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Amazon Dark Patterns

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Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#71

Post by alexgmcm »

mike_hearn wrote: post #55
jdietrich wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FakeSpot and ReviewMeta seem to do a decent job of identifying obviously fake Amazon reviews. I suspect that Amazon just have an incentives problem - purging their site of fake five-star reviews would go a long way to restoring trust in their platform, but it would negatively impact sales in the short-term. From what I've heard, Amazon has a very decentralised and data-driven management culture, which is antithetical…

How do you know what their FP rate is?

But equally - does it matter?

I would rather have less, but more accurate, reviews than have all of them but many of them being fake.

It seems like a use-case where a high false positive rate would be acceptable. Unlike say, medical diagnosis or something.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#72

Post by kennydude »

jxdxbx wrote: post #5

“Arrived damaged” could be borderline as it sounds like a review of the shipping process and not the product. Not sure what’s going on with that first one though.

Typically most Amazon products are shipped by Amazon Logistics now. So it's still a review of Amazon.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#73

Post by arrrg »

mrtksn wrote: post #20
arrrg wrote: post #4

An alternative explanation for this is that Amazon is struggling with identifying fake reviews, which could explain both why there seem to be many fake reviews and why one would get blocked from writing reviews (basically falling victim to a false positive of their fake review detection). Obviously there is also some bad UX thrown in for good measure (being able to write a review without being able to send it), but w…

If your maybes are valid it simply means that these Amazon guys are new in the business and will figure out how to design user interface once they have the resources.Lets give them a slack, aye? Seriously though, I canceled my prime after I got a fake SD Card that was sold by Amazon. There was no straightforward way of returning it, had to contact customer support. Later I looked closely and I noticed the reviews war…

You are throwing together different issues.

Amazon has lax standards as to who can use them to sell their wares (leading to fakes being sold). That’s not UX or a UX dark pattern, that’s a business strategy. (Which doesn’t make it necessarily better or worse than if it were a UX dark pattern if you are judging it morally, it’s just something different.)

Amazon makes it hard to initiate returns. That might be a dark pattern. (In my experience the returns process for things Amazon sells directly or more or less directly, returns are straightforward and simple. Third party sellers are here, again, the problem. And that’s then more a mix of UX and business strategy, where third parties either cannot or are not required to use Amazon’s returns process but have to provide their own, e.g. fall back to writing emails back and forth.)

Reviews are overly enthusiastic, even though the sold product is not genuine. This might be an issue with fake reviews or uncritical customers (themselves unable to recognize fakes) or both – but it’s not really a UI dark pattern.

I would also argue that Amazon’s way of surfacing negative reviews (with the stars histogram and ways to filter reviews by number of stars) doesn’t suggest that it’s Amazon’s intention to hide negative reviews …

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#74

Post by CannisterFlux »

sigotirandolas wrote: post #15
rkachowski wrote: post #7

An interesting dark pattern (albeit unrelated to the review flow) is during the standard checkout process. on the last screen before the purchase, the Amazon logo image / header no longer links back to the Amazon homepage like the rest of the site. I guess keeping the user captive leads to more sales

I’ve also noticed that they don’t let me ship a lot of products (mostly food, but also random harmless electronics) to shipping points or Amazon boxes in my city (in Spain), telling me they are full (they are not, they let me ship other products there and it tells me it’s full with literally any shipping point or Amazon box). They only let me ship it to a home address. I can’t prove it’s not a bug, but it seems such…

I don't like to defend Amazon because they are getting shadier all the time, but I always ship to a Correos office near my flat from amazon.es and haven't had this problem (yet?). Maybe it isn't the same thing as the box though. I've seen random 3rd party items that can't be left at Correos, but they do tell you at the start of the process.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#75

Post by sonnyblarney »

k__ wrote: post #17
NikolaNovak wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm missing something,that kind of masking behaviour is what typically causes me to exit an app and manually give it a low review. Are you saying you are actively gating the reviews? :-/

Pretty much. Some app-store marketing guru told the startup I'm contracting with, that this is the way to go, because you're pretty much f*cked if you get reviews below 4.

This is an important point.

Basically, once some start gaming the system - the others have to follow or they are dead.

It's similar to how irregular migration or general screwing over of workers works: if some farmers are paying 'under wages' or some factories are 'undercutting' ... then the others stand to lose business and are sucked into the same practices.

It's one thing when a massively successful entity like Amazon does shady stuff, but for most businesses ... it seems to often be kind of a quandary.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#76

Post by aardshark »

test1235 wrote: post #64
jackewiehose wrote: post #33

I once wrote a 1-star review on amazon for a top-selling product that had almost only positive reviews. The review was published but they quietly changed its contents. They replaced some words (I guess it was too strong language like "crap" or something) but even worse they removed at least one whole sentence and after that the review didn't make much sense anymore and it looked like I wrote it like that. Then I watc…

I find that hard to believe. Any chance of a link to the review? Otherwise this comment could easily be written by an Amazon competitor looking to sway opinion.

Who are these Amazon competitors that have shills working for them to damage Amazon's reputation?

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#77

Post by tcbawo »

arrrg wrote: post #61
TuringTest wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this bad UX has a positive consequence for Amazon, unintended or not. Products with good reviews generate more sales than those with comments stating problems with the product or delivery process, specially among infrequent buyers. (Frequent buyers may learn to ignore comments altogether, or at least spot valuable comments from fakes). So the bad pattern is not allowing fake reviews as much as it is rejecting l…

I would, however, postulate that Amazon is aware that fake positive reviews only buy them short term benefits with long term disadvantages. Having a cheap/free way to evaluate products by letting the customers do it is an advantage, especially if your goal is to sell everything (so you have no hope to evaluate it all yourself) – but it’s only an advantage if some useful signal is provided. With strings of negative pu…

Except, will they look elsewhere? The current trend seems to suggest otherwise.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#78

Post by windexh8er »

This seems to be BAU with Amazon these days and why I no longer trust their reviews en masse. You can still field high fidelity reviews, but unless it is for a large purchase it seems to be a waste of time. Amazon bolsters cheap (cost and quality) products. I wrote a 1 star for a set of poorly constructed LED bulbs where one exploded and created a fire hazard. This review was accepted, however a review of a product I purchased that came with the wrong model product (mistake or deception?) in the box was removed and it didn't matter what I tried Amazon would not give me a reason why.

Amazon is a machine running off of too many fake reviews and so I've been significantly cutting back supporting them by purchasing from. I'm sure, eventually, my return requests will be revoked due to a low review or when their algorithm shows my purchase cadence declining. At that point I'll be done.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#79

Post by Aissen »

stared wrote: post #37

I have a trick - looking at 4 star reviews. They are overally positive, but at the same time - talk about shortcomings (some of them may effect my decision, while others are not an issue). Typically, these are balanced. And totally unlikely to be faked. For the same reason I avoid 1 star reviews on some services (especially recommending books or movies). They are often related to a strong, emotional reponse, rather t…

A company I know was aware of this tactic, and bought their own items (through proxies) ~20 times, and two of those had to use 4-star reviews.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#80

Post by mrtksn »

fouc wrote: post #63
mrtksn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your maybes are valid it simply means that these Amazon guys are new in the business and will figure out how to design user interface once they have the resources.Lets give them a slack, aye? Seriously though, I canceled my prime after I got a fake SD Card that was sold by Amazon. There was no straightforward way of returning it, had to contact customer support. Later I looked closely and I noticed the reviews war…

What? They make returns very easy to do. There's a form that pops up and many choices for reasons.

There was no return option on the SD Card, it was marked as "not eligible for return" so I had to deal with the customer support.

I actually went ahead and dug out the conversation for you.

This is my refund request: https://imgur.com/bthMMoN This is the response from Amazon: https://imgur.com/xWK8FVH

Yeah, they refunded me without a fuss but I prefer an experience where the items arrive in expected quality and I keep them.

I think I actually kept the Prime membership for a while but I found myself disillusioned and felt uneasy when shopping at Amazon and later canceled as I was no longer buying stuff from Amazon.

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