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Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

theguardian.com

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Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#41

Post by briandear »

Someone1234 wrote: post #16
zarriak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't deliver the things you bought. I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. There is a reason designer stores exist. There are many reasons that Amazon as a company and service are bad but almost none of what you describe is a valid complaint.

Amazon logistics deliver at least 1/3 of the items I purchase from them. A "Prime" branded van literally pulls up to my house and someone who I assume works for Amazon drops the package on my stoop. > I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. I read this sentence four times and still don't quite understand it. Particularly in respon…

Those Prime branded vans are often third party contractors as well.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#42

Post by pmcollins »

plink wrote: post #2

I feel unaffected by such fake reviews as the only ones I ascribe much value to are the negative ones. Also, I've extremely curtailed any purchasing on Amazon as I've come to perceive the majority of their marketplace to be a degenerative crap house.

I bought a problematic item on Amazon and left a negative review. The seller contacted me three times via email and offered me $30 (the cost of the item) to remove the review. I didn't take it but maybe others had. And I wonder if I was duped into buying the thing because previous negative reviewers had been bought off.

Considering the fake reviews and the number of counterfeit items I've received from Amazon, I default to Costco, Target, Lowes, etc. for shopping now. I have a lot more confidence that their suppliers and their vetting of products are legit.

I consider Amazon a flea market at this point. I'll buy some things at a flea market, but not much.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#43

Post by Regardsyjc »

amelius wrote: post #12
plink wrote: post #2

I feel unaffected by such fake reviews as the only ones I ascribe much value to are the negative ones. Also, I've extremely curtailed any purchasing on Amazon as I've come to perceive the majority of their marketplace to be a degenerative crap house.

> I feel unaffected by such fake reviews as the only ones I ascribe much value to are the negative ones. I suppose fake review factories can be hired just as well to make the competition look bad ...

Fake negative reviews are a tactic of nasty competitors. I'm an Amazon seller and they are rampant. The more competitive the category you're in, the nastier it gets. They will bomb you with negative reviews using certain keywords that will trigger an Amazon algorithm to shut you down.

Amazon has a few systems in place for QC, things like 6% negative customer experience rate or certain keywords like counterfeit or related to safety that will get you flagged. Once you're flagged or shut down, it might take a week or two or more to sell again. You will probably have to pay for an expensive specialist to help you clear Amazon's red tape because if you mess up, and many people do, you might be banned forever from the Amazon marketplace. Almost like a sick video game.

It's a little funny but maddening how people will abuse every gear that makes the Amazon system tick. I use a number of Amazon softwares to scrape data from Amazon and I love seeing the bad players. I'm also in an expensive mastermind and their tactics are dirty. These are Americans so I can't even imagine the tactics that Chinese sellers might use. Honestly, every month I spend in this business makes me lose faith a little more. It's a dark system and I do not like where I think it's going.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#44

Post by nkozyra »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #15
bingbingo wrote: post #4

Shit like this is what made me lose confidence in Amazon and I stopped my prime subscription. My wife bought me “luxury” branded jackets and clothing for fall. Half of them were counterfeit. I called Amazon and they said I can return them and they’ll send me new ones. Ok. How will I know those won’t be counterfeit? Worse, I found a jacket was counterfeit after the return period when it literally started to fall apart…

Technically, the pervasive Amazon counterfeit problem is unrelated to the fake review problem. Both are serious problems that Amazon does little to combat, but they're not the same. The counterfeiting is more insidious because Amazon is entirely at fault for mixing legit merchandise with counterfeits. Fake reviews on the other hand aren't Amazon's fault. That's just the world being filled with heinous assholes out to…

> Actually if they did that I'd probably start buying from them again

Not that it would inherently solve the problem or prevent pay for play, but it would be a great strategy for Amazon to have an independent review company.

There are problems, though: 1. How do we trust that there's some objectivity, particularly as it relates to things that compete with Amazon products?

2. How could reviewers possibly cover any significant amount of the vast number of products Amazon sells?

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#45

Post by giancarlostoro »

toss1 wrote: post #36
astrodust wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to describe this is as an unfortunate inevitability of review systems as a whole.

I'd say of unmoderated (or poorly moderated) review systems. E.g., we don't see this on Angie's List or Houzz. I've found that the only way to get useful information out of most Amazon reviews is to look at the 1- & 2-stars, trying to filter out the fake competitor hits, and see if there are any consistent issues that aren't DEU issues. Then look at the 3- & 4-stars and see what seems to be good. That said, I expect…

Another factor is reviews with pictures depending on what you are buying. In any case I cancelled Amazon prime. They wont be getting my money once my membership expires. I rather pay for a service thats worthwhile to me. I rather get my things at Walmart or BestBuy due to convenience and now BestBuy will price match Amazon.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#47

Post by staticassertion »

plink wrote: post #2

I feel unaffected by such fake reviews as the only ones I ascribe much value to are the negative ones. Also, I've extremely curtailed any purchasing on Amazon as I've come to perceive the majority of their marketplace to be a degenerative crap house.

Competitors will pay for fake reviews. I know a friend who gets offers to do this in exchange for discounted goods.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#48

Post by giancarlostoro »

walrus01 wrote: post #40
CamperBob2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I imagine a lot of systems don't handle noninteger house numbers very robustly. That "1/2" business just seems like asking for trouble. The best solution might be to convince your building landlord or management to rename the units as 1 Fake Street Unit A and Unit B, or something like that. Assuming they don't have to fight City Hall to make that happen, they might be willing to help.

You would think, however, that the "1/2" works fine in the text field used for a standard North American address... At least with Amazon and 99% of ecommerce sites there's two separate freeform text entry fields for street address. It's not like these are fields that require a precise integer. This should enable the actual human making the delivery to see the same thing printed on the label, and visually match it to…

> It's not like these are fields that require a precise integer.

If you are treating the street address as more than a string something is wrong. Its supposed to be a string by design unless you are trying to be efficient by storing ints as ints but then you shouldnt be evaluating them from user input and if you are... Treat it as a raw string.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#49

Post by village-idiot »

briandear wrote: post #41
Someone1234 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon logistics deliver at least 1/3 of the items I purchase from them. A "Prime" branded van literally pulls up to my house and someone who I assume works for Amazon drops the package on my stoop. > I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. I read this sentence four times and still don't quite understand it. Particularly in respon…

Those Prime branded vans are often third party contractors as well.

Yeah, but Amazon is paying them and branding their trucks with the amazon logo, they should take responsibility for quality of service.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#50

Post by giancarlostoro »

zarriak wrote: post #11
bingbingo wrote: post #4

Shit like this is what made me lose confidence in Amazon and I stopped my prime subscription. My wife bought me “luxury” branded jackets and clothing for fall. Half of them were counterfeit. I called Amazon and they said I can return them and they’ll send me new ones. Ok. How will I know those won’t be counterfeit? Worse, I found a jacket was counterfeit after the return period when it literally started to fall apart…

Amazon doesn't deliver the things you bought. I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. There is a reason designer stores exist. There are many reasons that Amazon as a company and service are bad but almost none of what you describe is a valid complaint.

Amazon has been known to deliver counterfeits including counterfeit books which was a popular story here on HN a while back.

Edit see here on Amazon counterfeit books specifically Python for Kids being counterfeit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546

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