Doesn't the FTC require disclosing paid reviews?
Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
251–260 of 499 posts
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there is a way to fund and scale a service that uses a browser addon and separate database for reviews. People already use Honey for discounts, Keepa for historic pricing, and fakespot for fake reviews.
Having written several browser extensions, I have been thinking on building another one for people to comment on any website. Which ends up being useful for reviews. And, while I like the idea, there are two main details preventing me from pursuing it: - Moderating content provided by users is exhausting/costly. - I see no other way than ads to fund it, while it can potentially work as a paid app, it won't work until…
There was a similar add-on called Dissenter written by people associated with the American right-wing social network Gab, and it was banned from the Mozilla and Chrome add-on stores, citing policy violations.[1]
1. https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to...
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#253Amazon is out for the sale. SELL SELL SELL.
I went on there a week ago and front page they were advertising me $18 face masks...
TL;DR stick to Costco
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#254I 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.…
The thing you have to know about Amazon is that they combine all the reviews for all sellers of the same product (to the extent that Amazon thinks it is the same product). As such, reviews aren't an appropriate place to leave feedback about a seller, and leaving your review up would have been misleading. The reviews are only supposed to be about the product. You can leave feedback for sellers by clicking on their nam…
The thing you need to know about users is that they have no idea these seller reviews exist because they are outside of the product page for the product they are buying. Furthermore, most visitors to Amazon have no idea that their products are being fulfilled by different people and not by Amazon. They think that Amazon has a warehouse for 100% of the products they sell on their site, and these other sellers are non-obvious to the vast majority of users. When they see things related to "sellers" on a product page, they just think that means the manufacturer. They don't get that any scammer can "open a store" on Amazon because Amazon goes to great lengths to make the experience seem like it's all 1 big store. Sure there are weasel words all over the site that point out that Amazon is only an intermediary, but almost no non-technical user understands this. Thus, leaving bad seller feedback anywhere other than the product page allows Amazon to keep scamming users through these 3rd party sellers.
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#255I 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…
Believe me, this webcam is awesome.
Unbelievable quality.
Low price.
Light years ahead of the competition.
Seriously the best webcam in its class.
Help yourself out and buy one today.
I would give this SIX stars if I could.
Trust me.
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best place to find reviews it seems is through subscription paid independent reviewers. Consumer reports is one that comes to mind (they are also non-profit), as well as rtings. If you are looking for reviews for more niche products though, your pretty much on your own when it comes to finding out if its good or not.
Consumer Reports is notorious for just bad reviews - checking the wrong things, etc. They’re big on standardizing the test but not great on testing useful aspects. https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/consumer-repo... is an example. You used to be able to find forums and similar for almost anything; now you’re left with Reddit threads and half-remembered comments. Anything under $50 is just a crapshoot.
> You used to be able to find forums and similar for almost anything;
When google removed the option to search discussion boards I knew the internet was changing and the changes were going to be bad. Google discussion search was the most powerful tool to find real world information. You could put in the model number of some product you knew nothing about (e.g. a camera or boat motor) and discussion search results would reveal many different forum threads where professionals and aficionados had discussed the product in detail; those same forums were already hard to find and a search for "boat motor forum" wouldn't necessarily bring you to the same forums and even if so, requires many extra steps to arrive at the same thread.
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon doesn't give a shit. Amazon only wants to sell more stuff, so of course it's going to take down objective negative reviews and whistle-blowing accounts of review payola. This is a regulatory problem. If Amazon was a corner hardware store it would have been fined multiple times and the owner might well have been jailed by now. But thanks to the magic power of Internet leverage and the fact that only giant tradi…
You're thinking like a politician, whose law is a hammer and who sees every issue as a nail. Before regulating, let's see if the free market can't work it out way better by itself. And indeed it can, it's called competition. Amazon itself claims to be "customer centric" because customer trust ensures sales go up in the long term much better than short gain of abusing the customer relationship. Look at this very threa…
> let's see if the free market can't work it out way better by itself
How long are you willing to let the free market try and solve it? It seems like the free market has been solving this for, what, a couple decades in Amazon's case?
It seems like the free market is the problem here, and just continuing what's already been tried is going to give us more of the same results.
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#258Amazon removed my feedback on selling opened video card boxes and replacing the cards with a different models (sourced by Amazon, not a 3rd party). This prompted me to start providing feedback on sites that Amazon does not control. Not as many people will see it, but Amazon can't censor it.
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon doesn't give a shit. Amazon only wants to sell more stuff, so of course it's going to take down objective negative reviews and whistle-blowing accounts of review payola. This is a regulatory problem. If Amazon was a corner hardware store it would have been fined multiple times and the owner might well have been jailed by now. But thanks to the magic power of Internet leverage and the fact that only giant tradi…
> This is a regulatory problem This is a consumer problem - "you get what you pay for." If you want to buy something from a retailer that gives a shit about their wholesalers, shop at a local superstore for whatever items your looking for and eat the difference in cost. > If Amazon was a corner hardware store it would have been fined multiple times and the owner might well have been jailed by now. If Amazon was a cor…
>This is a consumer problem - "you get what you pay for."
It's pretty clearly not the case here. I've paid full price for what I thought were legit items on Amazon and received fakes.
That's the whole point, the whole "free market" thing only works if the consumer has access to all the relevant info about the product they're buying. On Amazon more and more there's a distortion between what the consumer thinks they're buying and when they actually receive.
>What Amazon shouldn't do is have it both ways, either they're an Ebay-esque digital flea market where everything is buyer-beware, or they're a retailer who is responsible for the garbage on their shelves.
I completely agree with you here and I hope that it'll bite them in the ass in the long run. I'm definitely a lot more cautious of the stuff I buy on Amazon now that I was 10 years ago.
Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews
#260I'm seeing similar things everywhere. I stood in line for a food truck a couple years ago that offered a promotion "$2 off your order if you show us your 5-star review of our truck on [site]." Obviously, you have to do this before you even order your food so I was intensely put-off by this. I gave them a 5-star review with no comment, received my discount, then after I tried the food I edited the review to 1-star wit…
My favorite is seeing 5 star reviews that are hijacking the top to complain. I've also seen 1 star reviews that are exalting reviews. But my all time ongoing pet peeve is how recommendation engines especially on video streaming and video game series use numbers and star systems that are not based on any other human's input. Not a critic, not a user score, just an algorithm's confidence score on similarities.
The 1 star review that loves the product but hated the way it was shipped. Someone needs to write a textbook on the pathology of those people.