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The scammer would organize a distributed buy-and-return of their victim's product, which would trigger this flag.
It's complex, but if returns are free and the competitive advantage of the flag is worth it, I could imagine it happening.
Edit: It seems that it is easier now to see the feedback broken down by seller than when I had last used Amazon or I didn't fully understand how it worked previously. Will these be separated by seller? Last I checked there was no way to review a seller on Amazon (or if there was, it was so well hidden that a week of effort and calling customer support only got me a refund). Rather Amazon lets you review "products". G…
I had this come up recently, the issue is that it seems that products with multiple "styles" will show the same alert across all "styles". The problem is that often times the "styles" may be significantly different products, in my case they were monitors with extremely different specs all from the same manufacturer.
This is probably not the correct use of the "styles" feature on Amazon in the first place. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm betting Amazon would prefer items with different specs to be different listings, with styles being limited to differences like color, finish, etc.
I don't get they don't crack down on the product switcheroo scam [0] - it seems like a trivial problem to solve. I've reported items to them before and they don't care. [0] this product for example, loads of the reviews are for something totally different - https://www.amazon.co.uk/WERPOWER-Windscreen-Invisible-Winds...
I suspect the switcheroo scam is somehow profitable or desirable to Amazon and there is no end to the number of shoelaces they will trip over or tangents they will chase on the path to confronting it.
Namely, products from randomly named companies, or companies that claim to be American but it their address is a warehouse and their Internet presence is hosted on Alibaba Cloud.
Most of what they sell is toxic, like PVC figures for children cakes, toxic kitchenware, counterfeit refrigerator filters and other magnets for penny pinchers.
It is almost as if they were intentionally trying to poison people.
Most of the furniture sold by Chinese vendors and their intermediaries are so toxic that fucking HCHO meters max out when you open the box. Including kids furniture.
Sneaky fucks should all go to jail.
I would much rather prefer buying products from countries with real customer protection, real compliance with regulations with real consequences when someone gets sick from a non-compliant product.
I don't get they don't crack down on the product switcheroo scam [0] - it seems like a trivial problem to solve. I've reported items to them before and they don't care. [0] this product for example, loads of the reviews are for something totally different - https://www.amazon.co.uk/WERPOWER-Windscreen-Invisible-Winds...
How is it trivial to solve? They either need to prevent sellers from modifying product pages (which would be a disaster because any mistakes could no longer be fixed without losing all reviews) or gate it behind human intervention(slow) /algorithm (complex). There's nothing trivial about the issue.
That’s not going to solve the issues of fake/paid for reviews however. I think there is a market for a store selling only vetted products they have reviewed themselves.
I don't get they don't crack down on the product switcheroo scam [0] - it seems like a trivial problem to solve. I've reported items to them before and they don't care. [0] this product for example, loads of the reviews are for something totally different - https://www.amazon.co.uk/WERPOWER-Windscreen-Invisible-Winds...
How is it trivial to solve? They either need to prevent sellers from modifying product pages (which would be a disaster because any mistakes could no longer be fixed without losing all reviews) or gate it behind human intervention(slow) /algorithm (complex). There's nothing trivial about the issue.
Amazon can make the "New Product" show up for queries for the older one, but without the stellar reviews. This way modified products still get good exposure and no one will accidentally buy the old one. But there aren't reviews on the same page for a different product. The system can still be gamed similarly, but at least you can't get reviews for the wrong product on the same page.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it trivial to solve? They either need to prevent sellers from modifying product pages (which would be a disaster because any mistakes could no longer be fixed without losing all reviews) or gate it behind human intervention(slow) /algorithm (complex). There's nothing trivial about the issue.
Trivial is an overstatement, but the solution space is far broader than the two options you propose. I can think of one off the top of my head: Give each listing a change score, where changing a description is a point, changing a photo is a point, perhaps changing categories is 2 or 3 points… At a certain threshold of points (tweaked over time to calibrate against false positives) the listing is flagged for human rev…
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/11q8mjw/i_got...
The craziest scam I saw on Amazon was ordering an expensive GPU > people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken one. Unsuspecting regular Joe will order the returned GPU ("open box deal!") and they get a fake one. And now you have to fight against the Amazon customer service too. It's incredible. Amazon is basically a "premium" Wish/Aliexpress nowadays. Might as well I order from China becuase I at l…
> people change the card's backplate and return a cheaper/broken one People really have to ruin everything