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

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

#191

Post by ry4nolson »

jimmaswell wrote: post #177
CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know my comment will be lost in a sea of voices, but I need to share my experience _somewhere_ else other than amazon reviews. I got my fiancé two Christmas presents this year - both bought off Amazon. One was an electronic keyboard that was dead on arrival, the other was a snuggie type blanket that started falling apart yesterday. Both items had thousands of 5 star reviews. I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else b…

This experience is alien to me. I order from Amazon all the time and everything I get is generally fine. Occasionally something breaks after a while or is missing a part but that can happen anywhere and Amazon has extremely generous return policies. If anything I've come to trust AmazonBasics as a reliable brand if I'm deciding between products.

Same. I really feel like this is one of those things where 99+% of people have zero issues and don't comment on stuff like this. Myself and just about everyone I know order from amazon all the time and have very very few issues. And when we do, the return/replace/refund/whatever process is smooth as butter.

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

#192

Post by PaulKeeble »

cbanek wrote: post #149

Somewhat related due to comments / reviews being for a product, but sometimes on Amazon one page has a set of different options (with the little boxes). So you can pick like a color or model. But then they group all the reviews together despite what buttons you've picked. This is so frustrating! At least they've added a little thing that says which SKU the review is for. But I wish they would just separate out the re…

This is especially a problem for things with different flavours. I have run into multiple problems with Protein shakes where the vanilla is amazing and everything else tastes awful. The comments being merged mean you might have to pick through 1000 review comments to work out which flavours are good and which are bad.

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

#193

Post by brewdad »

hanklazard wrote: post #122
fuball63 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was of a similar mind this year, but when I went to Walmart's website, they had 3rd party sellers on there too. It is really annoying, especially with the pandemic, trying to sift through all the trash online. I ended up buying we webcam from BestBuy.com, because a webcam I got from Amazon was pay-for-review and was utter garbage. Just more evidence, to me, that the era of internet business models being "get everyt…

I've also found myself buying a lot of things from Best Buy, something I would have scoffed at 5-7 years ago. These days, I just want to know that I'm getting a genuine (vs replica) product and most of the time I can go pick-up my purchase same day, solving the "fast shipping" problem.

I've shifted a lot of purchases to Best Buy as well. I also ordered far more products directly from the manufacturer's web site this year. Many offer the same free shipping if you are buying anything of value.

I figure if Netgear sends me a fake switch when ordering directly from them it's time to give up on capitalism.

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

#194

Post by rurp »

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.

Unfortunately Walmart seems to be doing their best to be just as bad as Amazon. I had good luck ordering from them for the past few years but more recently it's gotten almost as bad. They now have a lot of fake/junk products being sold by random parties, plus I had a really awful experience with their customer service recently.

The product page for one item that my partner was looking to buy for her Mom's birthday said something like "Free 2-day shipping, receive it by the 4th". Well when she went to check out the only option to get it by that date cost $30+ dollars. I ended up getting on the phone with a support person who fully acknowledged that the shipping info was wrong but to my shock completely dismissed it as not being a problem.

I said that people were putting items into their cart based on false information and the response was basically a dismissive shrug. We went back and forth a few times to make sure I really understood his response and there's no doubt that he did not care that they were displaying false shipping info.

Since then I've been wary of buying anything else from Walmart.

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

#195

Post by Grimm1 »

username90 wrote: post #135
Grimm1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An older friend of mine made the observation that really before the few large news networks and papers in the last 40-50 years objective information that everyone roughly agreed upon was not the norm. Yellow journalism, hearsay and rumors dominated common conversation. He observed that with the internet we're returning to what was this "normal" state with anybody being able to post something and gain widespread recog…

How much of that was the American propaganda machine doing its job to keep the western world united against communism? The change we are seeing could just be the end of the cold war leading to slow return to normal and not due to technology at all.

I mean united news cycles predated the cold war and wasn't an isolated American phenomenon and I'm not talking about America but the world so I don't see how your opinion is relevant to the topic other than to stir the pot.

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

#196

Post by cbanek »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #192
cbanek wrote: post #149

Somewhat related due to comments / reviews being for a product, but sometimes on Amazon one page has a set of different options (with the little boxes). So you can pick like a color or model. But then they group all the reviews together despite what buttons you've picked. This is so frustrating! At least they've added a little thing that says which SKU the review is for. But I wish they would just separate out the re…

This is especially a problem for things with different flavours. I have run into multiple problems with Protein shakes where the vanilla is amazing and everything else tastes awful. The comments being merged mean you might have to pick through 1000 review comments to work out which flavours are good and which are bad.

Exactly, same for Amazon pages that decide to sell the "new model" on the same page as the old model to harvest reviews. And then when I'm trying to figure out if it has better support or problems, I'm trying to pick through the reviews to figure out which one is talking about which version.

(Mostly a problem when also trying to figure out linux support!)

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

#197

Post by CC38 »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #175
CC38 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fakespot can help reveal which products have misleading reviews https://www.fakespot.com/ Obviously it isn't perfect but it does help.

I use Fakespot, and I wonder about its accuracy. Seeing a 5-star product given a `D` rating is shocking. If Fakespot is reasonably accurate, then Amazon is inexcusably bad at removing fake reviews. Amazon has orders of magnitude more developer talent and user information than Fakespot to tackle accurate ratings. But I suppose that's the reality of differing incentives...

I do think that Amazon is inexcusably bad at removing fake reviews.

However, I think there are some instances where Amazon probably rearranged large numbers of reviews because they found out the reviews were for a different item. It's likely that Fakespot can't tell the difference between mass censorship and legitimate removal. So you do have to take the results with a grain of salt and read recent reviews.

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

#198

Post by prepend »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #128

Here's one solution: don't buy cheap garbage. Yes, someone makes a $23 drone. It is cheap plastic shit from China. Do you really need to buy it, and then throw it in landfill a week (or two days) later after it breaks? Did OP reeeeeally expect a $23 drone to be on the up-and-up and NOT end up as landfill? OP is a bit oblivious to his impact on the environment. This race to the bottom for the cheapest crap is what ins…

It’s a children’s toy meant to be played with for a few hours. So $23 makes since since this is a simple toy.

The thinking that people shouldn’t pay low amounts leads to companies selling the same junk but for $100 instead.

Cheap things should be cheap, I think.

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

#200

Post by biztos »

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 just made a pretty big purchase decision in a field (cameras) where there is a lot of competition and reviews carry a lot of weight.

In the end, the information that helped me make up my mind was from video reviews by mostly well-known photography vloggers on YouTube.

This is also something that could be messed with by unscrupulous marketers, but there is a strong counterbalance to those anti-patterns: the vloggers themselves are trying to build reputations, because "top photography vlogger" presumably pays better than 99% of all other work that involves photography.

I'm not sure how much this counts as "better objective information" -- other than seeing an object move around in someone's hands you're mostly getting an opinion -- but I found it super helpful and could easily imagine this being the "future of purchase-decision influence" or something like it.

For example here are three channels I used, with radically different styles:

1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCknMR7NOY6ZKcVbyzOxQPhw

2. https://www.youtube.com/user/christopherfrost

3. https://www.youtube.com/user/JaredPolin

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