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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

#311

Post by AnssiH »

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…

I agree - in a lot of these Amazon discussions on HN a lot of people seem to believe Amazon does nothing.

But if you look at e.g. seller forums at Amazon, there are a lot of large threads about the opposite problem - Amazon taking out lots of reviews the sellers consider legitimate.

So clearly they are doing something, and it might even be that only a small minority of fake reviews get through, but due to Amazon's scale there are still a lot of them.

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

#312

Post by adsche »

renke1 wrote: post #307

A lot of complaints here. I personally never had any problems with Amazon (Germany). I might not have noticed that I received counterfeits for certain products, though. Does the shady stuff only happen in certain countries?

Well, the ratings as displayed cannot be trusted here either. Recently, I saw a product on amazon Germany with 3.5 stars, determined from 4 reviews. The reviews were 2x 5 stars and no text, 2x 1 star with reasonable reviews IMHO (and a high number of 'Users rated this review useful').

Still, amazon weights the 5-star no text reviews higher to arrive at 3.5 stars.

(The product now has 7 reviews with at least 3x 1 star text reviews and the weighting still favors the no-text 4/5 star ratings: [1])

[1] https://smile.amazon.de/Lego-Technic-42125-Ferrari-Corse/pro...

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

#313

Post by nomeddie »

asxd wrote: post #243
spoonjim wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if their solution results in Amazon making less money, it will never ship.

I’d like to believe that they truly see the long term financial value of building more customer trust, but I can see this being a bit of a back burner project due to short term losses

They build the customer trust by taking financial hits - if you’ve been a long time prime customer they are good at refunding the purchase when you aren’t happy. It doesn’t protect others from ordering the same bad widget but you are at least satisfied not to make it a bigger issue.

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

#314

Post by xxs »

lordnacho wrote: post #251
kioleanu wrote: post #182

Amazon has a problem with fake reviews and it seems they are ok with it. I bought a replacement screen from Amazon and it wasn’t working properly. I thought I did something wrong so I contacted the seller/manufacturer and they told: oh yeah, it‘s defective, we‘ll just give you your money back. I agreed and then the person said „cool, now in order to process your request, please click these buttons on Amazon” and they…

As an economics grad, I always wondered why online reviews existed at all. There's no skin in the game for anyone. If your neighbor recommends you a crap lawnmower, he'll have to explain to you why he thought it was good. You can ask him questions and compare his motivations to yours. He'll also end up living next to a badly mowed lawn if he doesn't put some work into it. The seller has every reason to pay people to…

>skin in the game

I do write/have written reviews, incl. tear down pictures for some products as I'd be happy if I find similar approach/reviews.

Normally I read only 3 and 4 star reviews, or the ones that have disassembly pictures and seem to have been written by coherent people. It's a slow process, unfortunately but it does help with selection.

EU (and the UK) have 2y of mandatory warranty and 2weeks free returns, so the fake reviews are not so prominent.

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

#315

Post by vidarh »

lordnacho wrote: post #251
kioleanu wrote: post #182

Amazon has a problem with fake reviews and it seems they are ok with it. I bought a replacement screen from Amazon and it wasn’t working properly. I thought I did something wrong so I contacted the seller/manufacturer and they told: oh yeah, it‘s defective, we‘ll just give you your money back. I agreed and then the person said „cool, now in order to process your request, please click these buttons on Amazon” and they…

As an economics grad, I always wondered why online reviews existed at all. There's no skin in the game for anyone. If your neighbor recommends you a crap lawnmower, he'll have to explain to you why he thought it was good. You can ask him questions and compare his motivations to yours. He'll also end up living next to a badly mowed lawn if he doesn't put some work into it. The seller has every reason to pay people to…

I leave reviews for two reasons: To reward a seller when I really like something, and to punish a seller when I really hate something. Rarely in between.

Well written reviews are a common good, and there is good reason to believe that leaving reviews encourages others to do the same, and that helps me, so I do it.

Yes, I know there'll be fake reviews, but most of the time they are pretty easy to spot.

Not least because the reviews that swing things for me -- both towards buying and away from it -- are the negative reviews.

Most of the obvious fake ones are good reviews, but I'm usually more concerned about what the worst thing someone has to say about a product. If someone posts about a printer that it doesn't work with Linux, I won't buy it (at least not without double-checking and verifying that said reviewers info is outdated) no matter how many positive reviews there are. Meanwhile, if I can't find any negative reviews complaining about things I care about it will often convince me to buy.

That is a lot harder to game than getting a bunch of people to write that they love the product.

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

#316

Post by ycombinete »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #238
ycombinete wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is even a counterfeit book problem on Amazon

A big one. I used to spend a lot of money on textbook-grade books from Amazon, but I've mostly stopped now. There's a veritable deluge of people reporting getting copies that are obviously Xeroxed, or photo scanned and printed on cheap paper. It's just not worth the risk.

I'm not surprised! The price of text-books is such that even getting one or two sales out of an account could make a counterfieter decent money

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

#317

Post by gwd »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #298
gwd wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how about this: 1. Add a way to report solicitations for fake reviews. Ban companies that pay for fake reviews for a year and all their reviews above 3 stars are removed. Customers who report requests for fake reviews are given a small bonus; maybe a $5 credit or something. 2. Amazon themselves pretend to be sellers and solicit fake reviews from customers. If a customer reports the request for a fake review, they'…

The one with the customers won't work because creating a new account is trivial. Actually, I think so is creating a new company to sell stuff on Amazon. Mind you, if your company is kicked off Marketplace, it has to rebuild its reputation and inventory and stuff. But yeah, they should definitely mark companies that pay for reviews as dodgy. I don't think they would ban them - because ANYONE selling stuff on Amazon is…

> The one with the customers won't work because creating a new account is trivial.

Creating a new credit card isn't.

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

#318

Post by agamentium »

newswasboring wrote: post #303
kioleanu wrote: post #182

Amazon has a problem with fake reviews and it seems they are ok with it. I bought a replacement screen from Amazon and it wasn’t working properly. I thought I did something wrong so I contacted the seller/manufacturer and they told: oh yeah, it‘s defective, we‘ll just give you your money back. I agreed and then the person said „cool, now in order to process your request, please click these buttons on Amazon” and they…

> I refused and asked them to process the refund. First they said they can’t process the refund technically without me pressing those buttons and then that their job depends on it. People who are familiar with phone scam baiting will recognize this as a standard scam tactics. First go for the technical play and then emotional one. They can't scream on text so they don't jump to the angry one.

Was gonna say, "their job depends on it" sounds ike something straight out of a Kitboga scam baiting video.

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

#319

Post by behringer »

Meekro wrote: post #179
alasdair_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Amazon sellers openly solicit good reviews with a card included with the purchase promising discounts or gifts for good reviews. This method would just increase that. "We'll pay you $100 if you get chosen and write us a 5-star review" would be a reasonable offer for both buyer and seller.

If I got that offer I would post the 5-star review, claim the $100, and then edit my review to say "They tried to bribe me. 1 star. Photos attached as proof." But you're right, I think that's a legitimate issue. I'm not saying my plan is perfect, but I'm pretty sure it improves on the status quo.

Review deleted. Seller feedback should be posted to the seller page.

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

#320

Post by vidarh »

lordnacho wrote: post #268
gwd wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal experience with Amazon is that it's the shop to go to for stuff that is ok if it is broken. If I buy a cable for £10, and there's a 10% chance it's faulty, it's not a huge problem for me. I'm rather surprised at that, from someone who claims to be an economic grad. First of all, you must realize that that 10% isn't stable: the "Market for Lemons" effect will guarantee that if nothing is done to stop it,…

But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it's broken, it takes 5 seconds, plus I can just buy two and be 99% sure I have one that works. Akerlöf doesn't seem to apply here, there's no hidden information that comes out later. With a car there's all sorts of dimensions to it that might annoy you. Perhaps the idea is that all cables will go to crap eventually, but my detection cost is also fairly low on that. Ad…

> there's no hidden information that comes out later

Sure there is: How well a cable handles being bent, and whether or not it catches fire... Cables and especially chargers are some of the products I'm most cautious about buying from sellers I'm not confident about exactly for that reason.

(not that origin is sufficient - the one charger I have had that got closest to setting the house on fire was a genuine Apple charger [many many years ago, they had a design flaw with a too-short sleeve on the cable on the early Macbook chargers; it'd bend and short and melt])

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