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Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

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Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#121

Post by oauea »

throwaway_1301 wrote: post #10
coldcode wrote: post #4

Of course they are, it's not like Amazon really cares much. With all the power of AWS and deep learning etc., identifying fake reviews should be a piece of cake if you are Amazon. It doesn't affect the bottom line, so why bother.

I guess I feel more comfortable commenting on this vs such posts about Google (my employer) because I don't have to worry about leaking anything important but this is absolutely not a piece of cake. Anyone who has worked on planet scale anti-abuse systems knows this is a very tough and never ending problem. You think there are obvious signals for good or bad - the 0.01% cases where this does not hold up turns to 20 m…

You think working for Google is a net positive for society?

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#122

Post by ianmcgowan »

spullara wrote: post #103
wvenable wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother-in-law no longer buys anything of significance from Amazon after being burned with counterfeit materials. I carefully check reviews, use fakespot, etc. There is a point where the eroding of trust will be significant enough to affect the bottom line. Eventually most people know to not trust Amazon reviews, soon it will be.

How are so many people buying counterfeit stuff on Amazon? What are they buying? Why would someone copy it? Are they just looking at price?

Certain things it's impossible to avoid - I'm trying to buy 18650 batteries for a flashlight and it's overwhelming trying to find legit sellers. There are some classes of products where it's really hard to tell what's real (reviews not matching product description, obviously fake 5-star and 1-star reviews etc.)

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#123

Post by ogre_codes »

spullara wrote: post #103
wvenable wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother-in-law no longer buys anything of significance from Amazon after being burned with counterfeit materials. I carefully check reviews, use fakespot, etc. There is a point where the eroding of trust will be significant enough to affect the bottom line. Eventually most people know to not trust Amazon reviews, soon it will be.

How are so many people buying counterfeit stuff on Amazon? What are they buying? Why would someone copy it? Are they just looking at price?

A lot of the time it's stupid things like advertising a product is glass or crystal when it's actually clear plastic. I got burned by that once. I've also seen manufacturers get burned when they put their branded merchandise up on Amazon only to have a clone/ copy sell under the same SKU. The manufacturer ends up fielding the returns, getting the 1 star reviews, and has little ability to prevent the copycat products.

It's not always "Nike" or some big brand, often it's smaller brands who have built up a reputation but don't have the legal team to fight with Amazon and protect their product from pirates.

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#124

Post by bombcar »

osrec wrote: post #67
bombcar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace reviews with raw data - total number of purchases (at this price and version), return rate, etc.

How does that tell you if the product is any good though? Popularity doesn't automatically imply quality.

It doesn’t - but if 80% of purchases end in returns you’d know to stay away.

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#125

Post by hattmall »

ta8645 wrote: post #116
Meekro wrote: post #104

I'm just spitballing, but what do you guys think about this as a fake-resistant review system? To list your product on Amazon as a seller, you pay $500 per year as a "review incentivization fee." The algorithm randomly selects buyers and emails them 1 month after their purchase. They are offered $10 to write a review. The chance of being randomly selected as a reviewer auto-adjusts to target a goal of 50 reviews per…

It might reduce the incentive for the seller to deal with post-sales problems after that 1-month period. Once they see a person hasn't been selected, they can ignore any of their support requests without worry of a bad review.

They could still leave seller feedback. Amazon has both seller feedback and product reviews two separate metrics and seller feedback impacts a sellers standing on Amazon where as product reviews only reflect on the product.

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#126

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

yojo wrote: post #31
wp381640 wrote: post #24

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.

Unless it’s a really big ticket item I’ve given up on product research as the investment is just not worth my time. I just buy whatever Wirecutter tells me to; usually they’re not too wrong.

Actually Wirecutter has gone down the toilet and is just as scammy and pay to play as everything else now.

https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#128

Post by ikeboy »

Meekro wrote: post #104

I'm just spitballing, but what do you guys think about this as a fake-resistant review system? To list your product on Amazon as a seller, you pay $500 per year as a "review incentivization fee." The algorithm randomly selects buyers and emails them 1 month after their purchase. They are offered $10 to write a review. The chance of being randomly selected as a reviewer auto-adjusts to target a goal of 50 reviews per…

You're just describing the Early Reviewer Program and suggesting all other reviews be banned.

Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online

#129

Post by astura »

dwighttk wrote: post #47

What’s the deal with people answering questions completely irrelevantly on Amazon? Do they boost your review karma if you answer a bunch of questions or something?

When a question is asked Amazon will email blast some small percentage of people who have purchased the product and people selling the product. If a customer who got this email blasts chooses to respond to this email, they may answer the question the only way they know how - completely irrelevantly. Beyond that, I've definitely seen answers where the answerer clearly thinks they are answering a human and not posting to a public page for everyone to read.
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