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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

#221

Post by robotnikman »

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…

Adding fuel to the fire; I remember reading an article last year which appeared on HN, it was about how sellers create groups on facebook which offer to send people free products in they agree to give 5 star reviews. Apparently this is also a massive problem with thousands of people doing this

So not only will the reviews be for the wrong product, there is also a good chance that the reviews were bought and are fake.

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

#222

Post by r00fus »

ryanyde wrote: post #178

Journalists have never operated an ecommerce company. In the same year, they'll publish a story about how requiring manufacturing information enables them to steal secrets from sellers. You can't have it both ways.

> You can't have it both ways.

Clearly you have to be a megacorp to get it both ways. Amazon shouldn't be able to evade liability for products sold on their website if they compete against their "sellers" as well.

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

#223

Post by nobody9999 »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #5
tomrod wrote: post #3

Note that I am not for Section 230's removal (mostly because it makes sense to me that platforms should be able to host negative content). However, if it were removed, would that mean bogus reviews become a liability for Amazon?

Now you know why Section 230 has to go. Comcast, TWC & so on is just a series of pipes, but Facebook & co has editorial control or at least should have.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

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

#224

Post by PaulKeeble »

cbanek wrote: post #196
PaulKeeble wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

I saw that around Black Friday where electric toothbrushes were on sale and they had merged the product pages a bunch of SKUs with just one of them being on sale. Of course the one on sale previously had a bunch of bad reviews, but merged with the reliable SKUs it appeared to have a good average and had a nice star rating. The comments showed an inconsistent story all about that one SKU.

What Amazon is doing is just outright dishonest and ought to be against the law. They are certainly intentionally utilising this to sell products with dishonest reviews and star ratings.

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

#225

Post by r00fus »

mdoms wrote: post #164

Presumably you've all stopped using Amazon because of this issue, so they're motivated to fix it..?

My family purchases went from tens of thousands of dollars in 2018 to thousands in 2019 and even less in 2020.

Now I'm on the brink of closing my Prime account. So yeah.

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

#226

Post by monksy »

ethbr0 wrote: post #139
coldpie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've completely stopped ordering from Amazon, for three reasons: they have too much market power, they have serious ethics problems, and their 3rd party seller program has made the buying experience garbage. Welcome to the club.

I've come full circle and only order books (usually used) or things I don't care if they're Chinese bargain-version off Amazon anymore. Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be Amazon's business from me.

Don't give them money if you don't support them doing crappy things. Still using them is giving them money.

Also if you're looking for Chinese knockoffs.. go directly to the source and go with Aliexpress.

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

#227

Post by cratermoon »

Pxtl wrote: post #89
14 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment caught my attention are bad cables really destroying your tablets? I ask because I literally power all my phones and tablets with cords I bought at the dollar store. Never had any problems. Have I just been lucky?

They physically mangled the connector itself, so the tablets could no longer charge. They were 4-year-old Galaxy Tab 7" so not worth repairing. Basically I had a usb cable where the metal of the connector bent in just the right way that it scraped off the contacts inside the tablets' female port.

That mechanical connection is definitely prone to failure. I've had phones where the charging port was physically worn enough that I could plug them in and charge them OK but bump it just a bit and it would disconnect. Wireless charging isn't quite there yet but I'd be happy to get rid of all cables.

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

#228

Post by opportune »

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…

Honestly if I were your customer I would probably really dislike this since I tend to put food products on subscriptions.

Also the fact you were able to do this for something (I am assuming) was relatively innocent shows someone could do this for more nefarious purposes.

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

#229

Post by SevenSpirits »

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...

Amazon does have the disadvantage of being more worth circumventing. I.e. if amazon cracks down on some method of cheating the system, to a large extent the cheaters are going to find some other method of cheating.

Whereas since Fakespot etc are less popular, there's less reason to evade their detection algorithms.

That said, yeah, it sure seems like amazon's doing an awful job for consumers in this area.

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

#230

Post by butterfi »

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…

Lets not forget the brands get bought and the new owners lower the quality until the brand name loses its influence, e.g. Pyrex glass.
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