Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#61

Post by merb » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #39

ilamont wrote: post #16

I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…

Leave a 5-star review, get your $20. Resell the item on Amazon for $10 less than what the original seller was selling for. Earn $10 dollars profit. Repeat for other such products. Earn more profit. Make a blog about your antics; earn more profit, and help others profit the same way. Exploit the system until Amazon has to fix it. EDIT: I guess at no point is Amazon actually harmed by this scheme. However, the companie…

btw. in germany there was a video that 3rd party sellers are sending inventory to specific people, because its cheaper to gift it to somebody instead of destroying/trashing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT4IJYzbMi0

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#62

Post by toxik » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #43

Buttons840 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave a 5-star review, get your $20. Resell the item on Amazon for $10 less than what the original seller was selling for. Earn $10 dollars profit. Repeat for other such products. Earn more profit. Make a blog about your antics; earn more profit, and help others profit the same way. Exploit the system until Amazon has to fix it. EDIT: I guess at no point is Amazon actually harmed by this scheme. However, the companie…

Write an ebook on how to make money on Amazon, sell it for $297, and post a Show HN about it.

... and give away $20 gift cards to people who leave 5-star reviews!

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#63

Post by donmcronald » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #10

There is a basic problem that if you see an obvious problem with a product listing on AMZN but you didn't buy the product they could care less. Sometimes the listing is obviously a scam, sometimes it is is just something that could be better: somebody is selling a box of assorted TTL ICs for $30 which were ill chosen for any use than testing your logic tester. (e.g. with $30 of quad-NANDs you can build a lot) In the…

The thing that absolutely blows my mind is the way other retailers want to be like Amazon, so they've all added 3rd party sellers to their websites. It's impossible to find anything because search results are dominated by absolute garbage on every retailer's site. They've taken the worst part of Amazon and latched onto it like it's the magic sauce that's going to make them relevant again.

The other thing that I find super frustrating is that I'm willing to pay a bit extra to get something better quality. I don't care about $10 vs $30 when I'm buying a case for a $1000 iPad. However, on the Amazon market place that seems to translate into "Hey! This dumbass is willing to give us $30, so lets sell him the same $2 piece of plastic garbage with different branding." It's soooooo frustrating.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#64

Post by mlyle » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #25

sailingparrot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A review telling me that a seller is doing shady things tells me nothing about the product It's not telling you anything about the product, but it also making you aware that those other review you thought were telling you something about the product, actually are not. In essence you are saying that it is a reasonable stance to remove off-topic bad reviews, but keep off-topic good reviews.

Wait I don't see how this is inconsistent. - "Seller was great and delivered on time!" - "Seller is doing shady things and posting fake reviews" It seems like both of these would be removed.

I think the concern is -- seller A (or manufacturer) has created lots of gamed reviews for product A. Putting a negative review on seller A is much less visible, and leaves the fake reviews in place, so that when successor-scammy-seller-B sells the product everyone is still deceived.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#65

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #52

willhslade wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been party to this scheme incidentally and the antenna I bought mentioned that they would only honour one purchase for a discount.

But how many products/companies are doing this? If there's 500 different products/companies offering $20 gift cards for 5-star reviews you can milk that for awhile and spread the word to others who are also in on the scheme.

Unfortunately they don't seem to advertise the gift card.

Maybe there should be a site with current gift card offers - call it something like reviewbribes.com?

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#66

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#67

Post by dheera » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #39

ilamont wrote: post #16

I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…

Leave a 5-star review, get your $20. Resell the item on Amazon for $10 less than what the original seller was selling for. Earn $10 dollars profit. Repeat for other such products. Earn more profit. Make a blog about your antics; earn more profit, and help others profit the same way. Exploit the system until Amazon has to fix it. EDIT: I guess at no point is Amazon actually harmed by this scheme. However, the companie…

Someone I know made easier money by listing Amazon-available products on eBay and selling them there for higher prices. They didn't even need inventory, they just got them with Prime shipping after a purchase on eBay. People are stupid.

On eBay before buying stuff I always ask the seller if they can beat the Amazon price - 5% cashback that I get on Amazon, or deduct CA sales tax in their price if the product is available on B&H. If they can't beat that I buy on Amazon / B&H.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#68

Post by Triv888 » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #2

This is an entirely reasonable stance. A given product could have n(bignum) sellers. A review telling me that a seller is doing shady things tells me nothing about the product. Amazon told him to go review the seller in the appropriate section. What's the problem?

I dont buy much from amazon anymore but arent very clear if the review is for the product or the seller...

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#69

Post by csnover » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

tomerico wrote: post #11

If you want to read more about how shady sellers abuse the system, and why it's so hard to deal with it, I recommend this well written medium article: https://medium.com/swlh/unaccountable-chinese-retailers-thre...

Why does Amazon even allow FBA sellers to be registered in another country like this? Forget about counterfeiting and taxes, what about basic issues of safety and liability?

A family member of mine recently bought a wearable electronic device from Amazon.com. I got a phone call from them asking what charger to use because it came with a USB cable and a note saying to use only a 1A charger. (Hang on, that’s not how USB charging is supposed to work!)

I looked up the “company” selling this product; their web site is a Shopify site with no address, no phone number, masked whois. Their “returns” page is lorem ipsum. Amazon’s public seller record says the company is actually just a random dude in Ukraine, but I was unable to verify that the registered address is even real. The product itself is the first result on Alibaba when doing a search for this kind of wearable.

When the battery in this cheap crap explodes because it has clearly shoddy power management, who’s going to be liable? Good luck collecting damages from someone halfway around the world. There’s currently zero incentive for anyone in this supply chain to ensure the products are even minimally safe. Most consumers are completely unaware of the distinction between a product sold by Amazon and a product that is being sold using FBA.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#70

Post by donmcronald » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #48

Now I remember ... The previous review practice that outraged me was when someone here at HN was producing very detailed analysis of LED bulbs (spectral analysis, etc.) and proving that lots of bulbs on Amazon had CRI and color temperature ratings that were way off . He then described how he posted that in some reviews and they were all taken down. Which is to say, crummy LED bulb on Amazon with an inflated CRI canno…

China Export [1] are the only two words anyone should ever need to know about Amazon when it comes to safety and quality.

1. https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H...