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Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

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Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#151

Post by beamatronic »

cstejerean wrote: post #37
IAmGraydon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a pr…

Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product. Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two…

For something like hiking poles, I really recommend REI. It may cost a bit more but you get higher quality materials and great customer support.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#152

Post by dmitriy_ko »

Nition wrote: post #146
chrissnell wrote: post #114

I've been burned multiple times by this; the worst was a pair of remote control off-road trucks for my sons' Christmas presents. They had hundreds of 5-star reviews and both units worked for maybe 5 minutes each. Within days of Christmas, the listing was flooded with 1-star reviews from other conned parents with very similar stories. The number of products impacted must be far over the 1% claimed. There are whole cat…

Does Amazon accept these faulty items back and refund the customers if they ask? Do they pay the return shipping cost? Assuming yes, surely this is costing them a lot as well.

Amazon accepts returns for 30 days and pays for shipping if you select "Item defective or doesn't work" for your return reason. However, that kind of con may still be very profitable for merchant since many buyers won't bother returning. 1. Pay for couple hundred 5-star reviews before Christmas 2. Get tens of thousands of orders 3. Send people cheap defective items that costs 1/10 of price to manufacture 4. Profit! Even if 80% of buyers return, it could still be profitable.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#153

Post by felix_nagaand »

dmitriy_ko wrote: post #152
Nition wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Amazon accept these faulty items back and refund the customers if they ask? Do they pay the return shipping cost? Assuming yes, surely this is costing them a lot as well.

Amazon accepts returns for 30 days and pays for shipping if you select "Item defective or doesn't work" for your return reason. However, that kind of con may still be very profitable for merchant since many buyers won't bother returning. 1. Pay for couple hundred 5-star reviews before Christmas 2. Get tens of thousands of orders 3. Send people cheap defective items that costs 1/10 of price to manufacture 4. Profit! E…

The seller can also just hit and run leaving Amazon with the losses.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#154

Post by 1024core »

Anecdata, sample size 1.

I bought some toy for a toddler. Upon receiving it, I realized that the description was misleading; many of the "pieces" they had listed boldly were just cheap plastic pieces of crap that had no useful functionality.

So I returned it, and wrote a 1-star review.

A few weeks later, I got an email from them: they were offering $30 if I took down the review. I ignored the email.

Several weeks later, another email: this time offering $40.

And so on.

Their latest email is offering me $70 to take down the review. I still haven't.

I'd forward the email to Amazon if (a) I knew they'd do something, and, more importantly, (b) I knew WHERE to send it!

Basically, Amazon has no interest in making sure that the reviews are not being gamed. Since the email goes through Amazon servers, they should be able to at least make an attempt at catching such people!

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#155

Post by lucb1e »

ashelmire wrote: post #88

"Our approximation is that less than 1 percent of reviews are inauthentic" Get the hell outta here. Look at literally any product and you'll see a plethora of obviously fake reviews. The worst I've noticed? Check out headphones. 500+ 5 star reviews for cheap Chinese products all over the place. In fact, anything that's around 500 5 star reviews is probably mostly fake reviews.

Couldn't it be that 1% is fake site-wide, but that for some products, 85% of 600 reviews might be fake? If I were Amazon and would want to downplay the issue, I would certainly quote the site-wide figure when the fake-review-posters are only paid to hype a couple of products.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#156

Post by lucb1e »

cstejerean wrote: post #37
IAmGraydon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a pr…

Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product. Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two…

> it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent [bathroom scale]

Maybe it's different in the USA, but when I needed a bathroom scale for our new apartment I went over to the store and bought the first one they had. If I would have come home and it wouldn't have worked, I'd have gone back and had either gotten repair under warranty or cash back (if they don't want to repair it, you can rescind the purchase). Took maybe 20 minutes. Ordering online would be quicker in terms of buying, but I would have to stay home to receive the package, and if something is wrong, I have to ship it back and get the money back for shipping, plus wait for them shipping a new one... Wouldn't buying from a physical store be easier than looking through hundreds of reviews, both in terms of time as well as in terms of mental effort?

I understand it's just an example and this doesn't apply to everything, but I do hear that in the USA, people order everything from Amazon instead of walking over to the store. I just can't imagine staying home for packages all the time, let alone trying to spot fake reviews for simple things like scales (of any kind), microwaves, etc. They are simple things with simple features (e.g. microwave: power, size, and whether it revolves) that I don't need reviews for. If it doesn't work as expected, also if it breaks after three years of light and correct usage, I'd get warranty (assuming the expectation that a microwave lasts a decade is not wildly off).

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#157

Post by kurthr »

Waterluvian wrote: post #140
monocularvision wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Toys R Us Um, I have some bad news for you.

They seem to be strong here in Canada. I hope that lasts. Walmart is the only other option and it's not really an enjoyable experience.

Hilariously, ToysRUs are still big in China. Lots of kids and parents shopping. How did the vultures only get the US stores?

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#158

Post by sasaf5 »

I find that even books are plagued with this issue. Some obscure technical books selling for more than 80$ will come in a very poor quality print, like they had been printed from a scan. Clearly the book has ran out of original prints, and somewhere they print it cheaply just to make the sell.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#159

Post by CodeCube »

I'm honestly starting to believe that the "wisdom of the crowds" that so many startups and businesses rely on to reach "internet scale", is exactly the wrong approach. Between recommendation algorithms that can be gamed, content that can be paid for, and social media sentiment that can prove to be entirely manufactured, we need to come up with a new paradigm for our products (where "our" is the tech industry at large).

The days of allowing what are essentially anonymous sources to dictate what we do, where we go, what we buy, and how we think are coming to an end.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#160

Post by lucb1e »

1024core wrote: post #154

Anecdata, sample size 1. I bought some toy for a toddler. Upon receiving it, I realized that the description was misleading; many of the "pieces" they had listed boldly were just cheap plastic pieces of crap that had no useful functionality. So I returned it, and wrote a 1-star review. A few weeks later, I got an email from them: they were offering $30 if I took down the review. I ignored the email. Several weeks lat…

Holy crap, $70 to remove a review. I'm pretty sure one could find a law under which it's illegal to offer relatively large incentives to silence negative publications.

By the way, care to link the product so I can write a couple 1-star reviews as well? /s

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