241–250 of 273 posts
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That's why I'm launching my new website, SpotFakeFakeSpot, which helps spot fake fake review spotting sites. I got the idea from my time as a sales rep selling radar detector detectors to police departments.
Thanks. I had no idea there's a full scale electronic war on the streets of my city.
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.
How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.
I personally just do my own homework. Rule of thumb is 2 or 3 star ratings IMO have higher weighted value because people weren't biased enough to leave a 1 or 5 star review.
Always check the most critical review as well, also all the 1 star reviews. If there's a video, its the most authoritative and unbiased source usually. Images are definitely good too.
Do a search on the question/answer section for competing products. The ones that are most unbiased are going to offer viewpoints in two competing products usually, but this sometimes can be faked. Check the reviewers history if there are both negative and positive reviews, as well as the semantics in their wording.
Check also if there's an alternative source of reviews, e.g. best buy & newegg for electronics. Do the ratings more or less indicate the same behavior? Or is there a discrepancy by a large amount?
If its a popular item or something like gym equipment, do multiple youtube searches and find both (1) authoritative well known youtubers and (2) amateur youtubers. (2) are usually unbiased (1) are potentially biased
If its a really popular item (phone, laptop) use other review sites as metrics. Wirecutter/Thesweethome started off as fairly unbiased, but were acquired by a large company so the ratings are now slightly skewed. You can always check other forums like linustechtips, reddit, and do a search across that entire thread for more answers.
Don't bother doing this much research unless its a big picture though. I had to buy a macbook pro so I thoroughly did 5-10 hours of research in which version I wanted (2015), which specs, potential issues I would run across, considering where the 3rd party sources of used macbook pros would most likely be sold at (ebay), etc. Differences in CPU/GPU benchmarks, battery life cycle usages, etc.
Anecdata, sample size 1. I bought some toy for a toddler. Upon receiving it, I realized that the description was misleading; many of the "pieces" they had listed boldly were just cheap plastic pieces of crap that had no useful functionality. So I returned it, and wrote a 1-star review. A few weeks later, I got an email from them: they were offering $30 if I took down the review. I ignored the email. Several weeks lat…
Hmmmph. The best I've been offered is a full refund to take down a review. I obviously didn't: a refund does not change the quality of a product. That being said, I had a few reach out and ask me for a review. In one instance I merely indicated that I had to use the product for longer to offer a genuine review, they gave me a line to the founder for concerns. For a cellphone screen protector, that has actually worked…
So, it is in their best interest to create review incentives. Of course, some review incentives are better than others (personal notes telling you how valued a review is and how much they will help with any problems vs. "here's $5, give me some stars").
Star ratings in general are just poor. In a 1 to 5 star rating, 3 is average but most people would perceive 3 stars to be above average. People tend to leave reviews only when they are displeased with the product, really pleased with the product or get something in return for making the review, in this case free products. I tend to just filter on reviews that are 2 or 3 stars and use those to work out the cons of the…
Really? I think most people perceive anything less than 4 stars (or even 4.5 stars for some) as "bad". I for one won't buy anything that are "merely" 3-stars.
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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…
> it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent [bathroom scale] Maybe it's different in the USA, but when I needed a bathroom scale for our new apartment I went over to the store and bought the first one they had. If I would have come home and it wouldn't have worked, I'd have gone back and had either gotten repair under warranty or cash back (if they don't want to repair it, you can rescind the…
One of the weird things about Amazon is that its turned us into people that think we need a crowd-sourced review for every $20 common household item.
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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.
> 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. Major improvements have been needed in Amazon's search…
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The fakes are a relatively new phenomena. A book like say 1984 has thousands of reviews over twenty years that are legit. They don’t break down fakes by year or tell you that 1% of new reviews are fake. Also you have grey fakes with solicited reviews. I have a few vendors who offer significant discounts in exchange for reviews.
Fakes are at least three years old. At least, that's when the great I Was Given This Product For Free Or At A Discount plague started. Plus these Chinese companies just rebrand and post new product listings free of the bad reviews, leaving the old ones to die.
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.
Toys R Us is NOT "premium". Even back when it existed a few years ago.
Melissa and Doug is "premium" for toddler toys. Spend a little bit more, and you get quality toys that is even a bit fun to use as an adult.
Plenty of those stores around, and their webstore (https://www.melissaanddoug.com) is well featured.
Based on my experience with buying kid's toys... Toys R Us failed to stock good enough quality for me. If I wanted crap toys, Walmart and CVS had plenty. Target's selection of toys is mediocre, but I find a few dolls here and there worthwhile.
A "major" gift is almost-always a Melissa and Doug splurge moment.
I've never trusted Amazon for kids toys either. But Toys R Us was also in a similar boat for me of low-trust low-quality products.
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.…
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…
Is this true? I'd expect if Amazon had any integrity they'd take steps to prevent this via there position as an intermediary.