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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?

#351

Post by pitkali »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #305
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…

Unfortunate, brand loyalty doesn't mean anything anymore: - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself - they don't even manufacture two products from the same subcontractor - sometime, the same product, between two batches, is not produce by the same sub-contractor - big players just don't care. Cisco is not going to lose business because you chose to not buy, and most people won't follow you to allow…

> - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself

But the brand is responsible for the quality as perceived by the customer. They retain any good brand image by properly managing supply/subcontractor chain with quality control.

For the end user expiernce, it is not important who manufactures what but what assurances about the quality are made.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#352

Post by SuperGent »

humaniania wrote: post #294
LetThereBeNick wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been happy with the “ReviewMeta” chrome extension, which evaluates the product reviews on any amazon site, and displays a score indicating how likely it is the ratings have been manipulated. It shows examples of flagged reviews which can be pretty funny. Chrome lets you limit extension permissions by domain, so I don’t worry about it snooping on the rest of my browsing. But you’re right about brands. When it com…

Reminder to always be very cautious about installing Chrome extensions. Especially ones being touted by new accounts.

Very wise words,but in this case you can just go to the website (https://reviewmeta.com/)

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#353

Post by m_fayer »

pjc50 wrote: post #134
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.

It's in the nature of the technology. If you can figure out how to do it once, doing it 1000x or 1000000x isn't going to cost you that much more. Quantity is easy, quality is hard. So we've created a selection force for "business" models that benefit from the nearly free ability to scale in quantity while ignoring quality. Ie, all sorts of spamming.

One of the reasons ML worries me is because it can sprinkle just enough of something that vaguely resembles quality into the pot to take the quantity (spam) scaling to a whole new level.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#354

Post by PeterisP »

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 Amazon had direct liability for selling counterfeit products, for example, if the Ove Glove company (first in the original article) could sue Amazon and recover all the revenue that went to the counterfeiters plus a penalty - I believe in this case Amazon would find a solution to ensure supplier verification.

The problem is that currently it's profitable for Amazon to host goods from fraudsters; if (when) any get discovered, they kick them off but keep the proceeds. Society and law should ensure that Amazon loses money when hosting goods from fraudsters, so that the motivation is properly aligned.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#355

Post by aguyfromnb »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #335
onion2k wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PR firms are so powerful now they can make any brand great again. See Microsoft. I guaranty there will be people that will want to answer this comment stating how they really are a good firm now. And cite great things they do. Yet I bet in 10 years, we will learn about some other horrible things they did. Again. In rhetoric this is what's known as "inoculating the argument", or "inoculation theory". You take a reason…

I appreciate your logic. However, MS continues to do wrong, forced telemetry and upgrades, ads in the OS, are but a few examples. Only now drowned out.

>MS continues to do wrong, forced telemetry and upgrades, ads in the OS

These things might be unpreferable to you, but none of them are "wrong".

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#356

Post by KozmoNau7 »

blizarre wrote: post #324
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunate, brand loyalty doesn't mean anything anymore: - a lot of companies don't manufacture the product themself - they don't even manufacture two products from the same subcontractor - sometime, the same product, between two batches, is not produce by the same sub-contractor - big players just don't care. Cisco is not going to lose business because you chose to not buy, and most people won't follow you to allow…

That's not my experience at all. A few years ago I would have been looking for the unknown chinese brands that could provide me with a gear that was "good enough". Now I will not even consider buying anything that is not from the top 5 brands for each thing. I have been burned too many time by products that were _almost_ as good, but not quite, and broke quickly. My branded gear is usually lasting forever (lenovo lap…

I've found a lot of value in niche brands. For instance the Finnish outdoor/military/surplus store Varusteleka have some quite good own-brand products.

Their Särmä-brand "common jeans" are just that; classic straight cut jeans with a medium waist, no stone-washing or other artificial wear, and a little bit of stretch for comfort. For someone like me who has large thighs from lifting weights, there are many otherwise nice pants I just can't wear, but these are perfect. Most brands these days have 5 different kinds of slim/skinny fit, and 1 straight fit if you're lucky.

Their "tactical jeans" are even better, with roughly the same cut and the addition of a crotch gusset for mobility and discreet extra pockets. There's a bit of polyester in the fabric for durability and a bit more stretch too. They're literally as comfortable as sweat pants, it's uncanny. If they last as long as promised, I doubt I will ever buy other jeans again.

Overall, I would say don't trust brands, trust quality, and don't trust reviews on big sites like Amazon.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#357

Post by nickjj »

pauljurczak wrote: post #206
Nasrudith wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite - how would them caring make any difference in terms of quality of "fake" reviews? The way I see it the problem is unsolvable. There is no mathematical way to absolutely determine truth of reviews and it is fundamentally an arms race. No measure they could do could keep it true and free of deception.

The problem is mostly solvable. Review quality went downhill when Amazon decided to let 3rd party sellers run rampant, in order to boost their margins. A decade ago or earlier, when they had a handle on their supply chain, the reviews were pretty reliable. They can always go back to that model, but the smell of a greenback is too intoxicating for this to happen. Notice that Walmart, Newegg and other wannabees are goi…

> Notice that Walmart, Newegg and other wannabees are going down the same route.

It's sad to hear Newegg is a part of this now. I haven't bought computer parts in 6 years but Newegg was where I typically got most things from (and sometimes Amazon back then too).

I wish I lived near a Microcenter.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#358

Post by aguyfromnb »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #328
blizarre wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my experience at all. A few years ago I would have been looking for the unknown chinese brands that could provide me with a gear that was "good enough". Now I will not even consider buying anything that is not from the top 5 brands for each thing. I have been burned too many time by products that were _almost_ as good, but not quite, and broke quickly. My branded gear is usually lasting forever (lenovo lap…

I'm not saying brands are not an indicator. Indeed, if I'm going to buy a USB-C cable, I'm going to use it as a filter. I'm saying brand loyalty has lost its power now. Sony is a good example. You say it's a reputable brand, yet sometimes they just lose it do something absolutely terrible. The first one that comes to mind is infecting willingly their customers with a rootkit in 2005 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So…

>Sony is a good example.

The fact that you're bringing up a 15 year old incident proves that doing bad things can sting, perhaps scar permanently.

It's foolish to think there's a company that will always "do right". They are run by humans.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#359

Post by wccrawford »

FalconSensei wrote: post #193
101404 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too expensive for most products. Simply limit "review rights" to users who have made a certain amount of purchases, are already subscribed for a certain amount of time, etc.

Also limit review to be written X time after the product arrives. So many useless reviews that just said they received it and they are going to try it later...

Those reviews always amaze me.

And the people who answer one of the questions with "I don't know", too. Why did they bother typing anything at all?

My theory is that some people can't imagine that people aren't talking specifically to them. You see them in chat rooms answering every question as if it was posed them to directly, even when it was obviously directed at someone else.

Re: Which of these Amazon Prime purchases are real?

#360

Post by SQueeeeeL »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #355
mixmastamyk wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your logic. However, MS continues to do wrong, forced telemetry and upgrades, ads in the OS, are but a few examples. Only now drowned out.

> MS continues to do wrong, forced telemetry and upgrades, ads in the OS These things might be unpreferable to you, but none of them are "wrong".

Something is only wrong from a business perspective if you lose customers (either from trust or legal means (probably in the EU))
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