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This deal is huge, but I hope Amazon starts doing a little better diligence on their sellers. I was initially drawn to Amazon for their amazing customer review

This deal is huge, but I hope Amazon starts doing a little better diligence on their sellers. I was initially drawn to Amazon for their amazing customer reviews - they were usually current and decently, well-written - but most importantly they offered a resassurance that websites without product reviews didn't have. Over the past year, I've noticed a HUGE uptick in the quantity of fake 5-star reviews. They are so blatant it's frightening, and they usually go unnoticed in Amazon's default "Most Helpful" sorting. In particular, the Home Office Desk Chairs landscape is pretty insane: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desk-Chairs-Furniture/b?ie=UTF8&node=3733721 http://www.amazon.com/Home-Office-Desk-Chairs-Furniture/b?ie.... I was trying to find a chair back in September, and I was appalled by some of the reviews I was seeing. Top selling products, with several hundred reviews that averaged out to 4/4.5/5 stars. This is a screenshot from back in September: http://imgur.com/qbCz0yE http://imgur.com/qbCz0yE, and it only contains a small sample of the "Awesome, highly recommend" reviews spattered around. You'll notice this pattern on virtually every chair on Amazon, except the Aamazon basics chairs which wer launched sometime in late September / early October. Their reviews seem pretty good so far (i.e. real), but unfortunately for me I had purchased a chair from eBay before these launched. These patterns are pretty frighteneing (especially considering a lot of people are actually buying these things), especially considering I've experienced the same issues when shopping for others things. Has anyone else had an experience like this? Or am I losing it?

captaindiego 11y ago
The amazon vine program sends people free items in exchange for reviews. I started running across absolutely crap 5 star reviews for grad level engineering and math textbooks from the vine reviewers 2-3 years ago. They would talk about how the binding seemed good, and how their was a lot of math and equations. Amazon ignored complaints at the time about these positive reviews. I'm guessing the bump in the star ratings lead to higher sales. I haven't noticed the more organic type you are seeing, but it does not surprise me at all.
- ethbro 11y ago
  The "best rated" sort became useless after vine reviews. "This impartial review was delivered after I received the product free or for a discount"? Give me a break. Joe or Judy Amazon are realistically going to be perfectly happy plunking five stars down for free stuff. If Amazon wanted to do it right, they'd set themselves up as a neutral intermediary, companies could register to get some amount of product in the review chain, then Amazon would randomly distribute it to relevant reviewers, and the resulting reviews would be posted anonymously (with a known pattern, e.g. 'TrialUser'). And drop any users from the program that consistently give five stars. Instead, they seem to have created a star-for-stuff system.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    For me, ratings were the most important reason why I used Amazon (plus the convenience of one-stop shopping). This is a major stumble for Amazon, IMO. Hopefully a competitor steps up - this would be good for consumers, Amazon has become too much of a monopoly.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Sadly, at this point Amazon has the network effect of both consumers and suppliers. They've got the eyeballs, so people want to sell through them, so they've got a diversity of items and people check there to buy first, repeat repeat. Be that what it may for the market: I think they've been a lot less mercenary than they could be (they could likely jack fees a lot higher now without much fallout), but the potential is certainly there. Great for low cost optimization, bad for great feature development. PS: The whole only-being-able-to-price-sort-in-a-single-category is terrible too. How do I know if Thing X is in category Y or Z? It successfully reproduces all the fun of wondering what aisle the grocery store stuck trail mix on.
rangibaby 11y ago
I usually look at the average / bad reviews that say "it was great but...", and if their concerns about it are unrelated "...this Nintendo wouldn't make my coffee in the morning!" or things that don't bother me, I take that as a good sign about the product. 5/5 and 1/5 reviews are often fake or nonsense.
lhecker 11y ago
You will probably like http://fakespot.com/ http://fakespot.com/ for discovering those fake reviews. ;) Unfortunately it does not always work accurately, but I think it gives a good estimation whether a product is legit. Example for AmazonBasic: http://fakespot.com/product/amazonbasics-mid-back-mesh-chair http://fakespot.com/product/amazonbasics-mid-back-mesh-chair And for "Engineered Now": http://fakespot.com/product/headrest-for-herman-miller-aeron-chair-h3-standard-by-engineered-now http://fakespot.com/product/headrest-for-herman-miller-aeron...
- simonebrunozzi 11y ago
  Fakespot should create a chrome extension - extremely useful when I navigate Amazon.com
  - abledon 11y ago
    When I go to the page there's a blue popup above that says they have one... (I'm on firefox currently) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-fake-ama/nakplnnackehceedgkgkokbgbmfghain https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-f...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
chx 11y ago
Amazon created a marketplace where anyone can sell anything and let it fester. I find something unbelievably broken every day. I found someone entered an Ethernet cable for like everything recognizable out there with an RJ-45 jack creating some 47 000 identical product pages in the process. Today I looked at http://www.amazon.ca/Manfrotto-Release-Special-Adapter-200PL/dp/B008I2175E http://www.amazon.ca/Manfrotto-Release-Special-Adapter-200PL... this is a tripod adapter and it's #135 in Tools & Home Improvement > Building Supplies > Building Materials . The http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Automotive-Body-Repair-Tools/zgbs/automotive/15707071 http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Automotive-Body-Repair-To... #5 Automotive Body Repair Tools is a Visible Cutaway of Padlocks Lock. I have seen ordinary ~20" LCD monitors weighing a thousand pounds, messenger bags fit for King Kong and who knows what else.
- xyzzy123 11y ago
  Umm, you don't have to buy it though. Noise isn't necessarily a problem unless it stops you finding what you want. Actually, most products (except for the one you want) are just noise. Hence the continuing success of craigslist, ebay, gumtree and so on, despite the low average listing quality. Actually in a way what whacks me out the most is people's expectation for an "open" marketplace with high average quality.
  - ehartsuyker 11y ago
    I don't want an open marketplace. I want somewhere I can conveniently find most things I need from my laptop for a reasonable price. If Amazon came alone with insane, draconian policies and made it a very closed market, I'd be ok with that as a consumer so long as I can find what I need.
    - webXL 11y ago
      > I want somewhere I can conveniently find most things I need from my laptop for a reasonable price. That sounds like Monoprice or Newegg. Slightly more focused for our needs, but not as fast search results or affordable shipping.
crapolasplatter 11y ago
I only pay attention to the negative reviews and look for common complaints. If the common complaint is something that I can't overlook than I look at other products.
- DenisM 11y ago
  I hope they don't catch on to this.
  - flubert 11y ago
    I'm interesting in what to look out for in the case of someone trying to game 1 star reviews.
JohnTHaller 11y ago
Don't forget about all the spammed product listings. It makes it impossible to look through many categories on Amazon. Try and sort SSDs of a certain size from low to high price and all you get are spam listings. And Amazon offers no way to report them. https://twitter.com/JohnTHaller/status/648883968201355264 https://twitter.com/JohnTHaller/status/648883968201355264
aivosha 11y ago
On the upside, amazon almost always covers your shipping when returning a product. I dont think they had that before. So even if you ordered something based on fake 5 stars, you can always return it and leave a negative review. But yeah, I did notice the trend myself.
clock_tower 11y ago
I've experienced the mirror image of this: shopping for a good, long-lasting pillow, I found that every promising-looking pillow had plausible-sounding, highly negative reviews from people who just happened to have no purchase history, and to have reviewed nothing except pillows...

captaindiego 11y ago

The amazon vine program sends people free items in exchange for reviews. I started running across absolutely crap 5 star reviews for grad level engineering and math textbooks from the vine reviewers 2-3 years ago. They would talk about how the binding seemed good, and how their was a lot of math and equations. Amazon ignored complaints at the time about these positive reviews. I'm guessing the bump in the star ratings lead to higher sales. I haven't noticed the more organic type you are seeing, but it does not surprise me at all.

ethbro 11y ago
The "best rated" sort became useless after vine reviews. "This impartial review was delivered after I received the product free or for a discount"? Give me a break. Joe or Judy Amazon are realistically going to be perfectly happy plunking five stars down for free stuff. If Amazon wanted to do it right, they'd set themselves up as a neutral intermediary, companies could register to get some amount of product in the review chain, then Amazon would randomly distribute it to relevant reviewers, and the resulting reviews would be posted anonymously (with a known pattern, e.g. 'TrialUser'). And drop any users from the program that consistently give five stars. Instead, they seem to have created a star-for-stuff system.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  For me, ratings were the most important reason why I used Amazon (plus the convenience of one-stop shopping). This is a major stumble for Amazon, IMO. Hopefully a competitor steps up - this would be good for consumers, Amazon has become too much of a monopoly.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Sadly, at this point Amazon has the network effect of both consumers and suppliers. They've got the eyeballs, so people want to sell through them, so they've got a diversity of items and people check there to buy first, repeat repeat. Be that what it may for the market: I think they've been a lot less mercenary than they could be (they could likely jack fees a lot higher now without much fallout), but the potential is certainly there. Great for low cost optimization, bad for great feature development. PS: The whole only-being-able-to-price-sort-in-a-single-category is terrible too. How do I know if Thing X is in category Y or Z? It successfully reproduces all the fun of wondering what aisle the grocery store stuck trail mix on.

rangibaby 11y ago

I usually look at the average / bad reviews that say "it was great but...", and if their concerns about it are unrelated "...this Nintendo wouldn't make my coffee in the morning!" or things that don't bother me, I take that as a good sign about the product. 5/5 and 1/5 reviews are often fake or nonsense.

lhecker 11y ago

You will probably like http://fakespot.com/ http://fakespot.com/ for discovering those fake reviews. ;) Unfortunately it does not always work accurately, but I think it gives a good estimation whether a product is legit. Example for AmazonBasic: http://fakespot.com/product/amazonbasics-mid-back-mesh-chair http://fakespot.com/product/amazonbasics-mid-back-mesh-chair And for "Engineered Now": http://fakespot.com/product/headrest-for-herman-miller-aeron-chair-h3-standard-by-engineered-now http://fakespot.com/product/headrest-for-herman-miller-aeron...

simonebrunozzi 11y ago
Fakespot should create a chrome extension - extremely useful when I navigate Amazon.com
- abledon 11y ago
  When I go to the page there's a blue popup above that says they have one... (I'm on firefox currently) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-fake-ama/nakplnnackehceedgkgkokbgbmfghain https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-f...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

chx 11y ago

Amazon created a marketplace where anyone can sell anything and let it fester. I find something unbelievably broken every day. I found someone entered an Ethernet cable for like everything recognizable out there with an RJ-45 jack creating some 47 000 identical product pages in the process. Today I looked at http://www.amazon.ca/Manfrotto-Release-Special-Adapter-200PL/dp/B008I2175E http://www.amazon.ca/Manfrotto-Release-Special-Adapter-200PL... this is a tripod adapter and it's #135 in Tools & Home Improvement > Building Supplies > Building Materials . The http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Automotive-Body-Repair-Tools/zgbs/automotive/15707071 http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Automotive-Body-Repair-To... #5 Automotive Body Repair Tools is a Visible Cutaway of Padlocks Lock. I have seen ordinary ~20" LCD monitors weighing a thousand pounds, messenger bags fit for King Kong and who knows what else.

xyzzy123 11y ago
Umm, you don't have to buy it though. Noise isn't necessarily a problem unless it stops you finding what you want. Actually, most products (except for the one you want) are just noise. Hence the continuing success of craigslist, ebay, gumtree and so on, despite the low average listing quality. Actually in a way what whacks me out the most is people's expectation for an "open" marketplace with high average quality.
- ehartsuyker 11y ago
  I don't want an open marketplace. I want somewhere I can conveniently find most things I need from my laptop for a reasonable price. If Amazon came alone with insane, draconian policies and made it a very closed market, I'd be ok with that as a consumer so long as I can find what I need.
  - webXL 11y ago
    > I want somewhere I can conveniently find most things I need from my laptop for a reasonable price. That sounds like Monoprice or Newegg. Slightly more focused for our needs, but not as fast search results or affordable shipping.

crapolasplatter 11y ago

I only pay attention to the negative reviews and look for common complaints. If the common complaint is something that I can't overlook than I look at other products.

DenisM 11y ago
I hope they don't catch on to this.
- flubert 11y ago
  I'm interesting in what to look out for in the case of someone trying to game 1 star reviews.

JohnTHaller 11y ago

Don't forget about all the spammed product listings. It makes it impossible to look through many categories on Amazon. Try and sort SSDs of a certain size from low to high price and all you get are spam listings. And Amazon offers no way to report them. https://twitter.com/JohnTHaller/status/648883968201355264 https://twitter.com/JohnTHaller/status/648883968201355264

aivosha 11y ago

On the upside, amazon almost always covers your shipping when returning a product. I dont think they had that before. So even if you ordered something based on fake 5 stars, you can always return it and leave a negative review. But yeah, I did notice the trend myself.

clock_tower 11y ago

I've experienced the mirror image of this: shopping for a good, long-lasting pillow, I found that every promising-looking pillow had plausible-sounding, highly negative reviews from people who just happened to have no purchase history, and to have reviewed nothing except pillows...