8 ms·

Amazon changes its review policy

58 points by fern12 9y ago

randomerr 9y ago
Great idea. At least they get some cash with a real name attached to the review. I hope they don't allow those pre-paid Visa cards.
- ScottWhigham 9y ago
  I don't know that the banks "tell" vendors "This purchase was made with a pre-paid credit/bank card" - I've not seen a flag that shows that before.
  - mortenjorck 9y ago
    As a former Redbox employee told me: this is a premium service from card issuers.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    You can find lists of the BIN numbers for prepaid cards. Also, in the US, most of them fail AVS checks with a 'U' code.
  - spjwebster 9y ago
    Stripe give you a `funding` property on a card source [0], which at least in the UK distinguishes between debit, credit and prepaid cards somewhat reliably. 0: https://stripe.com/docs/api/python#card_object-funding https://stripe.com/docs/api/python#card_object-funding I assume this is not exclusive to Stripe.
CamelCaseName 9y ago
The described policy change of requiring a customer to have spent at least $50 to leave a verified review happened in 2016... [0] [0] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=3742695 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?message...
omegote 9y ago
I don't think it's gonna make a difference. At least in Amazon ES, most reviews are written by top reviewers who have made their "career" by first reviewing small products bought by them and after that they're gifted other, bigger products (using 100% OFF coupons so they appear as verified purchases). The moment you find a review with several pictures and paragraph-separated long texts you know it's a paid review with zero value. And Amazon ES is full of those.
- ashtube 9y ago
  How can you say all reviews that have pictures and multiple paragraphs offer zero value? I have reviewed 100+ Amazon products and go in-depth whenever I can, and always provide value by providing hands on experience of using the products where I think it will help other people looking to buy that product.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  > The moment you find a review with several pictures and paragraph-separated long texts you know it's a paid review with zero value. Not always. I've seen tons of critical two- or three-star reviews that were multiple paragraphs and had pictures detailing the issues with the product. Piss off the right person with a shitty product or even an unfortunate lemon, and you'll get lambasted for it. And then there's people like me; I don't review Amazon purchases often, maybe one in 20 items, but when I do I write a detailed review because either the item greatly impressed me, or seriously pissed me off. I've never done a compensated review (I wouldn't even know how to start doing that) and the few times a negative review resulted in a seller offering to refund or replace in exchange for five stars and a positive review, I've refused. Only once did I change a review after interacting with a seller, and I left the entire negative text intact with an addendum stating their customer service was helpful and polite, and I was raising from two stars to three solely because their customer service attitude and promises to improve the product made up for the quality control issues in my mind. I did this without the seller requesting it, but they were greatly appreciative and refunded my purchase without me even asking for it.
  - Kurtz79 9y ago
j_s 9y ago
Google crippled their rewards for reviews (1TB for Local Guides dropped to 100GB now nothing) as they gained a critical mass of participants. There has to be a way for Amazon to Mechanical Turk reviews of reviews -- however many layers deep required!
post_break 9y ago
My latest foray into Amazon review was this. Company contacts me asking to do review. They have me purchase the product with my own money. Then they send me the amount via paypal. So I don't think this policy will stop much assuming they all shift to that model.
sebringj 9y ago
tldr; Amazon now requires fake accounts to pay them first.
discreditable 9y ago
I've stopped leaving Amazon reviews. Recently I was bored and went through a few bits of network equipment and PC hardware I purchased and reviewed a few of them. 3/6 of the reviews were rejected for being against community guidelines with no reason provided. Even after reading the guidelines it's not clear why they were rejected. I put in effort to describe why something got its rating from me. For example, I discussed the strengths/weaknesses the network equipment. From now on I might leave a star rating, but I'm not wasting time to get a review accepted. I'll leave that to the shills.
- qq66 9y ago
  Same thing happened to me with Wikipedia. I made a time-consuming, cited edit to an article and it was immediately backed out. Now I completely ignore factual errors in Wikipedia, including one that I just looked up and found is still there at least 5 years later.
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    Want to link to that specific factual error? Someone here could probably fix it.

58 points by fern12 9y ago

Great idea. At least they get some cash with a real name attached to the review. I hope they don't allow those pre-paid Visa cards.

ScottWhigham 9y ago
I don't know that the banks "tell" vendors "This purchase was made with a pre-paid credit/bank card" - I've not seen a flag that shows that before.
- mortenjorck 9y ago
  As a former Redbox employee told me: this is a premium service from card issuers.
- tyingq 9y ago
  You can find lists of the BIN numbers for prepaid cards. Also, in the US, most of them fail AVS checks with a 'U' code.
- spjwebster 9y ago
  Stripe give you a `funding` property on a card source [0], which at least in the UK distinguishes between debit, credit and prepaid cards somewhat reliably. 0: https://stripe.com/docs/api/python#card_object-funding https://stripe.com/docs/api/python#card_object-funding I assume this is not exclusive to Stripe.

CamelCaseName 9y ago

The described policy change of requiring a customer to have spent at least $50 to leave a verified review happened in 2016... [0] [0] https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=3742695 https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?message...

omegote 9y ago

I don't think it's gonna make a difference. At least in Amazon ES, most reviews are written by top reviewers who have made their "career" by first reviewing small products bought by them and after that they're gifted other, bigger products (using 100% OFF coupons so they appear as verified purchases). The moment you find a review with several pictures and paragraph-separated long texts you know it's a paid review with zero value. And Amazon ES is full of those.

ashtube 9y ago
How can you say all reviews that have pictures and multiple paragraphs offer zero value? I have reviewed 100+ Amazon products and go in-depth whenever I can, and always provide value by providing hands on experience of using the products where I think it will help other people looking to buy that product.
morganvachon 9y ago
> The moment you find a review with several pictures and paragraph-separated long texts you know it's a paid review with zero value. Not always. I've seen tons of critical two- or three-star reviews that were multiple paragraphs and had pictures detailing the issues with the product. Piss off the right person with a shitty product or even an unfortunate lemon, and you'll get lambasted for it. And then there's people like me; I don't review Amazon purchases often, maybe one in 20 items, but when I do I write a detailed review because either the item greatly impressed me, or seriously pissed me off. I've never done a compensated review (I wouldn't even know how to start doing that) and the few times a negative review resulted in a seller offering to refund or replace in exchange for five stars and a positive review, I've refused. Only once did I change a review after interacting with a seller, and I left the entire negative text intact with an addendum stating their customer service was helpful and polite, and I was raising from two stars to three solely because their customer service attitude and promises to improve the product made up for the quality control issues in my mind. I did this without the seller requesting it, but they were greatly appreciative and refunded my purchase without me even asking for it.
- Kurtz79 9y ago

j_s 9y ago

Google crippled their rewards for reviews (1TB for Local Guides dropped to 100GB now nothing) as they gained a critical mass of participants. There has to be a way for Amazon to Mechanical Turk reviews of reviews -- however many layers deep required!

post_break 9y ago

My latest foray into Amazon review was this. Company contacts me asking to do review. They have me purchase the product with my own money. Then they send me the amount via paypal. So I don't think this policy will stop much assuming they all shift to that model.

sebringj 9y ago

tldr; Amazon now requires fake accounts to pay them first.

discreditable 9y ago

I've stopped leaving Amazon reviews. Recently I was bored and went through a few bits of network equipment and PC hardware I purchased and reviewed a few of them. 3/6 of the reviews were rejected for being against community guidelines with no reason provided. Even after reading the guidelines it's not clear why they were rejected. I put in effort to describe why something got its rating from me. For example, I discussed the strengths/weaknesses the network equipment. From now on I might leave a star rating, but I'm not wasting time to get a review accepted. I'll leave that to the shills.

qq66 9y ago
Same thing happened to me with Wikipedia. I made a time-consuming, cited edit to an article and it was immediately backed out. Now I completely ignore factual errors in Wikipedia, including one that I just looked up and found is still there at least 5 years later.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  Want to link to that specific factual error? Someone here could probably fix it.