It's probably not perfect, but I use Fakespot https://www.fakespot.com/ >, which gives items on Amazon a rating for review accuracy.
https://www.reviewmeta.com is even better, sadly the owner seems to be on course to sell it.
Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
281–290 of 429 posts
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#282I'm just spitballing, but what do you guys think about this as a fake-resistant review system? To list your product on Amazon as a seller, you pay $500 per year as a "review incentivization fee." The algorithm randomly selects buyers and emails them 1 month after their purchase. They are offered $10 to write a review. The chance of being randomly selected as a reviewer auto-adjusts to target a goal of 50 reviews per…
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Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
One solution as a consumer is to buy from a place you trust. It would be nice if there was a version of Amazon that didn't have 3rd party sellers and only consisted of reputable (verified supply chain) products. Since Amazon is not providing this, one example of a place to shop is Costco in person. Things sold by Costco are generally reliable enough. On top of that, Costco has a generous return policy so I can buy wh…
In the UK we have John Lewis which is a department store with a decent reputation. OK, they are far from perfect, but their product range is curated to the point that when you search for, say, a toaster, you're not overloaded with 1000's of options and their own customer reviews seem to be quite genuine. Anything over £100, I tend to default to John Lewis rather than amazon.
Can confirm, its a shame they stopped delivering to the EU :/
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#284I'm just spitballing, but what do you guys think about this as a fake-resistant review system? To list your product on Amazon as a seller, you pay $500 per year as a "review incentivization fee." The algorithm randomly selects buyers and emails them 1 month after their purchase. They are offered $10 to write a review. The chance of being randomly selected as a reviewer auto-adjusts to target a goal of 50 reviews per…
The only fake-resistant review system is one read by critical people.
The problem the star average is used as the only proxy for quality. Even without fake reviews it's completely meaningless since different people like different things (relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/937/).
When I buy things I look at what people complain about when they dislike the product. Is this electronic badly grounded and gave you an electric shock? I'll look somewhere else. Did you give this gay bar a 1-star review because they didn't let you in with the rest of your hen party? Awesome!
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#285Can accepting reviews only from a verified purchase reduce this kind of fraud?
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#286I'm just spitballing, but what do you guys think about this as a fake-resistant review system? To list your product on Amazon as a seller, you pay $500 per year as a "review incentivization fee." The algorithm randomly selects buyers and emails them 1 month after their purchase. They are offered $10 to write a review. The chance of being randomly selected as a reviewer auto-adjusts to target a goal of 50 reviews per…
Amazon vine?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Vine
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There is even a counterfeit book problem on Amazon
Even the ones that Amazon sells themselves (not "fulfilled by Amazon"): https://twitter.com/nostarch/status/1183095004258099202
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My personal experience with Amazon is that it's the shop to go to for stuff that is ok if it is broken. If I buy a cable for £10, and there's a 10% chance it's faulty, it's not a huge problem for me. I'm rather surprised at that, from someone who claims to be an economic grad. First of all, you must realize that that 10% isn't stable: the "Market for Lemons" effect will guarantee that if nothing is done to stop it,…
But a cable is such a simple item to find out if it's broken, it takes 5 seconds, plus I can just buy two and be 99% sure I have one that works. Akerlöf doesn't seem to apply here, there's no hidden information that comes out later. With a car there's all sorts of dimensions to it that might annoy you. Perhaps the idea is that all cables will go to crap eventually, but my detection cost is also fairly low on that. Ad…
> Akerlöf doesn't seem to apply here, there's no hidden information that comes out later.
The hidden information is how much quality control has gone into the manufacturing process. Seller A and seller B are both selling a cable for $10. Seller A bought thier cables for $8 because they spent a lot of time honing their manufacturing process and weeding out bad cables; the chance of getting a bad cable from them is 0.1%. Seller B bought their cables for $2, because they just went for the absolute cheapest option they could. The chance of getting a bad cable from them is basically 75%. You as someone buying it from Amazon can't tell the difference; so sellers like B make loads more money. Unscrupulous people hear about this and many more sellers like B show up. Sellers like A get frustrated and leave.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#289I hate buying stuff thru amazon.
It's really hard to find what you are looking for and I can't trust it really.
Only upside they have is that their delivery is fast and service is ok (compared to normal retail offering online store)
Can't wait to be able to go somewhere, look at the options and talk to a human.
Online shopping is shit
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#290Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon. Look at all these people who are so happy to be buying stuff on Amazon, so much better than the alternatives. Amazon could clean this up and then watch the average drop. From the removal of the fake fives but also it makes it look more "socially accpetable"…
I don't get why Amazon loves fake five star reviews. It's put me off them completely and I'm no longer a customer. Are you sure that this is accurate?