortunately I've not been burned, yet.

The problem with "ships from and sold by" is that it doesn't address one of Amazon's other big problems, counterfeit items commingled in their inventory. Have a shipping container full of good quality counterfeit XYZ? Ship it to Amazon to sell, it'll get mixed in with the same UPC from everyone else including Amazon itself and the counterfeits will never be traced back to you.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#184

Post by doglet »

sputknick wrote: post #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.…

Nothing like the good old trusted hobby store. And yes, this repetition of phrase or structure should be a clear signal.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#185

Post by asdjasldkjkljd »

This is becoming a SEVERE problem for Amazon. My wife and I have been talking about cancelling our Prime account just because unless you're getting something from an obviously known manufacturer, the site is riddled with junk and counterfeits.

With clothing it's annoying, but with electronics it can be outright dangerous because there are a lot of falsely certified products. I bought a cheap outdoor LED fixture thinking at worst it would just be a bright LED in a cheap housing... it was manufactured so poorly that it didn't work out of the box, and upon investigation bare wires were exposed within and arcing. It was some of the sloppiest soldering I've ever seen.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#186

Post by anthuswilliams »

ausjke wrote: post #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 newl…

  But then, why does Amazon want to do that? it will decrease its own profit.
Why would policing fake reviews decrease Amazon's profits?

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#187

Post by bsder »

wingworks wrote: post #103
pwaai wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the fake reviews are bad for business. I'm buying much less because I know knock off Chinese white label products are being marked up 5~7x the wholesale price from Alibaba. I don't like being used as an arbitrage opportunity. I think that if unaddressed it could harm Amazon in the long run. Validating authentic and genuine reviews is still a very much under-developed solution, still relying on an equally weighte…

Why not just shop directly with Alibaba/aliexpress then, skip the big markup :D

I do. But it doesn't solve the whole "Is this good or crap?" problem.

Generally on Alibaba, you have to know what a "reasonable" price is and expect that "acceptable" means you may have to order something 3 different times. I seem to have a miss rate of about 20-30%--so most of the time I get what I want, but very occasionally I get a bad roll of the dice and have to order 3 times.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#188

Post by tintar »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #177
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…

> 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.

right? I have a HD280 from ~12 years ago? the headband started to disintegrate maybe 5 years ago but it's still quite usable at home and the sound and comfort is still as wonderful. bought a 2nd pair maybe 5+ years ago when it was discounted at literally half-price, so that's the one that gets taken outside on field-trips.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#189

Post by diebir »

naner wrote: post #175
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.

Is this really practical for small time items? Does this happen at scale, or there's some other mechanism to create fake reviews? Seems like the practice is widespread, all real purchases?

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#190

Post by maxxxxx »

jlarocco wrote: post #167
pjc50 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people think they're not buying from Amazon when they're on the Amazon web site and their credit card gets billed to Amazon? (Can't remember, but do the parcels come in Amazon packaging too?)

> Why would people think they're not buying from Amazon when they're on the Amazon web site and their credit card gets billed to Amazon? Because Amazon tells them when they're looking at the item that it's sold by a third party? And then again when they're checking out. And the items sold by third parties include an invoice and receipt from the third party? It's not a difficult technical issue - it only requires basi…

I think most people assume that there is some level of quality control of third party suppliers.
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