Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by piyh » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

gertrunde wrote: post #330

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 confid…

At least with ebay the items are cheaper and I know I'm buying bottom of the barrel stuff.

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

#362

Post by batterylow » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #350

SilkRoadie wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort reviews by new. It’s amazing how many “5 star” items have an average of 2-3 stars when you look at the latest reviews. I was looking for some L plates for my car. A lot of reviews called them “beautiful”... it is a white square with a letter L that sticks to your car... trying to find one which didn’t fall off or damage the car was far from trivial. Fortunately newer reviews mentioned damage or falling off or do…

I love that Steam shows an average of recent reviews. I think it’s very telling that Amazon does not.

I thought the reason Steam had "recent reviews" was to account for patches/updates and so on?

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

#363

Post by Jeff_Brown » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

Do you not have to have bought the item in order to leave a review? If you do, then fake reviews should not be economical for anything sufficiently expensive -- judging from the article, maybe $20 or so.

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

#364

Post by fatfox » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

random5634 wrote: post #18

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.

No kidding. What's interesting is the Chinese companies are actually getting better at this. It's usually multi-part. * Post a meaningful deposit / security to list, more if you list more. * Pretty involved complaint resolution process and tracking inventory by actual seller (no comingled inventory). * Product spot checks by platform itself for stuff that sells a better * Product spot checks let you also pick up the…

Which Chinese platform runs all these checks? Really curious as I don't have much experience with selling on Chinese platforms.

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

#365

Post by tim333 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

Catsandkites wrote: post #277

tim333 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... honesty is expensive and cheating is cheap. Why would we trust it? Most people are well meaning and as long as the site isn't flooded with fakes it can work ok.

Are they really though? I know a lot of some people, who would consider themselves "well meaning" (fair, honest, just, whatever) and they totally do this all the time. When you combine the actually bad people with those people, isn't 30-40% of the population constantly fucking with the system? See also: Democracy. App store reviews. The soundscape. Climate change. Etc.

I'd guess about 99% are basically ok with reviews. The trouble is if only 5% of those bother reviewing and 1% of the bad ones post a bunch of fakes.

Incidentally I use argos.co.uk a bit and have found the reviews there always ok so far. Maybe Argos polices it or that crowd doesn't bother faking? It's different from Amazon in that there are no independent sellers so the only people motivated to fake would be the manufacturers.

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

#366

Post by zbuf » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

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…

These days, if I want an honest appraisal of a product then I prefix the search with "reddit" not "review".

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

#367

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

The problem with fake reviews is that it creates a truly negative customer experience. I am not sure why Amazon who is "obsessed with the customer" does not see this. All I can think of is that there are two customers here, the 3rd party seller and the end retail customer. I guess the 3rd party retailer is higher value. The only way I could see there being a feedback loop is if 3rd party returns take off.

Fake reviews will be the death of Amazon if Target/Walmart and others can get their act together.

With respect to charging cables, I can buy the same crappy ones at Ace Hardware that I buy on Amazon basically. Ace picks one crappy vendor but Amazon has 100+ of them. The only high quality ones I've found are anker, monoprice and Apple.

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

#368

Post by sjg007 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

mtberatwork wrote: post #338

newswasboring wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The counter is that your hurting my family etc... but I agree best to leave.

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

#369

Post by tstrimple » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

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…

Five star garbage sells better than two star garbage. There is absolutely zero incentive for Amazon to fix this.

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

#370

Post by Balgair » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

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?

As a little experiment for other HN readers out there, try this:

Pick out a few random words here: https://www.randomlists.com/random-words . Put those few random words into Amazon's search bar and then order the list from most to least expensive. Then scroll down a bit. This should give you a pretty good selection of a random set of 'real' items. Do this, say, 3-4 times to get ~10 random items not influenced by your search history (presumably). Open them up in new tabs for easier organization. Now, go into a few of those items and try to say that they are 100% not 'fraudulent'.

How many could you get through before you gave up in frustration? Personally I got to about 5 before I gave up trying to determine if they were junk or not.