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Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

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Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#81

Post by benatkin »

jameslk wrote: post #55

There will always be a desire to pay for reviews, since 70%-80% of shoppers check reviews before buying[0][1] (and growing[2]). Amazon could help fix this problem by creating "sponsored" reviews. This way a company can pay for reviews in a non-scummy way, a reviewer (and Amazon) gets paid, and a customer can tell whether the review was paid for or not. Or just pass laws to regulate reviews. 0. http://www.peopleclaim.…

I don't just check the average rating and number of ratings. I also check the quality of reviews. If an unscrupulous company wanted to increase the chances of me buying from them, they might try buying bad fake reviews for their competitors.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#82

Post by bloaf »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #4
JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.

How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.

I would guess that it is legitimate. The fake review problem is real. Here is an example of an item with 2k good reviews:

https://www.fakespot.com/product/dewalt-dw745-10-inch-compac...

Notice that it is not a cheap plastic good, and is neither easily duplicated nor ripped off.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#83

Post by EnderWT »

NTARelix wrote: post #78
EnderWT wrote: post #72

This topic keeps coming up in the news, and I've altered my shopping habits because of it. The competition has gotten tougher with Google Express, Walmart delivery and pickup, Target pickup, etc. When I order from one of them or make a trip to the store, I can at least verify the item I'm purchasing is from the manufacturer. When looking at the reviews on Amazon, countless times I've seen reviewers mention to not buy…

Makes me wonder how many of those guides have been paid for, or at least what level of influence advertisers have on them. Nevertheless, I agree that a quality guide is well appreciated, however hard to come by.

Many "guides" just end up being affiliate marketing link aggregators. I appreciate The Wirecutter's About[1] page where they tell how they review products.

[1]https://thewirecutter.com/about/

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#84

Post by bpicolo »

cstejerean wrote: post #37
IAmGraydon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a pr…

Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product. Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two…

The deluge of low quality, rebranded, foreign built junk is a real problem for Amazon. A search for food scale[0] for example gives you a whole page of similar (many exactly identical with different brand names) pieces of garbage - they have massive, consistent weight drift and drain batteries like it's their job, and yet they're rocking thousands of 5 star reviews.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywor...

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#85

Post by AlexB138 »

EnderWT wrote: post #72

This topic keeps coming up in the news, and I've altered my shopping habits because of it. The competition has gotten tougher with Google Express, Walmart delivery and pickup, Target pickup, etc. When I order from one of them or make a trip to the store, I can at least verify the item I'm purchasing is from the manufacturer. When looking at the reviews on Amazon, countless times I've seen reviewers mention to not buy…

Avoiding particular sellers is no guarantee, since Amazon comingles inventory in the warehouse. You can order from seller A, who is completely legitimate, and receive fraudulent goods seller B supplied.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#86

Post by Terretta »

ilamont wrote: post #53

According to outside auditors like Fakespot and ReviewMeta, more than half the reviews for certain popular products are questionable. Amazon disputes those estimates. "Our approximation is that less than 1 percent of reviews are inauthentic," says Sharon Chiarella, vice president of community shopping at Amazon. She adds that "sometimes individual products have more suspicious activity." The disparity in what outside…

> Bezos truly hates negative press

I'm not sure that's true. I think they pride themselves on not worrying about being understood, in other words, not pandering to the press or Wall Street.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#87

Post by trukterious »

benatkin wrote: post #81
jameslk wrote: post #55

There will always be a desire to pay for reviews, since 70%-80% of shoppers check reviews before buying[0][1] (and growing[2]). Amazon could help fix this problem by creating "sponsored" reviews. This way a company can pay for reviews in a non-scummy way, a reviewer (and Amazon) gets paid, and a customer can tell whether the review was paid for or not. Or just pass laws to regulate reviews. 0. http://www.peopleclaim.…

I don't just check the average rating and number of ratings. I also check the quality of reviews. If an unscrupulous company wanted to increase the chances of me buying from them, they might try buying bad fake reviews for their competitors.

Yes. A review that explains why the product is good is harder to fake. Plus the reader may be able to verify independently whether the explanation itself is good. In which case the source no longer signifies.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#88

Post by ashelmire »

"Our approximation is that less than 1 percent of reviews are inauthentic"

Get the hell outta here. Look at literally any product and you'll see a plethora of obviously fake reviews. The worst I've noticed? Check out headphones. 500+ 5 star reviews for cheap Chinese products all over the place. In fact, anything that's around 500 5 star reviews is probably mostly fake reviews.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#89

Post by throwaway287391 »

Jach wrote: post #75
throwaway287391 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since listening to that podcast a few weeks ago I've also started checking both ReviewMeta and FakeSpot for every Amazon listing I think about buying. It's really made shopping on Amazon a frustrating experience -- well over half the products I've checked (in a couple specific product categories) have had F or D ratings according to both sites. I've wondered if some of these are false positives (i.e. ReviewMeta flags…

Consider that if you go buy an equivalent item at a box store, there aren't any reviews, the company (sometimes companies) with products on offer just happens to have enough money to get the stores to stock them over any potential competition. Similarly with fake and paid reviews, those companies happen to have money to do it (and do it better than competition, they can't all be using the same github script). A compa…

> Consider that if you go buy an equivalent item at a box store, there aren't any reviews, the company (sometimes companies) with products on offer just happens to have enough money to get the stores to stock them over any potential competition.

Well, I know that there aren't any reviews in a B&M store, but (1) I've been checking online reviews (usually Amazon) for non-trivial purchases at B&M stores for a while now (either before I go or at the store on my phone), and (2) B&M stores do usually have at least one human employee in the loop signing off on a product going onto the shelves, and at the very least the "big name" ones (almost) never sell blatantly bogus/fraudulent products (fake Apple-branded MacBook chargers, etc.). Amazon has pretty much been the Wild West ever since they started allowing third party sellers, which I used to be fine with, back when I was under the impression that the reviews were generally pretty reliable, and sure that something that said "Shipped from and sold by Amazon" (or whatever) was a safe bet.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#90

Post by bootlooped »

exolymph wrote: post #52
Gauc2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>BTW, because of the way Amazon’s FBA service works, even ordering items that are “sold by” a reputable retailer but “fulfilled by Amazon” gets you a high chance of receiving a fake. This is because they mix FBA stock and don’t discriminate what stock it comes from when filling that item, regardless of who the seller is. Is this also true with items sold directly by Amazon?

Yes. They commingle all the inventory.

Not true. Sellers can prevent comingling inventory by creating their listing with a unique FNSKU. This doesn't prevent the product from being sold on the same ASIN. If sellers can do that then Amazon can absolutely do that.
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