Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by throwaway201103 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

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.

Maybe this is a longer game by Amazon. Let bogus reviews and bad experiences pile up for third party sellers, slowly driving people to only trust "Amazon Basics." They have nearly perfect knowledge of the profitability of any item, so they know what items they should have under the "Amazon Basics" umbrella. Over time they could expand this into other Amazon "Brands" at varying quality/price points.

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

#232

Post by sdflhasjd » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #52

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…

> what incentive do they have to allow all these fake reviews? People buy the tat from Amazon instead of buying a name brand from a competitor.

Surely customers will still buy from respected brands on Amazon though.

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

#233

Post by RandallBrown » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #161

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…

The problem is that we don't have a great indicator of quality other than price. Why do I think the $30 or $50 will be better? It probably is, but I have no way to tell if I am getting a better quality product or basically the same just sold at a higher price. It is hard to decide to take this "risk" when you don't know. Trusted reviews and recommendations can solve this but they are hard to come by.

There's lots of indicators of quality on the amazon page beyond the price and reviews.

Look at the title. It's just restating generic "drone" SEO nonsense over and over. There's not even a real name of the product.

The photos of the item are pretty clearly photoshopped stock imagery.

The description is full of grammatical and punctuation errors.

The brand has no online presence beyond its Amazon listings. It doesn't even have its own Amazon brand page.

It may be asking too much of the general consumer to look at these signals, but they seem pretty obvious to me.

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

#234

Post by xnoise-beta » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

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.

I buy only prime items and only after i do a fair amount of research about them. I stay away from products that are prime but have chinese names and also i tend to look at the bad reviews rather than the good ones.

I recently decided to buy a tensiometer and i avoided about 2 bad ones (even if they were overall at 4.8 or so) because of the latest bad reviews indicating that the quality has been worse in the last few years.

Imo most of these things could be avoided with a little bit of care. I am not expecting amazon to be able to do that for me. On the other hand, the amount of chinese crappy products is staggering. Just looked for a subwoofer and i had to apply quite a lot of filtering to only get the decent brands up.

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

#235

Post by georgeecollins » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #130

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…

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.

It is really good to diversify your purchasing. Walmart is often a great alternative to Amazon: Newegg or Bestbuy for consumer electronics; Jensen for bikes; Adafruit or Robotshop for hobby electronics; Apogee for rockets.

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

#236

Post by cratermoon » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #102

I bought magnetic tiles for my kids for christmas, and in the box was a card promising me money if I left a 5 star review and forwarded proof that I left a 5 star review to the company's email.

A friend of mine got a no-name brand spotting telescope as a Christmas present, and it had one of those cards in the box. Not the shipping box, the actual package. Someone had to have unsealed the box, put the card in, and closed it back up.

It's an OK scope, nothing special, and I have no idea how much the giver paid.

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

#237

Post by coldpie » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #218

hinkley wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B & H photos has done right by me so far. CDW seems okay. Newegg appears to have vendors reselling stuff from Amazon with markup. And while you can filter third party out, you quickly discover Newegg doesn’t have much inventory.

Newegg went down the toilet in 2016 when Liaison Interactive bought it out. Adorama is also good and, like B&H, you can't do any business with them on Saturday.

Has any retail company ever gotten better after being bought out (thinking NewEgg, Toys R Us, Guitar Center...)? Some incentive is fucked up if decent businesses are being run into the ground.

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

#238

Post by nicwolff » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #189

ethbr0 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

B & H photos has done right by me so far. CDW seems okay. Newegg appears to have vendors reselling stuff from Amazon with markup. And while you can filter third party out, you quickly discover Newegg doesn’t have much inventory.

Last year I ordered a high-priced item from Newegg, received a different model from a reseller, and returned it – then ordered it from Walmart and got the same different model from the same reseller! Finally CDW sent me the correct product.

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

#239

Post by acjohnson55 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

I 100% agree with this article. And yet, I still do most of my shopping on Amazon. Unfortunately, when it comes to general merchandise, they're still the best at inventory, discovery, quality, fulfillment, and price. Which is a scathing indictment of the state of the rest of the e-commerce world.

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

#240

Post by tehjoker » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

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…

The problem is consumers are unorganized and people wanting to sell things can easily induce distortions in whatever recommender system by buying labor, companies, or products. You can only temporarily solve the problem before wealth demolishes objective feedback systems.