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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

#111

Post by markdown »

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.…

> Or just pass laws to regulate reviews

Australia just today fined a company for manipulating TripAdvisor reviews:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649912

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

#112

Post by 13of40 »

13of40 wrote: post #73
whitepoplar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name and shame!

The Art of the Deal has an F, with 57% low quality reviews. "Our engine has profiled the reviewer patterns and has determined that there is high deception involved."

Hmmm...can't edit, but: I just looked at this again, and it's interesting to note that the Kindle version has an A rating and the print version has an F rating, even though they appear to share the same set of reviews.

Scroll down to see the first two entries in the product list here: https://www.fakespot.com/company/donald-j-trump

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

dkonofalski wrote: post #95
chaostheory wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has done this for years now. It's call Amazon Vine. Select Amazon customers with high review ratings are given free* products for which they have to give unbiased reviews. It's both sponsored by Amazon as well as various manufacturers. https://www.amazon.com/gp/vine/help It has mixed results. Amazon is upfront about Vine reviewers getting free product and resulting reviews have a Vine tag on top. Customers ten…

Why would companies know who's getting their products to review and why would reviewers know which products they're getting? I feel like an easy fix for this is to have the company send the product to Amazon first and then have Amazon handle the distribution to reviewers. There's no "quid pro quo" if there's no incentive to review a product favorably. That's why Consumer Reports was so successful in the past. Their r…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by chrissnell »

I've been burned multiple times by this; the worst was a pair of remote control off-road trucks for my sons' Christmas presents. They had hundreds of 5-star reviews and both units worked for maybe 5 minutes each. Within days of Christmas, the listing was flooded with 1-star reviews from other conned parents with very similar stories.

The number of products impacted must be far over the 1% claimed. There are whole categories that have been ruined by Fake China and kids' toys is probably the worst. Headphones, as mentioned by another commenter here, are another.

This problem is quickly destroying Amazon's credibility with a lot of customers. I went to a Best Buy for the first time in a decade to buy a pair of iPhone headphones, just so I'd be assured a genuine product. I now buy my kids' toys at Target, just so I can be assured that there's a reasonable chance that they aren't crap.

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

#115

Post by dsr_ »

ashelmire wrote: post #88

"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.

There are three possible scenarios.

1. Amazon uses good ML techniques, and they don't work.

2. Amazon is doing something else to detect fraud, and it doesn't work.

3. Amazon is lying about the issue.

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

#116

Post by Eleopteryx »

I've found that it's more useful to sort by negative reviews. It's reasonable to assume that the product is what it appears to be at face value, but customers tend to speak up if they feel like they got cheated.

On the other hand, I believe I read that some fake reviews are actually negative, as a means to funnel users to competing products. So who knows?

Can't trust anything I read on the internet concerning a product or service.

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

#117

Post by themodelplumber »

Ensorceled wrote: post #69
themodelplumber wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I gave a tech book 3 stars once and the author contacted me to request that I reconsider, explaining that anything less than 5 stars could doom a brand new tech book on Amazon. He offered personal support and training in return for raising the score. It didn't work, but it also convinced me that he has a good point regarding the score: Reviews are difficult ground due to their subjective nature, and a lot of re…

So, when you were giving the book 3 stars, how did you judge the book? Did that match what you then learned (3 stars dooms a book). Did you intend to doom the book or feel it should be doomed?

Upon reconsideration I felt that for some readers it should be doomed, while for others it was probably a worthwhile purchase, and I made that clear in my review. Book recommendation is not as straightforward as people think.

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

#118

Post by Waterluvian »

chrissnell wrote: post #114

I've been burned multiple times by this; the worst was a pair of remote control off-road trucks for my sons' Christmas presents. They had hundreds of 5-star reviews and both units worked for maybe 5 minutes each. Within days of Christmas, the listing was flooded with 1-star reviews from other conned parents with very similar stories. The number of products impacted must be far over the 1% claimed. There are whole cat…

I can handle getting some crappy set of headphones but a big let down for a child's Christmas is just so upsetting to a point that maybe I've got unaddressed issues. I have a toddler and I think I'll gladly pay the premium to buy Toys R Us stuff I can touch and play with in the store.

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

#119

Post by chrissnell »

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…

They need to give customers a way to sort by review counts in a time-weighted fashion. In other words, a product with 1,000 reviews and a 4.5 average that had been sold for five years would rank higher than a product with 1,500 reviews and a 4.8 average that had been sold for three months. This would help identify the quality products from stable manufacturers.

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

#120

Post by dalore »

dsr_ wrote: post #115
ashelmire wrote: post #88

"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.

There are three possible scenarios. 1. Amazon uses good ML techniques, and they don't work. 2. Amazon is doing something else to detect fraud, and it doesn't work. 3. Amazon is lying about the issue.

All 3 could be possible.
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