61–70 of 429 posts
How much of this racket on places like Amazon and Yelp would be killed if you had a unique generated ID assigned to you once you purchased a good or service and it was verified as delivered?
I recently got an email offering 50% off a seller's products if I left a good review. This is happening on all marketplaces, not just Amazon. The only way I see to truly solve the problem is only allowing verified buyers to leave a review.
I've tried raising the issue repeatedly with Amazon, but I've now given up and look forward to the random crap I get sent almost on a monthly basis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would presume that most people that buy reviews for their own products would ask for them to be 5 stars. I wonder if anyone is deliberately paying for bad reviews of their competitors' products?
Or perhaps disgruntled customers [possibly who purchased an artificially inflated 5 star item only to find it garbage].
Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon. Look at all these people who are so happy to be buying stuff on Amazon, so much better than the alternatives. Amazon could clean this up and then watch the average drop. From the removal of the fake fives but also it makes it look more "socially accpetable"…
Disruptive solution proposal: Get rid of the review system entirely. Stars, comments, user pictures; eliminate all of it. For everyone. There. Problem solved.
Should just be thumbs up, thumbs down. Maybe a "meh" in between.
Alternatively, ask for ratings as 5 star, treat 4 as a meh, and anything 3 or below as a thumbs down.
Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon. Look at all these people who are so happy to be buying stuff on Amazon, so much better than the alternatives. Amazon could clean this up and then watch the average drop. From the removal of the fake fives but also it makes it look more "socially accpetable"…
Disruptive solution proposal: Get rid of the review system entirely. Stars, comments, user pictures; eliminate all of it. For everyone. There. Problem solved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> undercover with these firms, who are purposefully violating your platforms TOS These “brands” are sometimes a few guys in a garage in China. Shut them down and they popup with a new name the next day, like whack-a-mole.
Yeah they just buy white label cheap commodities and will slap a new sticker on it if you “crack down” on them somehow
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disruption often means to offer an alternative, better solution to a poorly solved problem. You seem to be suggesting we don't try and solve the product validation problem at all!
Replace reviews with raw data - total number of purchases (at this price and version), return rate, etc.
Reviews are broken. There needs to be a web of trust for reviews. I would weight a review from somebody I know or trust 1000x more than every Amazon or online review ever left. It's not just store reviews that are broken - web search is also completely broken because of affiliate spam I spent far too much time at the moment with each purchase researching and tracking down trusted reviews.
There's a good chance that the items you're most ignorant about are also the items your friends are most ignorant about (or at least enough of them that it'll significantly reduce the quantity of the feedback).
Also, once this became a thing, once it became monetizable, my web of trust would shrink drastically. I mean, geez, I'm even suspicious of my doctors prescriptions.
Maybe we need professional reviewers with a transparent system in place to protect against manipulation (as much as possible). Something like Consumer Reports on a larger scale.
I recently got an email offering 50% off a seller's products if I left a good review. This is happening on all marketplaces, not just Amazon. The only way I see to truly solve the problem is only allowing verified buyers to leave a review.
Sellers generate fake orders for their products using real identities, actually send the product to those people, but leave a fake review in their name. I've tried raising the issue repeatedly with Amazon, but I've now given up and look forward to the random crap I get sent almost on a monthly basis.