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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

#301

Post by birdyrooster »

bombcar wrote: post #38
cambalache wrote: post #29

I was a heavy Amazon customer 8-10 years ago. I only bought stuff sold directly by Amazon, and that was not hard to do, since +90% of the products had that option. The other day I was just checking the price of an article for my mom and I was shocked how different is now, the proportion has totally changed, +90% of the articles are not sold by Amazon and by the "stores" name it looks they are barely better than rando…

The same thing happened to Ebay and Etsy - once they reached a certain level of popularity based on the original premise it turned into a outlet for cheap junk. I've taken to finding as much as I can at places that DO NOT have a "marketplace" such as Target or Home Depot.

Quick counter: eBay is legit and has so much non-junk that its one of my top 10 visited sites. I've only once received a counterfeit item and it was a Sandisk branded sd card, but everything else in my three-hundred-and-counting auction history has arrived as described by the seller.

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

#302

Post by genericone »

sampo wrote: post #290
cratermoon wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toys R Us and Guitar Center are among the retailers bought by private equity firms explicitly so the investors could wring the value out of the company and throw the remains in the dumpster. G.I. Joes was another. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/toys-r-... By the way the remnants of Toys R Us are now owned by Tru Toys and they are looking to make a comeback.

> so the investors could wring the value out of the company and throw the remains in the dumpster What does that mean in practice?

Low expected long term business value due to predicted market shifts. Compress all dwindling future value into an immediately extractable source of income at the cost of the existence of the business itself. Basically, squeeze the brand name dry until the brand name itself means nothing.

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

#303

Post by Zelphyr »

maya24 wrote: post #106
Zelphyr wrote: post #80

The only way this changes is when more people stop buying from Amazon. The incentives otherwise are too great for Amazon to do anything about it.

Yep. I found Amazon pretty useless these days and rarely use it. I buy household essentials from Target their service and delivery is good and I have an option of in-store pickup within a day or delivery within a couple of days. At least they have a stable set of brands that they sell it's not the highest quality but it's good enough for most things. The things I care about quality I will buy directly from the seller…

I've actually found, to my surprise, Walmart to be somewhat comparable to Target in the sense of feeling like I'm getting what I ordered instead of a knockoff like with Amazon. I had avoided them for years because of the terrible customer service I have received in their stores in the past but their online service is noticeably better. Their grocery Pick Up system is far superior to the competitor grocery stores in my area.

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

#304

Post by rasz »

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…

What you describe is a digital version of white van speaker scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam while person you are replying to means old established brands, like Sony or Philips. You can pick up cheapest Philips hair trimmer and be sure of decent quality, but picking even something looking upmarket, but coming from one of the made up Amazon brands is almost a guarantee in chinesium shock. $300 Panasonic/$400 Moulinex bread maker might look identical to Silvercrest(lidl)/Medion/Sencor/Hamilton Beach $50 branded one, but difference in manufacturing quality and used materials are quite dramatic.

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

#305

Post by wombat-man »

afavour wrote: post #269
perl4ever wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to this experience, but the thing is, similar things have happened to me with other retailers, that I think have especially high markups and used to be in my mind decent brands. I got a shirt from Macy's with sewn in stripes that started to unravel before long, this was many years ago, but I never bought clothes from there again. And more recently, I got pillow cases from bed bath & beyond, that were ver…

One extra problem with Amazon is that a lot of products are sold by third party merchants and their site UX seems to deliberately obscure the fact. Same goes for Walmart, though I have less experience using them. If I order from Amazon, from Amazon, I tend to have good experiences. If I order third party from Amazon it’s a crap shoot.

walmart used to be better about this but now I notice they, and other major retailers are trying to adopt the amazon platform concept.

Sometimes it's easier to just make a list and physically go to a store so I don't need to question whether or not what I'm buying is legit and deal with that stuff.

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

#306

Post by oblio »

tjoff wrote: post #20
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.

Youtube comments are actually decent now, with a very low bar for decent at least. Also depending on the type of video/target audience of course. That google managed to improve them so much is likely their biggest achievement I can think of in many years.

It's a very low bar. The original, unfiltered ones were Chernobyl + WW1 trenches. Now they've just manure.

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

#307

Post by SamBam »

swiftcoder wrote: post #262
SamBam wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're still every looking for instruments, Sweetwater has excellent stuff, and really stellar customer service. They answered questions by phone before we purchased. I received a keyboard for my daughter, then we had a change of heart and decided we had gotten the wrong one, they handled everything for shipping it back and sending a new one, and called a week later to see if we were happy.

And they will call you once every few months for the rest of your natural life (and then some). Sweetwater is notorious for being a company whose contact list you can never, ever escape from. Change your phone number, move across the country... Sweetwater will find you.

Huh, they haven't called once since June, when I bought the keyboard. But it's possible they will in the future, though.

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

#308

Post by fmntf »

robotnikman wrote: post #221
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.

They are also in telegram. Just search "Amazon reviews" in the public groups, you will find plenty of results.

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

#309

Post by StreamBright »

CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #111
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 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 was thinking about creating a site (allreviews.com or something) where you could write a review about anything, purchase, service, etc. Not sure about the legal background. Could I face legal challenges having such site in the US?

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

#310

Post by robocat »

rurp wrote: post #194
bombcar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

> 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 ...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.

You have as much agency and incentive to fix the problem as the support person. Most arguments for why the support person should spend their time and energy trying to fix a problem outside their authority, and their reasons for not doing so, could equally be applied to you.

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