Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Dark Patterns

netinstructions.com

181–190 of 278 posts

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#181
post #25

Having recently unsubscribed from Prime, I can say their dark patterns don't stop there. About 5 pages to complete the process, in which the CTA to confirm bumps around the page, gets less prominent, and is given such lousy loss-aversion labels as "Give up my prime benefits".

Strangely it wasn't so bad for me, I live in the UK. I wonder if EU rules are different? I have to say for all the people complaining but still staying with Amazon, there's a simple solution that will force their hand if enough people act: Stop buying from them. Personally I cancelled my Prime subscription because no service is worth enough to me to force other human beings to pee in bottles to avoid work breaks for…

I'm from germany, cancelled two days ago and can confirm that the process was bafflingly bad.

[cancel prime membership]

...

"do you want to terminate your membership?"

[ask me later][keep me signed up][terminate]

...

"you'll lose [x], do you want to terminate?"

[ask me later][terminate][keep me signed up]

...

"but even shipping will cost!"

[keep me signed up][ask me later][terminate]

...

you're now unsubscribed

[sign me back on][ok]

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#182
post #153

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?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#183
post #177
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sources on your claim that they are actively trying to solve that problem and that they are failing at it?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-28/amazon-ge... among others. I don't think they can really solve it without a complete top-to-bottom shift in how they track and inventory products internally. Most of the fixes that I've seen proposed just lead to the vendors and merchants gaming the system in different ways.

Of course they will say that they are cracking down on fakes.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#184
I wonder if this is a job for activist investors: buy a bunch of shady stuff on amazon with 5-star reviews, write a lengthy report about how bad all the product is, short AMZN... ?

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#185
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…

If Batch C is different enough from Batch A that the reviews don't apply, then should it even be the same product?

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#186

This rant is not well written. The first issue looks like a bug on Amazon's side. I'm not going to assume malice without something pointing in that direction. The author writes "What would have happend if I had left a more positive review? Would that be allowed?" Well, would it? I see no indication it would. Those reviews are indeed suspicious, and Amazon should do a better job of detecting fake review accounts. The…

I can actually verify and tell you why. Amazon will not allow you to criticize Amazon or their platform in a review (they said as much). Only the product. They probably do automatic sentiment detection for negative phrases containing Amazon and don’t allow them to be posted. The platform and shipping are relevant in a product review.

I want Amazon and Amazon fulfillment reviews separate from my product reviews.

I've ordered enough stuff from Amazon to know how I feel about the shipping and platform. The only thing I care about in reviews is the product itself. A product shouldn't be penalized if Amazon stuffs up the shipping.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#187
post #101

Whenever I see one- or two-star reviews on Amazon (or Newegg) I make sure to read as many of them as possible to gauge what the problems with the item might be. This allows me to judge whether the people reviewing the items are overreacting or if there is a legitimate defect common to all the reviewers. The fact that Amazon is removing or not posting critical reviews in the first place is a red flag for me personally…

yes, I often read the 1-2 star reviews on Amazon. It's particularly useful for books - a positive signal for a book is "1 star - author used too many big words and complex ideas!". :-)

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#189
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To a certain degree. There really should be two ratings. Shipment rating and product rating. I don't want to get a TV that gets shipped badly, sure. But if the only problem with shipping is that it is slow, maybe I'm still interested in the product because I don't get it anywhere else and I can wait. In that case I'm mostly interested in the product review.

Which is why you, as a human, can read the review and ignore the part where a reviewer says “the shipping was slow”. I recently ordered a poster through Amazon. They sent me the wrong item 3 times . I gave up. And I can’t post a negative review despite it clearly being Amazons fault (not the shipper). I tried. Couldn’t. At least they have excellent customer service, they didn’t jerk me around and each resolved the is…

> you, as a human, can read the review

Yes, you can, if you ever get to the review page. The ratings on reviews average out into the product rating. If there is a zillion one star "shipping is slow and Amazon customer service sucks" reviews, the product (which might be of very high quality otherwise) will have a one start rating. So you are not likely to see the product, since it will not make it into any sort of rating based list and even if you do see it you are likely to ignore it based on its one star rating.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#190
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 App Store does a good job with this, showing reviews for a new version while maintaining old reviews. Of course products aren’t often “versioned” so this might requiring revisiting how products are posted/managed.
Post reply on HN