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Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

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Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#451

Post by noneeeed »

Amazon appears to be determined to make itself an untrustworthy place to buy stuff. It's like it's actively trying to get itself lumped in with eBay as a "tat-bazaa" as The Register likes to call it.

I've become increasingly wary of buying things on Amazon for this very reason. I recently bought several pieces of electrical/elecronic gear, and didn't buy either from Amazon. I don't trust that the named brand stuff will be genuine, and I don't trust that the unknown-brand stuff will be any good, irrespective of the reviews. I've had too many cards with my orders promising freebies for positive reviews to trust anything I read there now.

I now pretty much only buy low-risk stuff on amazon.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#452

Post by higerordermap »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #442
higerordermap wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the second thing falls into grey area. Users are often unkind and leave 1-star reviews on apps when it's often their fault.

That usually means that the advertising is not attracting the right kind of customer.

Nope. It often means users are too reflexive to not figure out something in one second and leave one star review. And it's about survival in the app stores where everyone else has 4+ rating and few of them are certainly bots.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#453

Post by Angostura »

hbosch wrote: post #125
Angostura wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if so, they will just pop back up over night with a new name. And that's fine. But if so they'll pop up again with zero reviews and have to work at rebuilding the scam. This is a pretty shocking comment. Amazon suggests that Amazon reviews are worth at least something. If they are not then they should all be removed and we can go back following your strategy of "buying from companies that I know the name of, be…

> Amazon suggests that Amazon reviews are worth at least something. More and more it is proven that reviews themselves don't mean much. You should consider your own personal relationship with the brand, or from people you trust. Of course we don't all have the luxury of those things and sometimes you need to read a few reviews. After all, without GOOD and HONEST reviews we probably would not have a company like Anker…

So basically "Don't use Amazon, you can't trust them - just shop from your favoured brand's online store."

That's fine - I'm not sure it's what Amazon are gooing for though.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#454

Post by oldkn »

ghayes wrote: post #273
radlad wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're implying the review is about the product. If the review is about the company (e.g. a restaurant), then a 1-star review is warranted, if you feel that a company which games reviews is a 1-star company. I certainly do.

This is why I do like the reviews on food delivery apps. You separately rate the food and the courier so that one doesn’t affect the other’s score too dramatically.

Which food delivery apps do you have in mind? In my experience they are heavily engineered towards leaving only positive reviews, and as a result the range of scores is 4.0-5.0 rather than 1-5. Ubereats says things like "this review will be public with your name", and the timing of the review prompt and wording of the question all feels like it's trying to optimize the chance of a positive review.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#455

Post by rafaelreinert »

zerocrates wrote: post #71
rafaelreinert wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because amazon is a marketplace, for example, a product can have more than one seller. because that the review is about the product and not about the seller. The right thing to do is complain about the seller on feedback and amazon delete all reviews from this specific seller buyers.

Wouldn't this kind of thing generally be coming straight from the manufacturer, or at least a fairly dominant seller for the product? Since they're paying for 5-star reviews of the product .

Could be, heh. I'm using amazon brazil, and here amazon isn't tooooo strong like USA. here in Brazil amazon works with other sellers in order to expand, but in a near future I really believe amazon will works like in USA.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#456

Post by BlueTemplar »

higerordermap wrote: post #452
BlueTemplar wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That usually means that the advertising is not attracting the right kind of customer.

Nope. It often means users are too reflexive to not figure out something in one second and leave one star review. And it's about survival in the app stores where everyone else has 4+ rating and few of them are certainly bots.

App stores are a form of advertising which attracts these "reflexive" customers.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#457

Post by slavik81 »

namdnay wrote: post #119
inetknght wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :)

I bought a Pixel 4a and a case direct from Google a couple months ago. For some strange reason, they shipped the case immediately, then the phone a few weeks later.

When I got the phone, I realized that the case had never arrived. Google refused to do anything, citing a 2-week limit on disputes. They told me to take it up with the shipper, but provided no guidance on how to do so and never responded when I asked.

Given that the cases are clearly high margin items, I was blown away by how terrible their customer service was.

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#458

Post by donmcronald »

teddyh wrote: post #268
donmcronald wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Fake urban legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export

Thanks for the link. I feel dumb for falling for that :-(

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#459

Post by jdmichal »

chowells wrote: post #312
jdmichal wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've never read it before, I highly recommend reading David Sirlin's Playing to Win. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ Specifically the chapter "Introducing... the Scrub" discusses exactly this sentiment. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub > In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on some…

I'm afraid you've deeply misunderstood Playing to Win. This is quite common. Sirlin assumed a sort of community knowledge as to the context that people who came across the series later tend to lack. Playing To Win is about people who refuse to learn the rules of a game. That's not what's happening here. What's happening here is that people who understand the rules very well are pointing out that they have holes in th…

First, I find it hard to believe that you inferred that I deeply misunderstood an entire book due to posting a single quote with almost no other context given within my response. Please be more charitable in the future.

Second, I have the same disagreement with you as I do with the other chains. Which is that, de facto paying for reviews is currently a rule in the system. I can tell it's a rule because it's happening, and there's no rules or punishment appearing stop it. In video games, the rules are explicitly coded and nothing beyond that code is permitted. This is why bugs vs intended behaviour becomes a conversation of intent, because the code is obviously allowing it and the code is the ruleset.

But that's not true in real life. And that's the part that all responses like yours are missing. There's a game being played at Amazon, where boosting your review stats correlated with boosting your sales stats. Except the permitted ruleset is everything not explicitly prohibited and punished by Amazon. Complaining about people buying reviews is just being a scrub not understanding the rules. The correct conversation to be having is the same as when an apparent bug is found in a game: Is this intended behaviour from Amazon's perspective, and if not what active action are they going to do about it?

Re: Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

#460

Post by randomswede »

air7 wrote: post #433
rebuilder wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selectively removing negative reviews is so sleazy, one wonders if it is actually even legal. Surely there's some truth-in-advertising legislation this falls under?

The flip side of this is that a single negative review offsets hundreds of positive ones. I've literally had to stop using my airbnb account that had dozens of possitive reviews after a single bad review left in bad faith (owner privetly asked for money to remove it) meant that each new owner was hesitant about me and asking me specifically about that single comment. I contacted airbnb support with proof of this and…

I would personally probably have talked to the police rather than AirBnB support about that, because it seems like a clear case of extortion.
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