Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#111

Post by zentiggr » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #75

Amazon is right here. If such a review were allowed, the first people to exploit that would be the the scummy vendors themselves. They would post fake one-star reviews against competing products, claiming that all the good reviews of those products are from bribes. Always consider the secondary effects, like back-scatter from replying to a spam e-mail to give them a piece of your mind!

So lobby for Amazon's policy to not allow stars, but just report fakes/fraud. Every item is taken down when flagged, until manually reviewed by Amazon staff. If a flagged item is restored, those that flagged it are banned, proportional to the number of false flags they get hit for.

First round, Amazon's listings drop by 95 percent as bad actors go hog wild blocking competitors.

Second round, Amazon is forced to triage item restorations in order to put best sellers back up first.

Third round, the bad flag bans help flush out the jackasses, and minimize the incentive to come back and try again.

It'll never happen, but it's possible it could restore Amazon's reputation re caring about delivering good quality and a clean platform.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#112

Post by lhorie » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

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…

Sometimes, I semi-seriously wonder if it isn't better to just buy things from aliexpress.com. The products themselves mostly come from China anyways and many classes of items consistently seem to be marked up on amazon.

And now we are left to wonder if the price deltas are helping middlemen retailers fund these review manipulation shenanigans, so why not just cut out the amazon exploit portion out of the equation?

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#113

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #3

Seems similar to how hackernews doesn't allow calling people "paid shills". The review doesn't have any evidence or proof attached. Perhaps reporting the seller to Amazon is a better approach.

Hacker News is also not in the business of selling products. A marketplace operator has different duties than a link aggregator - and calling someone names is different than posting evidence.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#114

Post by skept » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

I had a very similar experience last month. I ordered this toaster[1]. When I received it I noticed that in their user manual they were offering a "gift" in return for an Amazon review. Although to be fair they didn't explicitly demand that the review had to be positive. I submitted this 4-star review [2] to Amazon:

I received the toaster not too long ago. It looks just like in the advertised pictures and works fine. But the language on the last page of the user manual (see picture) makes it clear that LOFTER is offering customers a "gift" in return for leaving a review. Perhaps they're within their right to do that but it makes me not trust the rest of the reviews on this product.

A few days later I got an email from Amazon identical to the one in the submitted blog post[3]. I've stopped trusting positive reviews on Amazon. These days I only look at the negative reviews to see if there's a consistent complaint about the product.

[1] www.amazon.com/dp/B07S3TXD9H/ [2] https://cutt.ly/lhLZQ5o [3] https://cutt.ly/JhLZTjZ

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#115

Post by resoluteteeth » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #61

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…

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

I don't know German but there is also "brushing" where the products are bought and sent to an unrelated party so that the seller can leave verified reviews (as opposed to as a method of disposing of unwanted inventory).

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#116

Post by MereInterest » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #84

dheera wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 avail…

Eww. Meanwhile someone is out there saying "I refuse to support Amazon, I buy stuff on ebay even if it costs a little more."

Isn't it great when somebody's ethics are seen as an arbitrage opportunity by somebody else? It's almost like that whole "voting with your wallet" idea is incorrect.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#117

Post by ksk » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #34

turtlebits wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they got penalized, and have stopped doing it. There is now way as outsiders we can tell what's going on. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that a single reported case is going to result in visible action. (competitors/griefers can easily abuse this).

> I don't think it's reasonable to expect that a single reported case is going to result in visible action. (competitors/griefers can easily abuse this). In this case it's quite reasonable to expect prompt, visible action. The grefier problem is easily solved with a modicum of due diligence by Amazon. All it has to do is conduct an investigation to confirm the complaint, which is as easy as ordering the item in quest…

>All it has to do is conduct an investigation to confirm the complaint, which is as easy as ordering the item in question and confirming it contains the offer reported by a single customer.

The number of humans available to perform daily investigations versus the total number of products sold makes this most decidedly not "easy".

The easiest thing to do here would be to simply return the item because the seller crossed your personal ethical line, and state that as the reason. A large number of returns on an item will definitely get the sellers and Amazon's attention.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#118

Post by Aperocky » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

csnover wrote: post #85

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…

> The cost to the original company is a lost sale, a lost product, and $20 [lost] in exchange for a 5-star review. That may well be worth it for the company, so I'm not sure this scheme would actually stop dishonest reviews, only make it worse. Sometimes when I see a product being sold FBA I will do a search on Alibaba (they’re always on Alibaba) to find the wholesale price. I’ve found that the markup on most product…

You won't get 2 days delivery but you can probably buy two dozens for the same price.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#119

Post by namdnay » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #90

croes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't really care about customers like the rest of FAANG. It's all about money, data and power. Everything else is just PR and advertising.

> care about customers like the rest of FAANG I think of the five FAANG companies only Apple and Netflix have even a remote semblance of caring about the customer. Google and Facebook certainly don't and that was known since before the announced antitrust lawsuits.

I don’t know about Facebook, but Google is reasonably customer friendly, at least with big accounts. I worked at a large firm, Google assigned a very competent and dedicated account executive to look after us.

Unless you’re talking about end-users? In which case that’s like asking if McDonalds look after their cows well :)

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#120

Post by jrockway » Thu, Dec 17, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

toxik wrote: post #62

pc86 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

There is something about how the human brain works that makes us hate this. It happens in games a lot; the community will complain that a certain character is broken and that they hate playing against it... but won't actually go play the character themselves to exploit the brokenness for their own gain. Seems silly to me.

(Buying reviews might actually be illegal though, so that's a strong argument to not do it.)