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Amazon Dark Patterns

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Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#161

Post by satsuma »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #111
seren wrote: post #60

Prompted by this post, I wanted to check what happened to the 1-star review I have left 6 months ago. (Product worked for 3 days and then stopped, and after a replacement, the same thing happened). Sure enough, I have 0 comment in my profile, and I just checked, it has also disappeared from the product page. This is shady as hell, because I am 100% sure I wrote this review. I even wrote it twice, once on amazon.com a…

Consider the other side of this argument: should reviews be timeless? Many times a (good faith) vendor will make small, incremental changes to a product that addresses concerns that low-star reviewers point out. However, the product page remains the same - it does not distinguish between "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch A" and "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch C". It simply says "Seattle Coffee Beans". So if you leave a rev…

the google play store does this -- reviews left on older versions of applications will be denoted as such. the developer response to comments is also made public, so a bad review on a 1.0 release could have the dev apologizing and saying it's fixed for 1.1, with the current version being 1.1.5, and one could infer (with enough faith in the developer) that the issue is resolved.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#162

Post by vxNsr »

leoalves wrote: post #128
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…

This episode of reply all show how hard it is to identify fake reviews and what seller are doing to fake it. Really interesting in my opinion. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124#episode-player

I actually didn't like that episode because she very clearly said she spent no time looking at the product and just clicked buy. But there are legit reasons to want a UK plug in the US (maybe you're traveling and want to have it with you when you leave). The fact that the seller is trying to game the rankings is more an issue with the rankings system than with the seller.

Gaming the rankings/listings isn't an issue exclusive to amazon, every single website has this issue, in fact even phone books (remember those) had to contend with people listing their name with leading A's to try to get to the front. Gaming listings is as old as lists and until we can come up with a solution to that problem we're always gonna have problems like this.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#163

Post by mrtksn »

_ea1k wrote: post #156
fouc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, I mean, he got a refund and didn't even have to return anything. How dark is that pattern? Having said that, Amazon's product mixing is causing a lot of problems and trust issues for a lot of product types. I really hope they fix it.

Me not getting a refund would have been a fraud. I would have filed a chargeback against that fraudulent purchase.

A dark pattern is not about taking someone's money an running away but it's about impacting their decision making by designing processes or interactions that exploit common behaviour.

An example of a well known dark pattern is adding things to the shopping cart just before check out. Another one is starting a subscription with a click of a button but requiring documents to be faxed for the cancellation.

On my specific case with Amazon, the dark pattern is to make it hard for me to spot a fraudulent item and not making the standard refund process available therefore increasing the chances of purchase and decreasing the chances of refund by making it a hassle. Well, maybe it was not intentional, maybe it was a screw-up but that's again a lot of maybes.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#165

Post by thinkythought »

This skips/avoids another really important but bs thing they do: Reviews that mention counterfeits ALWAYS get pulled. Seemingly by some automated system, even. It's like a forbidden review topic or phrase.

Yea, that's not shady at all

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#166

Post by vxNsr »

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 found this to no longer be true.

Now a dropdown pops out and asks if you're sure you wanna leave checkout, you can choose "back to cart" and "continue checkout".

This is for US desktop. could be different for other devices/locations.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#167

Post by cptskippy »

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…

> An alternative explanation for this is that Amazon is struggling with identifying fake reviews

I seriously doubt this.

I review most products I purchase and most of the time I leave a description and written review. I tried to leave a 1 star review on an Anker Auxilary Cable I bought that was an "Amazon's Choice" product. I tried for 3 days and every time I receive an error trying to review the product telling me reviews were unavailable. I then tried giving it a 5 star review and it was immediately accepted, at which point I immediately changed the review to 1 star and explained why.

* So oddly I just tried to review a piece of electrical safety equipment I purchased through Amazon a few months back. I tried to give it a 3 Star (and 5 star) review and received the "Sorry, we are unable to accept your review of this product." notification.

Oddly this product has zero reviews. Are sellers allowed to disable reviews for their product listings? If so, do the existing reviews remain visible?

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#168

Post by _ea1k »

alexgmcm wrote: post #71
mike_hearn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that very few really "good" reviews actually get produced. If you accidentally filter out the really thorough and useful ones, you can end up with "real" reviews that aren't well written and don't really focus on actual product issues.

Take, for example, the review of the weights in the article. I would have ignored his review, even if it had been posted. He reviewed Amazon's warehouse rather than the product on hand.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#169

Post by paulie_a »

lghh wrote: post #153
beauzero wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who worked for a third party used bookseller, this was 8 months ago, we would always and I mean always dispute anything below a 3 star review. Many get thrown out. It was generally in the 40-50% range that we could get removed. Not much rhyme or reason...just dispute all of them.

Why? Isn't that a little dishonest?

Because people write crappy reviews. I remember seeing a 1 start review for a video card that was basically "I ordered the wrong one and it didnt fit my system" reviews should be taken with a grain of salt.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#170

Post by mike_hearn »

alexgmcm wrote: post #71
mike_hearn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If legit reviewers have their work deleted because of FPs they get annoyed and won't write more reviews, they may even stop using the site entirely.
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