8 ms·

FINALLY!!! You can't buy a single tech accessory on Amazon without these fake reviews. Next they need to get rid of grouping reviews for different product vers

• sokoloff 10y ago
  Some shipping carriers require a phone number, so I believe that Amazon transmits your ship-to phone number with the explicit requirement to use it only for logistics purposes. I'd complain to Amazon for a seller who used the number for any other purpose and certainly for one who called me for a review.
  • DanBC 10y ago
    I'm in England. I'd be calling the Information Commissioner as well.
  • Alupis 10y ago
    Amazon provides the phone number for all orders. It's whatever phone number you have listed on your account, or saved on one of your delivery addresses. Sellers are supposed to use them to fix order-related problems, and can be helpful for the case when a customer does not respond to emails (such as when you've provided an invalid delivery address).
    • losteverything 10y ago
      Your phone number is on Amazon shipping label too
      • Alupis 10y ago
        > Your phone number is on Amazon shipping label too Probably for shipments shipped from an Amazon warehouse (sold by Amazon, or Fulfilled-by-Amazon/FBA). For our own labels, we print our company phone number, and that's fairly common for many ecommerce companies (although certainly not all). It protects the customer's privacy, and in the event there's an issue with delivery, it's best the carrier contact the shipper (us) anyway.
        • sokoloff 10y ago
          Whether your phone number appears on the shipping label is variable. Based on the 5 fulfilled-by-Amazon (sometimes sold-by-Amazon) packages in my hand, it appears on all the Amazon-as-trucker packages and neither of the USPS packages. I suspect the rules are even more complex than simply "what carrier", but it clearly varies.
          • losteverything 10y ago
            Look again closely at your Usps labels. May seem like random numbers but it's there
            • Alupis 10y ago
              If it's not on the label, it's in the system. Some folks generate their own custom labels, and may omit things like that. The data is still sent to the carrier during the "End of Day" task (or equivalent) in whatever shipping software the shipper uses.
              • losteverything 10y ago
                Alright. I can only speak from what I see. Thanks.
            • sokoloff 10y ago
              It's really not there. (My phone number is in the 617 area code.) http://static-s3.sokoloff.com/random/amazon/IMG_1880.jpg http://static-s3.sokoloff.com/random/amazon/IMG_1880.jpg On other labels it's after the "DF3..." ID.
              • Alupis 10y ago
                That's a custom label (ie. not stock from USPS), and is likely generated by the shipper's shipping software. Apparently they chose to leave that field off the label, but it's still sent to USPS by the software.
      • CamperBob2 10y ago
        I have one simple rule: unless we've seen each other naked, or you've paid me money, the only phone number you get when you ask me for my phone number is the number of a pay phone at a gas station in Forks, Washington that was torn down a few years ago to make room for a new highway. If you give your cell phone number out to random companies on the Internet, then yes, you can expect to get spammed. What in the world makes that seem like a good idea to so many people?
        • gruez 10y ago
          So you give fake phone numbers to your friends?
          • dpark 10y ago
            He's actually a nudist and so are all of his friends.
          • CamperBob2 10y ago
            Obviously some judicious exceptions are made on occasion, but never without thinking through the consequences.
        • dpark 10y ago
          And yet you'll give them your address so they can send you a package hopefully containing something you want.
          • CamperBob2 10y ago
            Spam my mailbox all you want. That costs you time and money, not me.
            • Alupis 10y ago
              We all like to joke about mailbox spam, but it's certainly a serious issue - and the worst part is there's little to zero incentive for USPS to stop stuffing our mailboxes full of garbage. As long as the junk mailer companies pay their postage, USPS is more than happy to deliver the junk to you. I don't have any data, but I'd wager junk mailers are a sizable portion of annual USPS revenue...
    • joemi 10y ago
      I don't think this is right... I've been selling on Amazon for years and have never seen buyer phone numbers. I just logged in, and it doesn't show it when viewing an order on the site, nor does it come through in the order management software I use. (In case it matter, I'm talking about Amazon.com not one of the non-US ones, and I have a Professional seller account.) Edit to add: If there really is a way to get the buyer's phone number, I'd love to know. Some shipping methods need a phone number, and thus far I've always just put my own in when this happens since I didn't have the buyer's one, and hoped it didn't matter.
      • jjeaff 10y ago
        It previously came through the MWS order API. My custom order management software would pick it up. So you could only get it if you have a professional account. However, I believe that amazon has discontinued the practice of giving out phone numbers as of early 2014 to sellers due to some idiot sellers harassing their customers. But if you have someone's name and address, there is a decent change you can find it by googling their name. Especially if they have a land line. edit: Yes, I also logged in just now and it does in fact show phone numbers. Not sure why I stopped picking them up through the api. They may have changed the field name. Also, it is strange that there are multiple complaints about not being able to see buyer phone numbers any longer in the seller forums. I think maybe they went away for a time and are back.
        • Alupis 10y ago
          I just logged in, we can still see customer's phone numbers. Maybe it's because we have an olderish account? We're on V2 of the Order Manager pages in Seller Central... Edit: > Also, it is strange that there are multiple complaints about not being able to see buyer phone numbers any longer in the seller forums. I think maybe they went away for a time and are back Amazon experiments with Seller Central a lot - it's possible some people were getting phone numbers and some weren't for a long while. We also signup for many of their "beta" programs, so perhaps that makes a difference...?
          • 10y ago
• notyourwork 10y ago
  > They also need to ban merchants from hounding me to review their products. One of them even called me on my phone. I don't know how they got my number. I would consider phone calls out of bounds. Did you complain to Amazon customer service about this?
  • vinhboy 10y ago
    No. I didn't know it was a violation. I did sternly tell them not to call me again, and wrote a negative review.
    • notyourwork 10y ago
      Even if its not a violation of a TOS I suspect complaining to Amazon will help address this issue. Remember Amazon's core value is customer obsession so they strive to make you happy. Don't hesitate to let them know when you are unhappy. :)
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• rconti 10y ago
  Huh, I can't say I've ever even seen one. Perhaps I don't dig deeply enough into reviews, but I'd think these reviews would bubble up to the top.
• bradleyankrom 10y ago
  I've been getting that, too. I understand why they do it, but some vendors are definitely more aggressive than others. Anecdote: I purchased a dog hammock/cover for the backseat of my car last year and the straps melted over the course of the summer. The company replaced it for free, then emailed me every other day about updating my review... definitely before it'd gone through another summer, but even before I'd actually set it up in my car. I don't feel that a merchant holding up their end of their "lifetime guarantee" obligates me to update my review of their product (though I intend to once I'm satisfied that I've actually used it enough to warrant an update).
  • smokey_the_bear 10y ago
    Anecdote. I bought a dinosaur costume for my toddler son for Halloween, they sent me the wrong size but I didn't notice until Halloween, it sort of worked anyway. Later they hounded me for a review. After five or so requests, I replied saying I wasn't going to leave a positive review because they sent the wrong size. That was all, I didn't ask for anything or leave a negative review. They sent me huge rant about how I couldn't have a refund and what their return policy was.
    • cmdrfred 10y ago
      Retailers are shady despite people most of the time.
      • TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Retailers are shady... but so are the customers too. Source: my SO worked on phone support in her last two jobs, one was selling old books on-line, the other selling various appliances. Man, you wouldn't believe the horror stories I heard from her every other day. Having a phone number seems to somehow attract the worst subgroups of humans to it.
    • bradleyankrom 10y ago
      hope the dinosaur costume was awesome, though
• in_me_i_trust 10y ago
  > Next they need to get rid of grouping reviews for different product versions. This is huge. It seems to be a common tactic for companies to get a product's rating up to 4.5 stars, then replace it with a lower quality version. I notice only when I filter for the most recent reviews.
  • wnevets 10y ago
    There been many occasions where I didnt buy something because of this very reason.
  • Alupis 10y ago
    > It seems to be a common tactic for companies to get a product's rating up to 4.5 stars, then replace it with a lower quality version What you are likely seeing is not a seller "pump-n-dump" scheme. Rather, it's more likely another seller came along and "attached" to the good listing - except they are selling a knock-off product of worse quality. Often these sellers are from overseas, but not always. Amazon rotates the "Buy Box" (the "Add to Cart" button) winner on a "percentage-share" basis - meaning if there are 5 sellers attached to a listing, and all stats on the seller accounts are equal (volume sold, number of positive feedbacks, account history, etc...), then each seller will get 1/5th of the buy box time. When certain sellers are "stronger" than others (meaning their stats), they get a larger percentage of the buy box time. You can see this sometimes if you refresh the page several times while on a product page. The "Sold by xxxxx" may change. So, it's likely some cheap knock-off seller has attached to a "hot" product listing, and simply based on Amazon's Buy Box system, they will get a certain percentage of sales. Unfortunately, this can ruin a perfectly good listing for the other sellers who sell the legitimate product, and is difficult to combat. It pays to pay attention to a seller's own feedback rating. Not just how many stars on average, but more importantly the recent 30 day trend for their feedback ratings, as well as the number of total feedbacks, since it will give an idea of seller volume (most sellers average about <10% of orders leaving order feedback, and usually <1% leaving product feedback - my company has sold on Amazon for the past 7 years, and we seem to stay right in line with what other sellers expect as well).
  • abawany 10y ago
    Exactly. I tend to filter by critical reviews (with the default sort of recent) and that often gets the noise down to a manageable level.
• gthtjtkt 10y ago
  > They also need to ban merchants from hounding me to review their products. One of them even called me on my phone. I don't know how they got my number. If you go into the "Address Book" in your account settings, you'll see a phone number listed with each of your addresses. I'm assuming that gets passed along to merchants with your order details. I report any merchants who make unsolicited contact. It's extremely annoying/invasive, especially when they abuse your phone number.
• AJ007 10y ago
  Counterfeit / different products are a much bigger problem than fake reviews. Fake reviews are fairly easy to spot because of the one star curve. Amazon can weight and sort search results accordingly, if they so chose. Amazon can add additional weights based on the user's history and using graph network analysis of that user's review distribution. Bad items don't necessarily need to be banned, but the negative weight can make the listings virtually invisible. On the other hand, if the reviews are for a product other than what you are ordering, things get a lot harder. It is hard for a user to eyeball it, and perhaps equally as hard for Amazon to verify it at scale. Prediction - AI plus high resolution imaging of the good at high speed.
  • jessriedel 10y ago
    > Amazon can add additional weights based on the user's history and using graph network analysis of that user's review distribution. Bad items don't necessarily need to be banned, but the negative weight can make the listings virtually invisible. I cannot for the life of me understand why Amazon doesn't already do this.
    • LordDragonfang 10y ago
      It's entirely possible that they already are/ have looked at it, and found this move to be more strategically effective. Ultimately, Amazon's goal is to maintain a strong brand and keep stockholder confidence. This presents a much stronger move without admitting as much weakness, compared to allowing the behavior to continue and trying to mitigate it with AI (since the layperson -- ie most stockholders -- has a poor understanding of the efficacy of ML techniques). Additionally even if if they did, they are less incentivized to publicize it. Secretly diminishing the voting power of particular reviewers works just as well, if not better, if they don't know it's happening at all, and prevents creation of multiple accounts to avoid said penalties.
  • ams6110 10y ago
    > AI plus high resolution imaging Unless they are imaging every item sold I don't see how that helps. Unscrupulous seller uploads high quality images of the real item, and delivers counterfeits. Conterfeits are the biggest reason I don't buy more on Amazon. I can't say I've ever received a counterfeit item, but the stories are so widespread that I always have that fear.
• dawnerd 10y ago
  I've only been called when I've left a negative review. At first, I was very annoyed but the company offered a free replacement or a refund. They didn't even ask if I'd update my review. One thing to note here was they were not the seller, just the manufacturer.
• malandrew 10y ago
  They also need to require manufacturers to publish a changelog for the product so we can tell if a product has changed materially since the positive reviews were first published. It's pretty much a strategy now to create a well made product, get good reviews and then cheapen the product.
• jrockway 10y ago
  > They also need to ban merchants from hounding me to review their products. One of them even called me on my phone. I don't know how they got my number. Part of the shipping information, I guess. (I know it's "fulfilled by Amazon" but I guess the merchant gets that.) I find it super annoying. I am not quite willing to go in and give them 1 star reviews for the outreach, but I have no qualms about marking the email as spam.
• fnayr 10y ago
  Regarding the review hounding, I use Google labs experimental feature to auto reply to such posts. If any emails match the domain (something.amazon.com) and have the word "review" in them they get sent straight to the trash and get an automatically generated reply telling them that I will leave them a one star review on both their product and seller account on Amazon and to not further contact me. I haven't thought about it since I did that, and I can only hope its sending a message that harassing your users without consent for reviews is not acceptable.
• imroot 10y ago
  That's actually a pretty egregious violation of Amazon's Seller policies -- if you report it to Amazon, they'll get their seller account blacklisted. There's one or two power people in the Fulfilled by Amazon world who do podcasts/vlogs, and they were telling the people who subscribe to their podcasts to start stalking/tracking down the people who purchase their products and start calling them to ask for reviews. Needless to say, it backfired when Amazon started cracking down on it...
• ninv 10y ago
  Amazon encouraged this via giveaway scam.
• hga 10y ago
  The flip side is that I'd started using these as a metric of products to avoid; if a retailer is playing this game, while they might be legit like flavor8 claims in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12631810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12631810 it's just safer to avoid if at all possible. Although in general spending a bit of time looking at the reviews, 1 start, recent ones, etc., with a finely honed for decades BS detector is what allows me to continue buying a lot of stuff from them.
  • flavor8 10y ago
    I can't _stand_ the reviewkick sourced reviews, and there is a substantive difference between those and those from "product niche experts". The person who subscribes to reviewkick to "get free stuff" is building a profile to increase their value, so that they can get more expensive free stuff which they can in turn sell on ebay (or, I guess, hoard.) The reviewer who actually _uses_ the product, on the other hand... Personally, given the choice between products I'll definitely avoid those with obvious fake reviews. I bet it's common behavior to do so among those who actually take the time to consult reviews, and I bet Amazon saw the writing on the wall via their analytics.
• 55555 10y ago
  Amazon passes your phone number along to merchants, mostly incase there's any shipping issues. Amazon hides almost all of your information from merchants, but it does share your phone number.
• porpoisemonkey 10y ago
  I've been thinking about the review hounding on Amazon recently. I think the only way to make companies wary of soliciting reviews short of new rules and enforcement is if every solicitation carried a risk of the reviewer leaving what appears to be a legitimate review (not a diatribe) with a low score. Maybe creating low score reviews with text indicating the seller spams its customers would be enough.
• porpoisemonkey 10y ago
  I've been thinking about the review hounding on Amazon recently. I think the only way to make companies wary of soliciting reviews short of rules and enforcement is if every solicitation carried the chance of the reviewer leaving what appears to be a legitimate review (not a diatribe) with a low score. Maybe creating low score reviews with text indicating the seller spams its customers would be enough.
• fred_is_fred 10y ago
  Tech accessory. I couldn't even buy a Brush for my grill without wading through those fake reviews!