Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

fullstackeconomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 238 posts

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#101

Post by wheels »

noduerme wrote: post #56

I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that mig…

This has had a significant impact on my buying habits as well. For luxury items, I tend to order them from a large department store chain, which is pricey, but more predictable quality, and for cheap knock offs, I just go to the source and get them from AliExpress for 1/3 the price they are on Amazon. Nowadays, you see almost the exact same stuff there without some rando brand I've never heard of attached to it.

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#102

Post by alpaca128 »

jjav wrote: post #89
noduerme wrote: post #56

I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that mig…

Last summer I bought a new Nikon DSLR from Amazon. Not the type of item where I thought they'd substitute scam items! But when the box arrived, it was an opened box with an old used and abused Nikon DSLR, parts even missing! Wow. At least the return was painless so I guess there's that. I try hard to avoid Amazon now. I prioritize a locally owned store if possible, second option is a reputable specialty web store tha…

> I use Amazon only for books these days since I figure it'll be difficult to substitute a scam item for those

Unfortunately you're wrong, it's a huge problem for books as well. No Starch Press already left Amazon because it was the only way to prevent fakes being sent out to customers buying the genuine book. Fakes including ones where the back cover wasn't printed or everything was printed black & white, low-quality paper etc. As Amazon just mixes fake & genuine products because they say the same thing on the package it's impossible for both sellers and buyers to know what they'll get. You get what the person handling the package will draw next from the pile.

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#103

Post by maeln »

noduerme wrote: post #56

I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that mig…

What start to really annoy me is how it as become almost impossible to buy quality product anymore. And the issue is not even limited to Amazon. Recently, at work, we had to make a bunch of RJ45 cables. So we bought some cable, terminals and a crimper and a tester. The crimper was so horrible, we add to cut and re-crimp new terminals 2-4 times before having a working cable. So we said fuck it, lets go buy another one. Turn out, all the shop around us had only cheap ones in store (And I keep stumbling upon the same issue when I want to buy tools, electronics and sports equipments: You only have a choice between very cheap stuff that will clearly not do the job or won't do it for long, or very expensive (sometimes overpriced) high-end equipment. There is almost no middle ground, no places for product who are not top notch quality with the latest technology, but will do a solid job if you don't need the latest and greatest. There is the second hand market, but it is a hit a miss, and not a reliable supplier either.

And if there is those "middle-ground" product, you often only find them in limited quantity in specialized store, often only on the internet.

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#104

Post by noduerme »

paxys wrote: post #96
noduerme wrote: post #56

I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that mig…

I had predicted a while ago that the end goal for Amazon's retail division will be to sell only Amazon's own goods and services, and I still stand by it. We may not see it for a long time, but let's face it Amazon isn't what it is today because it sells cheap Chinese knockoffs. The real money is in grocery delivery, pharmacy, Prime Video, Kindle, Audible, Fire Tablets, the Echo ecosystem, Ring. They could even start…

This is an interesting and possibly prescient take. They could announce a crackdown tomorrow on all fake sellers and basically sell 2/3rds of the appliances in America themselves overnight. OTOH then they'd be on the hook for the reliability of their products. And that's not been their methodology so far (excluding acquisitions like Whole Foods and Ring). But it's interesting..

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#105

Post by detaro »

nerdjon wrote: post #48
odonnellryan wrote: post #2

If you leave a bad review on a high priced item often you will be contacted and offered a refund for removing the review.

I have been fighting with Amazon on a review for a product I bought and returned for weeks now. The manufacture is trying to bribe me to remove my review (offering me multiple times what I paid for it at this point). I have been trying to update my review to reflect that but it keeps being denied but I am not being told why. It is very frustrating that these companies are able to deceive customers through reviews.

Anything related to the seller is not accepted as part of the product review (which makes some sense in most cases, since one product can be offered by multiple sellers).

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#106

Post by mda »

managerclass wrote: post #38
civilized wrote: post #3

I don't understand what Amazon thinks it's doing with its legions of data scientists, analysts, product managers and engineers that they consider so much more important than solving this problem, which will destroy their reputation long-term and create space for a competitor. At this rate, Amazon will be on its way to becoming Yelp -- untrusted, irrelevant, ultimately deserted.

What do you use as an alternative to Yelp for finding restaurants?

Google maps. Has its flaws, but not bad at all.

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#107

Post by bombela »

nerdjon wrote: post #48
odonnellryan wrote: post #2

If you leave a bad review on a high priced item often you will be contacted and offered a refund for removing the review.

I have been fighting with Amazon on a review for a product I bought and returned for weeks now. The manufacture is trying to bribe me to remove my review (offering me multiple times what I paid for it at this point). I have been trying to update my review to reflect that but it keeps being denied but I am not being told why. It is very frustrating that these companies are able to deceive customers through reviews.

I bought a gaming mouse where the middle button could never be pressed in combinaison with another. It turns out there was a firmware update to fix that. And of course it only runs on MS Windows.

My review stating this was blocked. I made appeal multiple times and Amazon simply ignored me.

Last time I checked the listing had a perfect 5 star rating...

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#108

Post by TuringTest »

jjav wrote: post #89
noduerme wrote: post #56

I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that mig…

Last summer I bought a new Nikon DSLR from Amazon. Not the type of item where I thought they'd substitute scam items! But when the box arrived, it was an opened box with an old used and abused Nikon DSLR, parts even missing! Wow. At least the return was painless so I guess there's that. I try hard to avoid Amazon now. I prioritize a locally owned store if possible, second option is a reputable specialty web store tha…

> I prioritize a locally owned store if possible, second option is a reputable specialty web store that specializes in the kind of item I want.

Serious question, how do you find reputable specialty web stores nowadays? (for items which are not your professional specialty, i.e. when you don't have direct knowledge of the market or trusted contacts that can recommend those for you). Trying to google for items of medium quality, you only get shady reseller shops that are as bad as Amazon third-party market, or worse.

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#109

Post by ggfgg »

jjav wrote: post #89
noduerme wrote: post #56

I wish I could say I stopped buying things off Amazon for ethical reasons, but the truth is, I stopped buying because if you look closely at the reviews, you realize that almost everything for sale there is now a scam or a knock-off. This was a slow creep for awhile, but now the problem has grown exponentially. Amazon is what Canal Street was in the 90s - somewhere to buy fakes, stolen goods, and electronics that mig…

Last summer I bought a new Nikon DSLR from Amazon. Not the type of item where I thought they'd substitute scam items! But when the box arrived, it was an opened box with an old used and abused Nikon DSLR, parts even missing! Wow. At least the return was painless so I guess there's that. I try hard to avoid Amazon now. I prioritize a locally owned store if possible, second option is a reputable specialty web store tha…

To be fair we used to get that a lot in retail stores in the UK. I bought my first DSLR many years ago from a large high street retailer (John Lewis) and was disappointed to find it was used, slightly damaged and carefully repackaged. When confronting them about it they weren’t very interested in making it good. I had to chargeback them with my credit card company. After which they referred it to a debt collector to recover the cost of the goods. The collector told them to go away after being shown the chargeback forms.

The benefit of Amazon is they actually have decent customer service once you’ve navigated the ocean of crap they sell. Really you can’t got to Amazon unless you know exactly what brand and product you’re after already. Once that’s done I’ve never had any problems. In fact some of the “garbage” brands are absolutely fine too.

Re: Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews

#110

Post by cherioo »

robert_tweed wrote: post #97
purplepatrick wrote: post #18

I don’t get why we need to have good ratings and reviews at all. Why not only allow bad ratings (eg a simple thumbs down) and reviews, then run some ML to detect and normalize semantic patterns (“short battery life”), and then word-cloud or summarize those. Users could then sort ratings ascendingly from least number of bad ratings and scan the semantic patterns. Voilà - a functioning ratings and review setup…

Adversarial reviews. The problem isn't just fake positive reviews. The other problem is fake negative reviews left by competitors, which is already a problem on Amazon. Most 1-star reviews are either stupid & irrelevant (it arrived a day late, ONE STAR! and so forth), or fake. I've seen some categories of products with lots of obviously fake reviews claiming safety issues. These were on every single product I could f…

With the amount of money at play, I think return based ranking will pretty quickly result in adversarial return.

The problem is people will do anything for money. Both on the seller side, and on the (fake) buyer/reviewer side.

I recently came across site that's sort of "mechanical turk for scalping", and it was eye opening. IIRC helping to scalp a PS5 would earn 200 in commission.

Post reply on HN