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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

#321

Post by nkrisc »

vidarh wrote: post #315
lordnacho wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becau…

You make good points, but on Amazon I just have to assume that all the reviews are fake. I've seen how easy it is to buy fake reviews, the lengths sellers go to get people to leave only 5-star reviews, and Amazon's inability or unwillingness to do anything about it.

Why do you think any of the reviews on Amazon are real? I think any random review you pull up is more likely than not to be fake. Of course, we can't know for sure, but Amazon has simply lost my trust.

I no longer believe any of the reviews on Amazon are real, and Amazon will have to prove to me they are before I ever trust a review on that site.

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

#322

Post by onion2k »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #92
harry8 wrote: post #30

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"…

Considering that after almost 25 years there is still no functionality for reporting listings as being fraudulent or counterfeit, that tells you exactly where amazon's priorities lie.

As soon as they implement that feature they'll be swamped with reports on every product regardless of whether it's fake or not. Rival sellers will use it to try to monopolise a product, annoyed customers will use it to take revenge on genuine sellers, and occasionally people will report an actual fake. Unless it's much better than a simple report function it won't work.

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

#323

Post by xxs »

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…

>But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it's broken, it takes 5 seconds

This is so incredible false, cable quality varies greatly:

- wires, gauge and material. Copper is expensive and some cheat using aluminum or Al plated copper. Gold plated terminals, tinned copper, etc.

- wire material and single/multi strand determines resistance and current rating, along with loses in the cable.

- insulation and sleeves can be made from different materials with a lot of properties, incl. max temperature, flame retardant and so on: pvc - cheap, rubber - expensive, nylon/polyamid - expensive, silicon - very expensive.

And that just touches the basics...

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

#324

Post by b112 »

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…

But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it's broken

5 seconds?!

Poor assumption. You're presuming this is "only the types of cables you buy". Many times I buy cables to do things with devices, for which I have no working cable already.

Examples:

* My device stops syncing with my cable. Is it the device, or the cable? I buy a replacement cable, just in case.

Replacement cable doesn't work. Now I think it's probably the device.

I spent time here, checking to see what's changed, maybe an update, maybe a config setting, maybe something else. Or, is the device just broken? Do I send it away for repair?

* I want a cable to use with something I've had for years. Lots and lots and lots of examples here, all sorts of devices, like serial cables to debug with routers/switches, test cables, even just an ethernet cable, if you may not have had one before.

Now you test, and you can't tell. Is the port on the device bad? The settings you are using to connect? The device firmware? A problem with the port on the computer you're using to connect to the device?

Hours and hours wasted.

Worse, you advocate buying two. Great. This means that no matter what, I'm returning that spare cable. Now it's not '5 seconds' to determine it is bad, it's 'no matter what, I'm spending 20 minutes returning something I never wanted to begin with".

Frankly, I'd rather spend $10 extra on some types/classes of $20 cable, to have it pre-tested even.

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

#325

Post by OakNinja »

There’s no point in more than two or possible three different scores:

Don’t recommend - Do recommend

or

Don’t recommend - Neutral - Do recommend

It’s rather silly when you rate an app with four out of five stars only to get a “Why didn’t you like our app?” question. And, as an app maker, anything other than a five star review feels like a punch in the face.

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

#326

Post by alangibson »

cycomanic wrote: post #185
mxcrossb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is basically my last resort these days. Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic means there are times where I can’t justifying going out to buy something. But I wonder if they’ll be taking a bigger than expected hit once things clear up.

Maybe there is a big difference between the US and Europe, but here the only things I can't find anywhere but amazon are typically the cheap Chinese knockoff things (e.g. new cushions for my bose headphones), for everything else there always is a cheaper solution by going with one of the smaller online retailer. That way I don't have to go through the horrendous amazon interface, which I have the impression tries to…

Even here in Europe, Amazon still has the monster competitive advantage of Prime. If not for that, I would probably be buying all my gear from Saturn, Mediamarkt, etc.

It's also worth nothing that European Amazon has waaaay less stuff available in general than US Amazon.

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

#328

Post by mrighele »

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #302
mrighele wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you seriously get them when buying from Amazon itself Does it matter ? I go to amazon.com, I give my money to Amazon, I receive a package from Amazon, so for me (and the average user) the one selling me a counterfeit is Amazon.

> Does it matter ? If you can't do the due diligence of even reading the one word that declares from whom you're buying then yes, it matters, it is your fault to be that careless.

> If you can't do the due diligence of even reading the one word that declares from whom you're buying

I'm buying from Amazon. From my point of view the other company is not more than a supplier.

If I am the one at fault is not really the point. I will learn my lesson and shop elsewhere, in the end it is Amazon that suffers: if I shop from a big brand's website I expect them to be the ones to do the job of filtering out the crap, not me.

(And this is not even taking into account the issues of amazon commingling the inventory and not fighting properly the fake reviews)

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

#329

Post by vidarh »

nkrisc wrote: post #321
vidarh wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becau…

You make good points, but on Amazon I just have to assume that all the reviews are fake. I've seen how easy it is to buy fake reviews, the lengths sellers go to get people to leave only 5-star reviews, and Amazon's inability or unwillingness to do anything about it. Why do you think any of the reviews on Amazon are real? I think any random review you pull up is more likely than not to be fake. Of course, we can't kno…

I think many of the reviews on Amazon are real because a lot of them are negative reviews warning people not to buy the product, and those are generally the ones I look at.

That's harder to game, because while a seller certainly could post a negative review citing some irrelevant flaw (and I have seen that), and hope that triggers buyers who don't care, they won't stop other people (like me) from posting negative reviews too, and what I'm looking for is products with a reasonable number of negative reviews where there is an absence of reviews mentioning things I care about.

I also know first hand from selling a novel on Amazon that you can perfectly well gain honest reviews in ways allowed by Amazon, and I also leave a reasonable number of reviews on Amazon myself, so I have every reason to expect at least a portion of the reviews to be honest.

Overall I've managed to avoid buying anything that appears to have been fake from Amazon, despite having bought a couple of thousand products at Amazon over the years (based on the order page stats, and taking off a few hundred as an estimate of digital only products)

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

#330

Post by gertrunde »

I feel like the fake reviews are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Over the last 5-10 years, Amazon's main shopping website seems to have gone from a reasonably reputable location to an internet cesspool to rival ebay or craigslist.

For example, looking for an item one is presented with a wide variety of almost identical products from a wide variety of almost identical, completely unknown brands, with no trust or confidence in any of them.

Now obviously, these brands/products are most likely nothing to do with Amazon, they're just using Amazon as their storefront, and sometimes fulfilment, but it still reflects upon Amazon, and ultimately taints their brand with the same brush.

Maybe Amazon makes more money in this way, by taking a cut of this flow through various service fees, but for me it makes Amazon less useful to go to when I don't know exactly what I want already, and more often pushes me to go direct to a more trusted source.

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