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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

#141

Post by makecheck »

“Reviews”, in general, are absurdly misleading on any site; Amazon is just prominent.

I’ve given real reviews on Yelp of businesses that had real problems. These negative ratings were shuffled off into their special bucket of maybe-less-reliable reviews, well under pages of HIGHLY questionable 5-star reviews. I also have a friend with a business who was plainly told that he needs to pay to ensure good reviews. Yelp is a scam, and wins by being a virtual monopoly (as Amazon reviews do).

It is also amazingly hard to get reviews on the App Store from real users, for instance. I imagine you pretty much have to ask 60 friends to “help” you, or pay somebody, either of which creates a pool of fake reviews. It really changes your perspective on any other “ratings” you see.

In the end, I think society will learn that this is another example of buyer beware, and you get out of it what you put into it. Since looking over “reviews” for 30 seconds is low-effort, it is low-value. If you want good results, you need to spend a good amount of time and effort researching products.

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

#142

Post by dylan604 »

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…

> This problem is quickly destroying Amazon's credibility with a lot of customers

It has totally destroyed their credibility with me personally. I used to be an avid Amazon shopper. It was just too easy. I now actively find stores locally to shop. Does it make a difference to Amazon's bottom line, not in the least. While it might be less convenient, I feel less dirty than supporting Amazon. There are times where local stores do not carry something, and I still have purchase from Amazon but only if I can't find it anywhere else first.

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

#143

Post by ralfd »

greggman wrote: post #139

I hate it too but rather than just complain is it a solvable problem? Reply All had an resent episode about it https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124#episode-player first they had fake reviews. Amazobn required actual purchases so companies would pay people to purchase and return. you can't ban returns otherwise there would be no negative reviews. how can this be solved? some kind of reputation system? how would y…

Tag the review with the info if the item was returned.

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

#144

Post by dylan604 »

marviel wrote: post #20
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.

You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.

Would this be the same machine learning that was recently in the news for incorrectly identifying 28 lawmakers as people that had been charged with some crime? Maybe it is, and that's why it can't spot the fake reviews?

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

#145

Post by danjayh »

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.

Worse still, Amazon will delete authentic reviews that contain information they don't like. For instance, I started working my way through all of the batteries on Amazon (top review on this product, for instance: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B009PPR5OU/ ), and Amazon deleted them from multiple products because of the table with cost/battery data (which is extremely relevant when reviewing a commodity product like Alkaline batteries). I got pissed off and quit reviewing stuff on Amazon unless it sucked (or in rare cases where a chinagarbage product and/or seller exceeded my expectations).

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

#146

Post by Nition »

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…

Does Amazon accept these faulty items back and refund the customers if they ask? Do they pay the return shipping cost? Assuming yes, surely this is costing them a lot as well.

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

#147

Post by zorpner »

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.

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

A good friend of mine worked on the recommendation engine ML side for AMZN until fairly recently. His review was that it's worse, and more expensive, than having hired people do it by hand.

But the sibling comment is more correct -- all three of these things are currently the case.

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

#148

Post by redgetan »

I've actually very interested in finding a solution to this problem as well. I think the issue is that regular users who are more likely to give honest reviews currently don't have an incentive to write one as there's nothing to gain, but potentially something to lose. If everyone is rewarded instead of just the ones who give positive reviews (i.e ones who receive free stuff, getting paid for etc,), then the ratio of fake/legit reviews might balance out. And we just need a better UI to show the most relevant + recent reviews for each star rating. For example, in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DNTWTKH#customerReviews someone mentioned "All the reviews are non verified!! 5 starts with 100+ reviews...... something is fishy!!". It also shows that 54 people found it helpful. So think that's a neat feature.

I think blockchain might be a good use case for this. Cencorship resistant, decentralized review, not controlled by a single company, and anyone can contribute, and see the reviews (i.e via browser extension). And everyone is rewarded by currency when they provide a review. Just not sure how to prevent spam, and deal with people gaming the system. Perhaps a staking system could be introduced wherein a user would lose their stake if the review proved to be inauthentic (proving it comes with its own problems). Anyway, these are just some of things I've been pondering about before.

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

#149

Post by beamatronic »

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.

The last time I needed headphones, I turned this on its head and bought AmazonBasics brand. Any chance of commingling there? Anyway they were great. I went back to buy more, but they were sadly discontinued.

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

#150

Post by snegu »

whitepoplar wrote: post #54
snegu wrote: post #24

Last night I finally abandoned a book that was absolute trash, but had 83% 5-star reviews on Amazon. Looking at the reviews now, I see that most of them are written by people who only write 5-star reviews (it has an F-rating on Fakespot). Feeling like kind of a dummy right now.

Name and shame!

Do You Realize? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06VX1QQHX/ref=oh_aui_d_de...

It was only 99 cents, but I wasted at least a couple of hours on it, which is what really annoys me.

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