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Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

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Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#131

Post by jdkee »

nappy-doo wrote: post #22
someonehere wrote: post #5

I have friends who are no longer buying from Amazon. Especially friends with kids. You can’t trust anything safe for your kids when crap like this is allowed. Amazon is in a race to flood the market with availability at the cost of consumer confidence. Remember all the hoverboard fires you saw on the news several years ago? They weren’t knock offs, but items sold that didn’t have any real safety certifications in min…

My neighbor bought a set of woodworking clamps from Amazon. When the ~25lb. box arrived, the driver threw them up onto his porch (his house is quite raised from the street), and he has video of it damaging his siding as it took three attempts for the driver to get them over the railing onto his porch. When he contacted Amazon, they said to contact some insurance company they had. When my neighbor called the insurance…

Amazon sold us a defective and/or counterfeit refrigerator water filter that leaked and damaged our hardwood floors. Homeowners insurance gave us an estimate of $5300 in damage. I sent a demand letter to Amazon legal dept. detailing the claim and threatening a lawsuit. They wrote us a check in about two months from mailing said letter.

This is not legal advice and YMMV.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#132

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

heavyset_go wrote: post #56
squarefoot wrote: post #45

Fake reviews also contribute to more fake and low quality products being sold. It looks like Amazon simply doesn't care. https://thehustle.co/amazon-fake-reviews FTA: "One stay-at-home mom from Kentucky told me she makes $200-300 per month leaving positive reviews for things like sleep masks, light bulbs, and AV cables." “Do you actually like the products?” I asked. “I don’t know,” she wrote. “I never use them.”

I posted about this on HN recently[1]. Within the last month, I've been getting an increasing amount of native ads on different platforms for "Free [Product]!". If you engage the ad, you find out that the ad-purchaser wants you to buy the advertised product and leave a positive review for it on Amazon, after which they'll refund you for the cost of the product. Some of these items have thousands of positive reviews[1…

Seems like it would be more productive to have them buy your competitors' products and leave bad reviews.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#133

Post by 101008 »

gurumeditations wrote: post #79
101008 wrote: post #34

Sorry if this is offtopic, I was planning to buy a Google Pixel 3A from Amazon in a week (It's cheaper than from Google Store). Are mobile phones also forgered on Amazon? or they don't aim to forger stuff like that? Thank you. (I am from a 3rd world country and travelling to USA next week)

Personally, any expensive electronics I buy in person, not from Amazon. Best Buy and the like are trustworthy.

Thanks. The problem is that in BestBuy the price is much higher if the phone is new, not refurbished. I found it new on Amazon fora good price. I just checked and it says "Sold by Google", and it goes to a Google landing page on Amazon, so I should be fine, right?

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#134

Post by pjc50 »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #88

It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. Recently there are more…

One of the important lessons of the internet is that unless there's very deliberate suppression, noise will drown out signal if there's the slightest incentive to spam.

Anything that can be faked will be faked in bulk.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#135

Post by milesskorpen »

jahnu wrote: post #127
andrewfromx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

Only allow reviews from verified purchasers

Doesn’t stop fake reviews.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#136

Post by heavyset_go »

yomly wrote: post #118
heavyset_go wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted about this on HN recently[1]. Within the last month, I've been getting an increasing amount of native ads on different platforms for "Free [Product]!". If you engage the ad, you find out that the ad-purchaser wants you to buy the advertised product and leave a positive review for it on Amazon, after which they'll refund you for the cost of the product. Some of these items have thousands of positive reviews[1…

If you have examples you can try sending it to jeff@amazon.com and it will (eventually) get triaged as a sev-b ticket if you're lucky or it is an interesting enough issue

I tried that, but got no response. Might be because of my ProtonMail address, though.

If anyone has an address I can use to reach out to an actual person, I'd be more than happy to use it to report these sellers.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#137

Post by strangeloops85 »

When you're buying for your kids, particularly in the newborn -> infant -> toddler range, Amazon is a nightmare and we're steering clear of it. Especially since pretty much everything will end up in the kid's mouth. I even ordered formula a couple of times, figuring it was regulated, but something seemed off in the packaging and consistency.. had to throw them away. Just completely unacceptable! Brick and mortar it is.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#139

Post by kkaske »

andrewfromx wrote: post #124
ThePhysicist wrote: post #88

It's funny: I always thought the Internet and platforms like Amazon with the collaborative reviewing system would make brands more and more obsolete, because you could just pick high-quality products from smaller manufacturers by looking at user reviews. Now I find that I rely more and more on brands to decide which things I buy, because I simply cannot trust user reviews in most of the cases. Recently there are more…

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

If we really want to look at it from a money point of view... I would say Amazon has more money to make in keeping people from leaving their marketplace. It seems like that’s the point it’s either at or getting close to.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#140

Post by askar_yu »

jahnu wrote: post #127
andrewfromx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think from the director of engineering at amazon charged with making sure reviews are not fake, they would say "we can only make it so difficult to create a new account and prove you are human before it literally becomes impossible for new people to make real accounts." You say amazon has to police this more. I say amazon has tried and there is so much money to be made in jumping through the hoops to prove you are…

Only allow reviews from verified purchasers

I am afraid verified purchases are being gamed too. Sometimes I feel like scammers might be going to the extreme of coordinating clustered purchases (I am guessing the merchandise ends up in the owners hand/warehouse anyways somehow?) and posting the reviews.

This is not even mentioning incentivized reviwers who may be posting exaggerated (if not fake) reviews for promos, discounts, etc.

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