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

#321

Post by fuzxi » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

zucked wrote: post #297

coldpie wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limited brand selection is actually a benefit. I don't want to spend an hour flipping through shitty USB-C cables to find the one that won't nuke my device. I want to pay the buyer at the retailer a few cents to do that for me.

You're just shuffling the effort of finding a good quality cable upstream to finding a good quality retailer.

Well, yes. The difference is that once you find a trusted retailer, you don't need to put in the same effort every time you need to buy something. You just trust them to have vetted their products for you.

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

#322

Post by CC38 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #317

kongolongo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also question them. It seems a lot easier to accuse Amazon ratings of being poor especially if it feeds into an already existing confirmation bias against Amazon. For all we know Fakespot could just be making all of it up right? How are Fakespots ratings verified? Do I need a Fakespot for Fakespot too? Maybe rating systemes like these are fundamentally flawed.

Just switch to a reliable vendor like Costco or Target and stop buying from Amazon.

So you believe that those companies somehow avoid review manipulation? I sure don't.

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

#323

Post by Kluny » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:23 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…

> Brands can get stocked in major retailers because you need decent products to make it through Walmart's buying process.

Not only this - brands that get stocked at Walmart need to have considerable production capacity. I was involved in a manufacturing business that did great as long as we stayed b2c - but when we started doing b2b sales, even in small local shops, we got swamped rather quickly because we didn't have enough capacity.

It's not much use finding a quality product if you can't buy it.

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

#324

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:33 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…

[deleted]

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

#325

Post by dzdt » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

My Christmas Amazon experience was helping my young daughter search for a doll to buy with a gift card and finding mixed into the results a large number of graphically illustrated sex toys. (She typoed "dolll" as the search term.) The convenience of an everything e-commerce site is not worth the nonsense.

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

#326

Post by Rapzid » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

Amazon uses this tactic themselves! They did it with the high capacity Amazon Basics AA batteries. The community pretty much verified they were rebranded Panasonic batteries manufactured in Japan. Then, after a few years and thousands of 5 star reviews they switched the batteries out for Chinese manufactured batteries. Check for yourself: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-High-Capacity-Rechargeab...

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

#327

Post by toss1 » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

This would be pretty simple to solve if Amazon appended a couple new fields to each review logging the string of text in the main headline at the time the review was posted, and the sales category.

Using this field could then at least provide a control for us poor customers to filter only reviews for the current version/category of the product

And if they really wanted to do it right, they'd scan headlines/categories and reviews for substantial changes. Just a bit of good logic or AI pattern recognition should be able to sift this down to a manageable set of changes for human review and appropriate action, such as demanding a re-listing as a new product, weeding out repeat offenders, etc.

The article's point about Amazon failing to show a focus on "customer obsession" in this area is key - Amazon used to be a great place to search for products, and it is now a miserable, long slog to find anything good in the sea of crap with bogus listings & reviews.

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

#328

Post by frankosaurus » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

> When I sorted the reviews by date ... most recent reviewers actually had bought a drone ... But the older reviews were for honey.

I'm definitely going to use this sort-by-date trick for future product research adventures.

I do miss the good old days when Amazon reviews were an amazing product research tool.

Aside: I have no idea why they bury the "search reviews" feature. It's essential for discovering, say, real-world Linux compatibility for random pieces of hardware.

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

#329

Post by devinplatt » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #27

I had this problem literally half an hour ago. Looking for power strips, and the top rated one (average > 4.5 stars) thankfully has customer pictures showing extremely flimsy connections and soldering, a huge fire hazard.

Ugh, I had this problem looking for power strips on Amazon too. I wanted something with lots of reviews (to verify quality), but every product with a high number of reviews had at least one scary customer picture.

I ended up relying on brand trust: I looked up reputable brands and bought some Tripp Lite power strips.

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

#330

Post by FireBeyond » Wed, Dec 30, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

biztos wrote: post #200

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…

You're wise to do so.

People believe (speaking of photography / video YouTubers) that Apple generally doesn't give pre-release or demo units to users (except the "inner circle", shall we say - Daring Fireball, etc.).

Odd, then, how a whole bunch of photography vloggers, the vast majority of whom made absolutely no mention of loaner / demo units, promotional consideration, etc, all got launch day Mac Pros.

"Much anticipated", people might argue, so of course they pre-ordered.

Odd. They must have all got together and talked. Because on my YT subscriptions list I counted no less than eight photography vloggers who somehow, coincidentally, managed to get the EXACT same configuration:

The 24 core, 384GB, 4TB, Vega Pro II Duo, with a Pro Display XDR, nano coated.

Now, not only is this an overkill for ANY photography editing, even 100mp medium format, it's also a $25,000 (33 when you count the display).

I'm willing to guarantee that these were all Apple loaner units and that at some point they bought their own with the specs they really wanted, and "subbed it in" to their setup, later.