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Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#71

Post by whatisthiseven »

GavinMcG wrote: post #34
alkonaut wrote: post #11

Amazon reviews are about as useful as Youtube comments. You can read them for entertainment but don't expect anything useful about the product, and don't base a purchase decision on them.

I always look at negative reviews. From those you can tell if there's a consistent concern, if someone got a fake, or if there was just a preference mismatch for someone.

This also used to be my strategy, but now I am concerned that competing brands are sabotaging each other by just leaving poor 1-star reviews. I say this as I have read some low reviews that just made no sense, or didn't reference aspects of the product that existed.

I still trust 1-star reviews more than 5-star, but I don't take them as gospel. As you said, if there is a consistent message across all the negative reviews from a mix of reviewer types, then it strengthens the signal quality.

Buying online sucks :(

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#72

Post by duxup »

Originally the reason I liked Amazon was that I grew up in an area that didn't have access to stores with higher quality goods. Wal-Mart's price sensitive nature and similar stores meant that most of what was offered was 10% less in price, but 30% less in quality / how long it might last.

Now on Amazon everything is a race to the bottom on price and quality and, it is really hard to find something that is good quality and if you do ... someone is probably willing to sell you a fake.

I've gotten a few items I thought were fakes, and when I post a less than glowing review (not even mentioning my fake suspicions) I'm often contacted and offered a free product for removing my review.... I refuse to take these offers, but I wonder how many people do.

Rather than what I sort of expected, Wal-Mart trying to be Amazon... Amazon seems desperate to BE Wal-Mart...

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#73

Post by noveltyaccount »

valuearb wrote: post #39
Raed667 wrote: post #8

From the article listed (a toy drone) [1], reviews range from talking about car oil, stickers for kids, a plaque for finishing a race, honey, something about horses (?).. What is this mess !? And how is this not Amazon's top priority? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08P14T1Z2

I worked for a startup that sold a food product direct, with a significant part of sales on Amazon. We decided to switch our standard size from 12 packs to 8 packs to better fit our customers consumption habits. But on Amazon that meant creating new listings for new SKUs, abandoning hundreds of positive comments/ratings on each 12 pack flavor SKU, which would crush sales for a while. So instead we let inventory run o…

That's crazy. Can't you add two variants to the same product? Like how a single t-shirt item can have different sizes and colors? Or maybe Amazon only allows that for certain listings, or only if they're set up that way from the start?

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#74

Post by ryandrake »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46
TravisLS wrote: post #18

There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…

I myself am convinced that brand recognition is on borrowed time - that is, recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter, but new quality brands will be near-impossible to establish. The reason for that: we're being DDoSed with brands on e-commerce sites. For an increasing amount of product categories, you're going to find 10+ "brands" on Amazon that are selling the same white-label garbage class product…

> recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter

Not for long. How many dependable long-lived brands have been mopped up by hedge funds and private equity and subsequently slapped on the cheapest crap you can make? Remember when Craftsman tools used to be top notch?

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#75

Post by rendall »

dopylitty wrote: post #65
TravisLS wrote: post #18

There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…

Brands aren't perfect either. For example Volvo had a reputation for making great safe cars. The brand is now owned by a company with a reputation for making cars that disintegrate and obliterate the occupants in crash tests. The same is true of Arc'teryx, Jaguar, and many other well known brands that have been sold off to companies with terrible reputations for quality. Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality w…

> Ultimately the only way to guarantee quality would be to vote for politicians who support strong regulations and a strong regulatory apparatus.

Speaking as a socialist-leaning libertarian, I'mma have to take a hard disagree on this. Let the companies have a mix of terrible quality and great quality as they wish, and let the market itself decide which products and companies succeed or fail

Let a private company, say, Consumer Reports or Vegan International, give their imprimatures to quality.

A government, in this specific case of toy drones, is a bit heavy-handed, in my opinion. Would "quality specs" work? Would they be subject to political whims? Would a connected company be able to overwhelm the governmental department dedicated to the quality control of toy drones?

Edit: I promise, despite the proximity of "socialist" to "libertarian" in my preamble, this is not an ideological stance. If you have a better idea, I will change my mind! I'm fine with a downvote, but don't just smash it because you disagree. Tell us why :)

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#76

Post by dathinab »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #48

Bait-and-switch doesn't matter if Amazon doesn't care about fake and paid-for reviews. I was looking for dashcams and came across this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/iiwey-Channels-included-Dashboard-D... 91% 5-star reviews, a lot of the reviews are from "Top XXX reviewer", and almost every one seems to be reading off a script. If you check out all the profiles of these "Top XX" reviewers, they all seem to be non-stop pur…

I don't think they have interest in fake reviews.

But they might have an interest in not having a lot of products which don't sell at all because of mostly bad reviews (they are the Nr1 platforms for cheap "Chinese" products, they would lose a lot of sellers if they are no longer suited for selling low quality products) .

They also might have some interest into a erosion of trust into non "sold by Amazon", "shipped by Amazone" and "Amazone Choice" products. But that supper speculative.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#77

Post by searchableguy »

bombcar wrote: post #32
TravisLS wrote: post #18

There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…

Amusingly enough if you trace the history of brand names ... this is why they started! And this is the strength that the major retailers have against Amazon - if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target will jump ahead.

> if Amazon won't police (and they have problems with commingling counterfeit brands, too) then Walmart and Target will jump ahead.

I think they are solving this differently. Amazon introduced their own brands for almost all daily necessities. Amazon basic, amazon pharmacy, amazon fashion, amazon elements, amazon pantry, amazon echo and few more. They generally have average or above average products at an affordable price and good support.

You can buy AC, fridge, vacuum cleaner, clothes, baby food, dog food, dog bed, multi-vitamin, ramen, TWS, carpet, blanket, swiss army knife, solder machine, and a lot more from amazon itself now.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#78

Post by tangoalpha »

This is how the seller can do it, atleast on Amazon India.

Swapping the details completely triggers AI based flags and often causes the change to be manually reviewed.

But the seller can add a variant of the product (like size or color). But the seller instead adds a completely different product he intends to swap the original product with. Now the listing will show two completely different products as variants on a single product listing. Then the seller removes the old variant. Nothing gets flagged. No manual review.

This has been around for long and a very popular trick with shady sellers on Amazon in India. I don't think Amazon never figured it out. For whatever reason, Amazon turns a blind eye to this practice.

Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews

#79

Post by TeMPOraL »

ryandrake wrote: post #74
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself am convinced that brand recognition is on borrowed time - that is, recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter, but new quality brands will be near-impossible to establish. The reason for that: we're being DDoSed with brands on e-commerce sites. For an increasing amount of product categories, you're going to find 10+ "brands" on Amazon that are selling the same white-label garbage class product…

> recognition of old brands may still work as useful filter Not for long. How many dependable long-lived brands have been mopped up by hedge funds and private equity and subsequently slapped on the cheapest crap you can make? Remember when Craftsman tools used to be top notch?

Right. Also the regular "optimization" (i.e. of costs, not value). For example, Miele was a decent brand of white-label goods, but I've read numerous commenters here claiming that they're succumbing to plasticpartisis and their products aren't as reliable as before. I also vaguely recall hearing that Anker isn't what it used to be.

(Then there are brands spanning great many product categories - like Phillips. I'm having trouble keeping track which product categories they do well, and which they don't.)

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