31–40 of 499 posts
I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…
Meanwhile the cards that offer rewards for a 5 star review remain pretty common....
I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…
I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…
Or they got penalized, and have stopped doing it. There is now way as outsiders we can tell what's going on. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that a single reported case is going to result in visible action. (competitors/griefers can easily abuse this).
In this case it's quite reasonable to expect prompt, visible action. The grefier problem is easily solved with a modicum of due diligence by Amazon. All it has to do is conduct an investigation to confirm the complaint, which is as easy as ordering the item in question and confirming it contains the offer reported by a single customer.
If it's too onerous for Amazon to spend $20 our of its billions to conduct and investigation, it could even write in terms to its contracts saying it reserves the right to inspect any seller inventory for compliance.
Product reviews are only for reviewing the product, not the shipping, or the seller's practices. There are other ways to report this to Amazon, and you can report it to the FTC
I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…
Seems similar to how hackernews doesn't allow calling people "paid shills". The review doesn't have any evidence or proof attached. Perhaps reporting the seller to Amazon is a better approach.
I got the same kind of card ordering a laptop charger earlier this year. Tried to report it to Amazon. Got back a canned response telling me to report individual reviews. Amazon doesn't care.
Product reviews are only for reviewing the product, not the shipping, or the seller's practices. There are other ways to report this to Amazon, and you can report it to the FTC
It seems like it should be reasonable to have a review warning people reading them that many of the 5 star reviews are suspect as the reviewer was compensated by the seller.
I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything incl…
EDIT: I guess at no point is Amazon actually harmed by this scheme. However, the companies trying to buy 5-star reviews are themselves exploited to the extent that people do this.
The cost to the original company is a lost sale, a lost product, and $20 [lost] in exchange for a legitimate looking 5-star review (from someone who is not a bot). That may well be worth it for the company, so I'm not sure this scheme would actually stop dishonest reviews, only make it worse.
There is a basic problem that if you see an obvious problem with a product listing on AMZN but you didn't buy the product they could care less. Sometimes the listing is obviously a scam, sometimes it is is just something that could be better: somebody is selling a box of assorted TTL ICs for $30 which were ill chosen for any use than testing your logic tester. (e.g. with $30 of quad-NANDs you can build a lot) In the…
I've totally given up on amazon, it is now impossible to know if what you are getting is of any quality - I wanted a good kitchen knife - but wading through the reviews and search was so painful. In the end I went to John Lewis and bought by price - hoping that gave me a good idea of quality and so far I am damn happy, which is far more than I can say for my last 20 or so amazon purchases.