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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

#331

Post by jp555 »

gwd wrote: post #262
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…

> 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,…

"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, that 10% will become 90%."

Are you sure? Is this ergodic? Does the ensemble average predict the time-series average?

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

#332

Post by Chris2048 »

xxs wrote: post #323
lordnacho wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sleeve…

"find out if it's broken" isn't the same thing as cable properties/quality.

If the cable fails to carry a signal, or fails to do so without interference, it should be pretty easy to determine this. Failure to do this would make it "faulty".

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

#333

Post by eythian »

Semaphor wrote: post #156
ibraheemdev wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better idea: Only verified buyers who have been on Amazon for X amount of time (or some other process to gain trust) should be allowed to leave reviews.

I never experienced it myself, but I’ve seen reviews claiming they had a letter in their package that they’d get X currency if they leave a 5-star-review.

Sorta similar but different, I left a 3 star review for something (cheap headphones that were OK but not great), and got a few emails after it offering me credit etc. if I changed it to a 5 star review.

I didn't, but did report it to Amazon (no idea if they cared at all.)

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

#334

Post by permo-w »

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"…

If you look at the review average, Amazon skews the numbers anyway. It’s a weighted average.

If they sorted this out and the average reviews started to drop, they could very easily adjust this algorithm and never tell anyone and they’d be fine. I don’t think this is the problem

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

#335

Post by thrwy0000 »

matkoniecz wrote: post #257
retsibsi wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply resulted in everyone adapting to 5 = slightly above average, 4.9 = average, 4.8 = run away screaming. Just out of curiosity from someone who doesn't use Uber, is this an exaggeration or meant pretty much literally? (Not with regard to running away screaming... but is 4.8 genuinely a terrible score?)

"Uber tells drivers online. “If your rating over the most recent 100 trips is below a 4.6, your profile may be at risk of deactivation.”" from https://qz.com/1038285/uber-will-make-riders-explain-when-th... (citation is dead - not sure where Uber keeps this info now and is it even public)

The archived citation: https://web.archive.org/web/20170225191129/https://www.uber....

Another quote from that:

"If your average rating falls below a 4.3 after your first 25 trips, your profile will be deactivated and you will need to take a quality improvement course in order to be considered for reactivation."

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

#336

Post by peanutcracker »

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…

Why trust the negative reviews? I'm sure it is common to try to hurt the competition by leaving fake negative reviews. If a company is willing to buy positive reviews, why would they stop at buying negative reviews?

Worse, that way you would end up avoiding the "fair players" who don't leave fake negative reviews with the competition.

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

#338

Post by mtberatwork »

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.

This must be some kind of common sales technique then perhaps because I recently experienced this same playbook at a car dealership with the sales manager. After pulling out technical arguments as to why they couldn't do the price we agreed upon over email anymore, they went the emotional route and bluntly told me that I was hurting the well-being and livelihood of the sales person I was dealing with by not accepting their higher offer. I came in ready to purchase, but at that point, I exited as quickly as possible. This was supposedly a reputable dealership for a major car brand.

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

#339

Post by fmajid »

gwd wrote: post #262
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…

> 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,…

Amazon has a huge counterfeit goods problem, and buying from Amazon itself as opposed to a third-party merchant on the Amazon platform is no guarantee, because of their "commingled stickerless inventory" program.

Apple accessories in particular are heavily counterfeited, I'd bought some USB-Ethernet adapters for a meeting room with too much WiFi interference. They seemed to work fine then I got a new Mac and it refused to recognize the adapters, and they appeared with weird Chinese characters in System Profiler. On careful inspection, they turned out to be fakes, but highly convincing ones. Amazon refunded me, but the distinct impression I got was they don't care as long as they get the money from a sale, and refunds for the few customers who do complain are just a cost of doing business.

https://blog.majid.info/amazon-counterfeits/

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

#340

Post by vidarh »

peanutcracker wrote: post #336
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…

Why trust the negative reviews? I'm sure it is common to try to hurt the competition by leaving fake negative reviews. If a company is willing to buy positive reviews, why would they stop at buying negative reviews? Worse, that way you would end up avoiding the "fair players" who don't leave fake negative reviews with the competition.

Because it has worked fine in avoiding bad products so far, and while it would suck for fair players to lose my business, as long as I avoid bad products that is what matters most to me as a buyer.
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