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The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#31

Post by crazygringo »

tivert wrote: post #29
crazygringo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I guess I realize I'm talking about items that people are actually buying -- those show 1, 0, and 2 reviews. Just because when a product has virtually no reviews, the price is often temporarily crazy cheap (including on Amazon) as they're just trying to get people to buy and review it in the first place. Or it's basically a scam listing with a crazy high price so nobody's touching it except for a few people w…

> Thanks. I guess I realize I'm talking about items that people are actually buying -- those show 1, 0, and 2 reviews. IIRC, AliExpress lists items by "shop," and it honestly it doesn't seem like the listings last very long for stuff like this. I have no reason to believe any one of them are "better," so I just buy from the cheapest one. Even for Amazon listings for stuff like this, the listing come and go. For that…

Oh interesting. And thanks so much, now I see what you mean -- yeah that's a very popular Amazon product so it's definitely a "real price".

I'll have to keep an eye out now -- maybe it's more about cheap electronics? The products I've usually been comparing have usually been more home/office/kitchen type stuff.

Thanks again!

Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#32

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

crazygringo wrote: post #30
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's a popular product and I find it quite weird to acknowledge in one breath that positive reviews have been paid for while also assuming in the next that a product with many reviews is popular and hasn't just acquired the mass of its reviews fraudulently. What steps are involved in determining legitimate popularity?

I don't get your point. Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month". On top of category rankings like "#3 in iPad stands". It's easy to tell if it's popular or not, if it's something people are actively buying. If a product is bad, some of those people will be leaving negative reviews, regardless of the number of paid reviews. Does that make sense? Zero weird about it.

> Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month"

Yeah, about that. People buy fake purchases for verified reviews too. The scam is a lot bigger than just spinning up dummy accounts. They make fake purchases, sometimes even ship empty boxes, and then switch the listing after a month when purchases are accumulated. You have no way to know that those "400 people" were actually 400 real human customers and not 400 fraudulent sales or how many months a particular listing has been consistent for without being switched.

There are tons of websites, forums, and facebook groups all for doing this. I originally had linked some, but I don't actually want to drive traffic to them, so you can google or dig on facebook for "verified amazon reviews".

And then when a person does leave a negative review, the seller contacts them and says "We'll refund you your money and send you a new one free if you take the review down." And they almost always either take their negative review down in exchange for the refund and free shitty item, because free is free, or update their review to complain about getting the offer, in which case Amazon itself takes the review down for being off topic.

Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#33

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #26
yunwal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. This has to be a joke, right? It’s nearly impossible to filter by legitimate unpaid-human reviews on Amazon.

Of course it's not a joke. It's easy to filter for only negative reviews, and obviously none of the negative reviews are paid. If it's a popular product and all the negative reviews are dumb complaints about shipping speed, the product is probably fine. If all the negative reviews are about how the handle snaps off by the third time you use it, then don't buy it. It doesn't matter how many paid 5-star reviews there a…

[deleted]

Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#34

Post by crazygringo »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #32
crazygringo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get your point. Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month". On top of category rankings like "#3 in iPad stands". It's easy to tell if it's popular or not, if it's something people are actively buying. If a product is bad, some of those people will be leaving negative reviews, regardless of the number of paid reviews. Does that make sense? Zero weird about it.

> Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month" Yeah, about that. People buy fake purchases for verified reviews too. The scam is a lot bigger than just spinning up dummy accounts. They make fake purchases, sometimes even ship empty boxes, and then switch the listing after a month when purchases are accumulated. You have no way to know that those "400 people" were actually 400 rea…

A product that has been listed for 1 or 2 years, that's highly ranked in sales, with a ton of reviews all over the spectrum, is genuinely and legitimately popular. End of story.

I don't care if they got 100 fake reviews via 100 fake purchases at first. If you're a human with a reasonably functioning BS detector, you can figure it out. It's not exactly rocket science.

Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#35

Post by yunwal »

crazygringo wrote: post #34
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month" Yeah, about that. People buy fake purchases for verified reviews too. The scam is a lot bigger than just spinning up dummy accounts. They make fake purchases, sometimes even ship empty boxes, and then switch the listing after a month when purchases are accumulated. You have no way to know that those "400 people" were actually 400 rea…

A product that has been listed for 1 or 2 years, that's highly ranked in sales, with a ton of reviews all over the spectrum, is genuinely and legitimately popular. End of story. I don't care if they got 100 fake reviews via 100 fake purchases at first. If you're a human with a reasonably functioning BS detector, you can figure it out. It's not exactly rocket science.

> A product that has been listed for 1 or 2 years

No way to filter on this. Also, sellers "edit" (read: completely change) their items all the time.

> highly ranked in sales

Faked all the time

> a ton of reviews all over the spectrum

Faked all the time. Yes, people pay for a few negative/middling reviews sprinkled in for exactly this purpose. Generally, reviews follow a few common statistical distributions, and sellers pay to match those distributions.

There is literally no purpose in looking at any aggregation of amazon reviews. You can likely read an individual review and tell if it's real, but that's about it.

Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#36

Post by marklubi »

crazygringo wrote: post #20
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!

I know it's funny and a whole trope to say that, but in my experience they're not. On the whole, they do their job just as well as anything else. After all, most of your name-brand stuff is coming from the same types of factories in China anyways. And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. Just like you should with any product you're considering purchasing. Now grante…

Personally, I like to look at the 2-star reviews to see if something is junk or not. 1-star is usually a reactionary rating with little/no thought.

I don't trust most 1-star reviews, they're effectively saying "it couldn't possibly be worse" even though that's probably not the case. It's just an emotional review.

Re: The Best Thing About Amazon Was Never Going to Last

#37

Post by crazygringo »

yunwal wrote: post #35
crazygringo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A product that has been listed for 1 or 2 years, that's highly ranked in sales, with a ton of reviews all over the spectrum, is genuinely and legitimately popular. End of story. I don't care if they got 100 fake reviews via 100 fake purchases at first. If you're a human with a reasonably functioning BS detector, you can figure it out. It's not exactly rocket science.

> A product that has been listed for 1 or 2 years No way to filter on this. Also, sellers "edit" (read: completely change) their items all the time. > highly ranked in sales Faked all the time > a ton of reviews all over the spectrum Faked all the time. Yes, people pay for a few negative/middling reviews sprinkled in for exactly this purpose. Generally, reviews follow a few common statistical distributions, and selle…

Your argument makes as much sense as saying there is "literally no purpose" in reading books because authors can lie. You're missing the big picture which is that it all works pretty fine if you have a decent BS detector.

> No way to filter on this.

Who cares? Most listings showing in search results have been around for a while, and you check the date on each listing

> Also, sellers "edit" (read: completely change) their items all the time

No they don't. It happens occasionally, and it's quite clear that pre-existing top reviews are talking about a totally different item

> Faked all the time

You can't fake sales rankings for any substantial length of time, it would destroy all of your profit on the item and then some

The truth is that while it can be economical for sellers to pay for some reviews/purchases at first to get a product listing off the ground, it can't be sustained. And listings can be switched to other products, but that's generally extremely obvious because the reviews and photos are for something entirely different.

In the end, it's just not a problem if you pay attention at all.

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