22 ms·

Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would sear

by x0054 8y ago

Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would search for "target arrows" on Amazon the first page results would be for legit American companies who make exceptional arrows for about $30 per set of 6. Now, and for the last 2 years if I search for "target arrows" I get pages and pages of Chinese crap arrows (I purchased several sets and returned them). The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up. To get the nice American made ones I have to got 10-20 pages deep or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China. Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure they can make quality arrows in China, but what makes it to the top of Amazon is utter crap. I noticed this with many other products as well, but the arrows is a particularly noticeable example because it's something I regularly replace as they get beat up and destroyed (I shoot a lot).

joelx 8y ago
I suggest Amazon solves this by requiring ALL purchasers to leave reviews of ALL products they buy. Or by adding a $10 fee to every purchase that can only be refunded by leaving a review.
- kakarot 8y ago
  That will just create a shitload of low-effort noise in between useful reviews.
- phakding 8y ago
  I don't think I would agree to that model. I wouldn't like my money being held hostage for a review. If they give me a dollar discount, on the other hand, I would be much inclined to leave a review.
  - eightysixfour 8y ago
    It is the same model, just semantics. Either way they are increasing the price of the product by some amount and decreasing it when you leave a review.
    - ericd 8y ago
      It's only the same model if you ignore the large psychological difference.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - kipchak 8y ago
        I remember this being used early on in WoW; in order to keep people from playing too long XP earned decreased over time. After complains it was changed to a boost for time spent logged out which was much more popular.
        ericd 8y ago
        Ha! Great example.
  - Jedi72 8y ago
    I would just get the discount then leave a 1 star review, to make up for the annoying hoop I just had to jump through.
    - phakding 8y ago
      This wouldn't stop people being dishonest in their reviews. Nothing does so far.
- dclowd9901 8y ago
  Nah. Better solution is removing reviews from people who get refunds. Double win by incentivizing manufacturers to refund a disgruntled customer.
  - CWuestefeld 8y ago
    I'd sure prefer to know that the product I'm about to buy frequently needs to be returned.
    - sosborn 8y ago
      I’d also prefer to know how that return process played out.
    - umichguy 8y ago
      I would love that too! If they had some sort of stat meter next to a product saying x% of the purchases were returned, it would be great. Plus it would force the seller to up their game or die.
      - 8note 8y ago
        nah, they'd just change their name more frequently
  - x0 8y ago
    If all reviews are glowing positive, what's the point of the review system?
  - monocularvision 8y ago
    According to the article, people were getting refunded via side channel and keeping the products.
  - ElBarto 8y ago
    Which defeats the purposes of having reviews by removing the negative reviews...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cgriswald 8y ago
  Door Dash more or less forces users of their app to review the last delivery they had in order to place their next order. Maybe there is a way around it but it’s non-obvious. As a result, the worst rating of a restaurant I’ve seen is a 4.2 out of 5. Because people, myself included, just tap 5 stars to get it out of the way.
bootlooped 8y ago
It's not clear those low-price low-quality products aren't legitimately listed first because most people prefer them. Edit: ignore the above, I failed to read the part where they said the price was the same.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- incongruity 8y ago
  Except when sellers game the system and flood it with fake reviews, it’s pretty strongly suggestive that this isn’t a grassroots shift in consumer preferences. Relatedly, if someone else can make a business out of helping your customers sort out fake reviews on your site, like Fakespot has, it pretty clearly means either there’s something wrong with your site or you don’t care about the sham reviews because they still drive business for you.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - adaptiveValleys 8y ago
    Agreed. I recently heard in a talk an example of NLP being used to help rank sellers by analyzing messages between buyers and sellers, before and after transactions. Another example was how Taobao increased the number of useful reviews by allowing sellers to pay for reviews, and used NLP to determine if the review was useful. If it was, only then would the reviewer get paid. This would then dis-incentivize sellers expecting bad feedback from paying for reviews, and incentivize good sellers who were seeking honest, relevant feedback. Seems like both examples can still be gamed, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up. Low price, low quality is a real value proposition; outside the context of wristwatches, no one legitimately prefers lower quality at the same high price.
ajross 8y ago
Isn't the solution to that problem branding and not nationalist policing by the retailer? I mean, reading your post I don't see what Amazon can do to make you happy except ban "chinese" manufacturers. If you're seriously a regular buyer of these products, surely you have a few manufacturers that you know and trust, just like serious hobbyists in other activities have preferred brands of balls or shoes or guitar strings or whatever. Can't you just search for those?
- frotak 8y ago
  > or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China So he does search for specific brands and is still stymied by Amazon ranking algorithms.
  - sombremesa 8y ago
    Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there). If you search for a brand name, products without that brand name anywhere should just not show up, period. (I suppose an exception is if you just don't have it, kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actually looking for.)
    - cortesoft 8y ago
      Right, but those other products pay Amazon to show them when someone searches the competitor’s brand, so they will keep showing them even if you don’t want to see it.
    - alsetmusic 8y ago
      > Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there). You’re conflating direct experience with the masses. My parents didn’t work there. They wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell them. I think most people aren’t having this conversation.
djsumdog 8y ago
Why don't you just got to a sporting goods shop; either a local or a chain like REI or Dicks, and pay the retail premium and know what you're getting? I don't want retail to go away. Fuck Amazon.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  Before the fake review epidemic, buying on Amazon meant I didn't have to drive out for an hour or longer and instead spend time on other things.
  - macintux 8y ago
    For any product I care about, I do my best to find online retailers who specialize in that category. I'll buy disposable stuff off Amazon, or something I literally cannot find anywhere else, but that's about it. I broke my rule last week to buy a CB radio that was about 66% the usual retail price, so of course the seller rewarded me by having it delivered 600 miles away (either that, or USPS seriously messed up) and then failing to respond to my inquiries.
    - peteretep 8y ago
      I much preferred the convenience of a single source which already had all my payment details setup, delivery addresses set up, and which I knew wouldn't give me any bullshit with returns. Fulfillment should be a commodity, and I don't want to have to deal with how different brands have structured their own fulfillment.
      - bluGill 8y ago
        Supporting a tiny store that does something for the community (ie real reviews) is more important to me than not having to fill out my address on another form.
  - blobbers 8y ago
    agree.
la6470 8y ago
After you returned it did you leave a review? You should have left one start reviews for those sellers.
PostOnce 8y ago
Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer? "Get everything in one place" was more valuable when we had to travel from place to place and it took 30 minutes, but traveling from one website to another takes no time, so the proposition isn't as strong. Return policies, security, etc, are concerns still, but those cons come along with the pros of no commingling, probably a lower price if ordering direct, and supporting the economic diversity of having more than one store.
- alsetmusic 8y ago
  Not OP. > Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer? I don’t want to share my info with more websites / services than necessary. Amazon already has my CC. I don’t want to spread my info any more than I have to.
  - laumars 8y ago
    That’s one of the main reasons I use Amazon. However as long as other sites allow me to use PayPal I’m happy.
- nabaraz 8y ago
  > Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer? Already have an account with Amazon, 2-3 days shipping, customer support.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  Yes, at this point I'm considering cancelling my Prime subscription since I noticed that for many product categories I frequently buy (audio equipment, HIFI, biking gear, clothing, hardware) Amazon is a subpar option. - Product exploration, curation and comparison is a huge problem at Amazon. Unless I know exactly what I want, I don't even bother searching on Amazon. This issue extends to the quality of the product selection - I think the marketplace approach is a mistake. If I wanted to browse a sea of cheap low quality items from dubious sellers, I'd check eBay. - The selection for niche categories is limited and the listings are terrible to browse. Particularly clothing is bad: The same item is scattered over countless listings, featuring inconsistent attributes/options - Pricing is competetive, but rarely exceptional. These days things are priced very similarly between different stores. - return policies aren't issue here in the EU. There's a mandatory 14-day return window. Sure, 30 days are even better and Amazon handles them flawlessly, but it's basically a non-issue at any store for me. That said, I still very much enjoy their reliable next-day delivery enabled by Prime. This is what makes me come back to Amazon again and again - after doing my product research elsewhere, of course.
la6470 8y ago
HN is also becoming a hi tech breitbart.com
esalman 8y ago
I was recently researching car dashcams. On Amazon the top brand has thousands of reviews but the most critical one accuses the seller of offering free mounts in exchange for 5* reviews. The second most prominent one is featured heavily in a deal aggregator website which I knew about from before. I decided to do my research outside of Amazon. The most reliable brand which I chose based on independent review sites and user forums does not actually appear on first 10 pages of Amazon search results. I bought it anyways, and it is so good value for money that I have ordered another one. Safe to say I don't trust Amazon recommendations at all.
- jtreminio 8y ago
  I'm in the market, can you tell us the name?
  - dudus 8y ago
    I'm not OP but something similar happened to me. I ended up buying the Papago goSafe 535. Pretty decent bang for buck.
  - esalman 8y ago
    Sorry for the late reply, I went road-tripping with the new dashcam. I went with Viofo A119. I think it's pretty reliable and good value for about $90 (plus an SD card). Also ordered a CPL filter got one of the cams, it's not arrived yet.
    - skookumchuck 8y ago
      Thank you! I ordered one.
- ceyhunkazel 8y ago
  One way to overcome this sort by "Most reviews" which normally Amazon hides (I think they do it to give chance to sell new brands/products more). You have more chance to find the product you want and more trustful if it had 10K reviews instead of 10 reviews. I wrote about how to do it. Full disclosure, I am the author of free web app tool on the article. https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate-amazon-products-that-have-4-or-5-starts-but-only-few-reviews-f485d35d5969 https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate...
intended 8y ago
Competition for scarce resources without regulation drives entropy.
chrisper 8y ago
I remember the daily deals used to be all useful products. Now I just feel like I am browsing some Chinese market.
hbbio 8y ago
It would be very funny if Amazon gets back to where Internet started... curated directories. Not necessarily à la Yahoo! but a modern collaborative system, with help from some ML would do. My friends at Slant would agree :)
- marcusjt 8y ago
  Amazon wants to automate & eliminate manual tasks, not add more manual tasks to what they've already got. But Amazon's bright sparks might be able to come up with an automated approach to solving this problem (e.g. via machine learning to identify the suspicious patterns of behaviour that Which? and others have observed) if they are suitably incentivised (e.g. sufficiently embarrassed)
simias 8y ago
It's really baffling to me how despite being one of the largest companies in the world and being centered around e-commerce Amazon doesn't do anything about these issues weakening their core product. I say "do nothing" not "fail to stop" because I haven't seen any evidence that Amazon does anything at all to prevent or discourage these behaviors. I wonder if it's because they push the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra too far. After all, their current approach is successful so why risk changing anything? That would also explain why the website overall looks so dated in many areas.
- da_murvel 8y ago
  I don't think it's baffling at all. Facebook is the largest social media company, and what do they do to try to stop all of the propaganda, troll factories and hateful things going on there? Naught. They know that they are the largest company and therefore doesn't have to do anything as long as their position stays the same. Which it seems to be doing. Yes, there are people leaving the platform but where do they go? There is no real contender, therefore Facebook will remain number 1.
  - simias 8y ago
    I don't think it's completely the same thing though, this propaganda and trolling could arguably be a positive for Facebook by driving engagement. Of course there's a balance to maintain but it's not necessarily all bad. Socially and ethically it might be bad but bean-counting-wise it might not be that terrible. Facebook doesn't really care if people trust what they see on the platform as long as they generate pageviews and get ad impressions. On the other hand I don't see how fake reviews and bootleg items do anything but hurt Amazon by making people distrust the platform. You don't want to add friction to the buying process by making people triple check that they're not getting duped. And it's not like it's a new problem either, lack of trust was a huge issue in the early days of e-commerce, I'm sure Amazon doesn't want to return to these days where you felt like you were swimming in a sea of scams.
    - alexgmcm 8y ago
ElBarto 8y ago
> Amazon is going downhill quickly Unfortunately I have to agree. There has been a huge increase in the number of dodgy sellers and obviously fake reviews, and Amazon does not seem to care. I reported a few dishonest listings and absolutely nothing happened despite a number of reviews corroborating it. Prime deliveries have also started to slip (here in the UK), with 'guaranteed next day deliveries' suddenly being delayed with no update or anything. Amazon got so successful because they earned a pretty much blind trust from customers, but trust is lost quicker than it is earned.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
I agree with this, but would like to say, if you open your orders history, you can order the same arrows again assuming the business is still selling them on Amazon.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
I recently had the same experience. In an effort to get completely off of Google, I moved my music library off of Google Music and was going to just use an MP3 player. I had some suggestions from friends (Sony, Phillips, Onkyo, Pioneer) and decided to search Amazon to see what I could find. When I did a search on Amazon, it was page after page after page of Chinese MP3 players, all under $50. Most of the Hi-Fi players my friends recommended were in the $4-$500 range and up. Even after searching for the specific models they recommended, I still couldn't find them. The search results would return the same sub $50 players. After a few minutes I gave up and went directly to the manufacturers site. Even more discouraging, when I was googling "Pioneer MP3 player" the Pioneer website was completely buried in the search results, but the first two pages of SERP's had a myriad of Amazon results. There was a time when you just expected a company to be on page 1 if you searched directly by the company name and product. And these were not fly-by-night companies nobody has heard of. These were major electronic and audio companies I was searching for. Depressing to say the least
zxcvvcxz 8y ago
"Amazon is going downhill quickly. Here's my anecdote of a niche product experience that doesn't even make up 0.0000000001% of their revenue." Here's my anecdote: I can't stand Amazon Canada. It's complete and utter crap. Actually everything in this country is a crappy watered-down version of the US: Amazon, Netflix, you name it.

by x0054 8y ago

joelx 8y ago

I suggest Amazon solves this by requiring ALL purchasers to leave reviews of ALL products they buy. Or by adding a $10 fee to every purchase that can only be refunded by leaving a review.

kakarot 8y ago
That will just create a shitload of low-effort noise in between useful reviews.
phakding 8y ago
I don't think I would agree to that model. I wouldn't like my money being held hostage for a review. If they give me a dollar discount, on the other hand, I would be much inclined to leave a review.
- eightysixfour 8y ago
  It is the same model, just semantics. Either way they are increasing the price of the product by some amount and decreasing it when you leave a review.
  - ericd 8y ago
    It's only the same model if you ignore the large psychological difference.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - kipchak 8y ago
      I remember this being used early on in WoW; in order to keep people from playing too long XP earned decreased over time. After complains it was changed to a boost for time spent logged out which was much more popular.
      - ericd 8y ago
        Ha! Great example.
- Jedi72 8y ago
  I would just get the discount then leave a 1 star review, to make up for the annoying hoop I just had to jump through.
  - phakding 8y ago
    This wouldn't stop people being dishonest in their reviews. Nothing does so far.
dclowd9901 8y ago
Nah. Better solution is removing reviews from people who get refunds. Double win by incentivizing manufacturers to refund a disgruntled customer.
- CWuestefeld 8y ago
  I'd sure prefer to know that the product I'm about to buy frequently needs to be returned.
  - sosborn 8y ago
    I’d also prefer to know how that return process played out.
  - umichguy 8y ago
    I would love that too! If they had some sort of stat meter next to a product saying x% of the purchases were returned, it would be great. Plus it would force the seller to up their game or die.
    - 8note 8y ago
      nah, they'd just change their name more frequently
- x0 8y ago
  If all reviews are glowing positive, what's the point of the review system?
- monocularvision 8y ago
  According to the article, people were getting refunded via side channel and keeping the products.
- ElBarto 8y ago
  Which defeats the purposes of having reviews by removing the negative reviews...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cgriswald 8y ago
Door Dash more or less forces users of their app to review the last delivery they had in order to place their next order. Maybe there is a way around it but it’s non-obvious. As a result, the worst rating of a restaurant I’ve seen is a 4.2 out of 5. Because people, myself included, just tap 5 stars to get it out of the way.

bootlooped 8y ago

It's not clear those low-price low-quality products aren't legitimately listed first because most people prefer them. Edit: ignore the above, I failed to read the part where they said the price was the same.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
incongruity 8y ago
Except when sellers game the system and flood it with fake reviews, it’s pretty strongly suggestive that this isn’t a grassroots shift in consumer preferences. Relatedly, if someone else can make a business out of helping your customers sort out fake reviews on your site, like Fakespot has, it pretty clearly means either there’s something wrong with your site or you don’t care about the sham reviews because they still drive business for you.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- adaptiveValleys 8y ago
  Agreed. I recently heard in a talk an example of NLP being used to help rank sellers by analyzing messages between buyers and sellers, before and after transactions. Another example was how Taobao increased the number of useful reviews by allowing sellers to pay for reviews, and used NLP to determine if the review was useful. If it was, only then would the reviewer get paid. This would then dis-incentivize sellers expecting bad feedback from paying for reviews, and incentivize good sellers who were seeking honest, relevant feedback. Seems like both examples can still be gamed, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up. Low price, low quality is a real value proposition; outside the context of wristwatches, no one legitimately prefers lower quality at the same high price.

ajross 8y ago

Isn't the solution to that problem branding and not nationalist policing by the retailer? I mean, reading your post I don't see what Amazon can do to make you happy except ban "chinese" manufacturers. If you're seriously a regular buyer of these products, surely you have a few manufacturers that you know and trust, just like serious hobbyists in other activities have preferred brands of balls or shoes or guitar strings or whatever. Can't you just search for those?

frotak 8y ago
> or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China So he does search for specific brands and is still stymied by Amazon ranking algorithms.
- sombremesa 8y ago
  Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there). If you search for a brand name, products without that brand name anywhere should just not show up, period. (I suppose an exception is if you just don't have it, kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actually looking for.)
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    Right, but those other products pay Amazon to show them when someone searches the competitor’s brand, so they will keep showing them even if you don’t want to see it.
  - alsetmusic 8y ago
    > Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there). You’re conflating direct experience with the masses. My parents didn’t work there. They wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell them. I think most people aren’t having this conversation.

djsumdog 8y ago

Why don't you just got to a sporting goods shop; either a local or a chain like REI or Dicks, and pay the retail premium and know what you're getting? I don't want retail to go away. Fuck Amazon.

castlecrasher2 8y ago
Before the fake review epidemic, buying on Amazon meant I didn't have to drive out for an hour or longer and instead spend time on other things.
- macintux 8y ago
  For any product I care about, I do my best to find online retailers who specialize in that category. I'll buy disposable stuff off Amazon, or something I literally cannot find anywhere else, but that's about it. I broke my rule last week to buy a CB radio that was about 66% the usual retail price, so of course the seller rewarded me by having it delivered 600 miles away (either that, or USPS seriously messed up) and then failing to respond to my inquiries.
  - peteretep 8y ago
    I much preferred the convenience of a single source which already had all my payment details setup, delivery addresses set up, and which I knew wouldn't give me any bullshit with returns. Fulfillment should be a commodity, and I don't want to have to deal with how different brands have structured their own fulfillment.
    - bluGill 8y ago
      Supporting a tiny store that does something for the community (ie real reviews) is more important to me than not having to fill out my address on another form.
- blobbers 8y ago
  agree.

la6470 8y ago

After you returned it did you leave a review? You should have left one start reviews for those sellers.

PostOnce 8y ago

Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer? "Get everything in one place" was more valuable when we had to travel from place to place and it took 30 minutes, but traveling from one website to another takes no time, so the proposition isn't as strong. Return policies, security, etc, are concerns still, but those cons come along with the pros of no commingling, probably a lower price if ordering direct, and supporting the economic diversity of having more than one store.

alsetmusic 8y ago
Not OP. > Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer? I don’t want to share my info with more websites / services than necessary. Amazon already has my CC. I don’t want to spread my info any more than I have to.
- laumars 8y ago
  That’s one of the main reasons I use Amazon. However as long as other sites allow me to use PayPal I’m happy.
nabaraz 8y ago
> Why not order online from a sporting goods store, or, if possible, direct from the manufacturer? Already have an account with Amazon, 2-3 days shipping, customer support.
thirdsun 8y ago
Yes, at this point I'm considering cancelling my Prime subscription since I noticed that for many product categories I frequently buy (audio equipment, HIFI, biking gear, clothing, hardware) Amazon is a subpar option. - Product exploration, curation and comparison is a huge problem at Amazon. Unless I know exactly what I want, I don't even bother searching on Amazon. This issue extends to the quality of the product selection - I think the marketplace approach is a mistake. If I wanted to browse a sea of cheap low quality items from dubious sellers, I'd check eBay. - The selection for niche categories is limited and the listings are terrible to browse. Particularly clothing is bad: The same item is scattered over countless listings, featuring inconsistent attributes/options - Pricing is competetive, but rarely exceptional. These days things are priced very similarly between different stores. - return policies aren't issue here in the EU. There's a mandatory 14-day return window. Sure, 30 days are even better and Amazon handles them flawlessly, but it's basically a non-issue at any store for me. That said, I still very much enjoy their reliable next-day delivery enabled by Prime. This is what makes me come back to Amazon again and again - after doing my product research elsewhere, of course.

la6470 8y ago

HN is also becoming a hi tech breitbart.com

esalman 8y ago

I was recently researching car dashcams. On Amazon the top brand has thousands of reviews but the most critical one accuses the seller of offering free mounts in exchange for 5* reviews. The second most prominent one is featured heavily in a deal aggregator website which I knew about from before. I decided to do my research outside of Amazon. The most reliable brand which I chose based on independent review sites and user forums does not actually appear on first 10 pages of Amazon search results. I bought it anyways, and it is so good value for money that I have ordered another one. Safe to say I don't trust Amazon recommendations at all.

jtreminio 8y ago
I'm in the market, can you tell us the name?
- dudus 8y ago
  I'm not OP but something similar happened to me. I ended up buying the Papago goSafe 535. Pretty decent bang for buck.
- esalman 8y ago
  Sorry for the late reply, I went road-tripping with the new dashcam. I went with Viofo A119. I think it's pretty reliable and good value for about $90 (plus an SD card). Also ordered a CPL filter got one of the cams, it's not arrived yet.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Thank you! I ordered one.
ceyhunkazel 8y ago
One way to overcome this sort by "Most reviews" which normally Amazon hides (I think they do it to give chance to sell new brands/products more). You have more chance to find the product you want and more trustful if it had 10K reviews instead of 10 reviews. I wrote about how to do it. Full disclosure, I am the author of free web app tool on the article. https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate-amazon-products-that-have-4-or-5-starts-but-only-few-reviews-f485d35d5969 https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate...

intended 8y ago

Competition for scarce resources without regulation drives entropy.

chrisper 8y ago

I remember the daily deals used to be all useful products. Now I just feel like I am browsing some Chinese market.

hbbio 8y ago

It would be very funny if Amazon gets back to where Internet started... curated directories. Not necessarily à la Yahoo! but a modern collaborative system, with help from some ML would do. My friends at Slant would agree :)

marcusjt 8y ago
Amazon wants to automate & eliminate manual tasks, not add more manual tasks to what they've already got. But Amazon's bright sparks might be able to come up with an automated approach to solving this problem (e.g. via machine learning to identify the suspicious patterns of behaviour that Which? and others have observed) if they are suitably incentivised (e.g. sufficiently embarrassed)

simias 8y ago

It's really baffling to me how despite being one of the largest companies in the world and being centered around e-commerce Amazon doesn't do anything about these issues weakening their core product. I say "do nothing" not "fail to stop" because I haven't seen any evidence that Amazon does anything at all to prevent or discourage these behaviors. I wonder if it's because they push the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra too far. After all, their current approach is successful so why risk changing anything? That would also explain why the website overall looks so dated in many areas.

da_murvel 8y ago
I don't think it's baffling at all. Facebook is the largest social media company, and what do they do to try to stop all of the propaganda, troll factories and hateful things going on there? Naught. They know that they are the largest company and therefore doesn't have to do anything as long as their position stays the same. Which it seems to be doing. Yes, there are people leaving the platform but where do they go? There is no real contender, therefore Facebook will remain number 1.
- simias 8y ago
  I don't think it's completely the same thing though, this propaganda and trolling could arguably be a positive for Facebook by driving engagement. Of course there's a balance to maintain but it's not necessarily all bad. Socially and ethically it might be bad but bean-counting-wise it might not be that terrible. Facebook doesn't really care if people trust what they see on the platform as long as they generate pageviews and get ad impressions. On the other hand I don't see how fake reviews and bootleg items do anything but hurt Amazon by making people distrust the platform. You don't want to add friction to the buying process by making people triple check that they're not getting duped. And it's not like it's a new problem either, lack of trust was a huge issue in the early days of e-commerce, I'm sure Amazon doesn't want to return to these days where you felt like you were swimming in a sea of scams.
  - alexgmcm 8y ago

ElBarto 8y ago

> Amazon is going downhill quickly Unfortunately I have to agree. There has been a huge increase in the number of dodgy sellers and obviously fake reviews, and Amazon does not seem to care. I reported a few dishonest listings and absolutely nothing happened despite a number of reviews corroborating it. Prime deliveries have also started to slip (here in the UK), with 'guaranteed next day deliveries' suddenly being delayed with no update or anything. Amazon got so successful because they earned a pretty much blind trust from customers, but trust is lost quicker than it is earned.

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JustSomeNobody 8y ago

I agree with this, but would like to say, if you open your orders history, you can order the same arrows again assuming the business is still selling them on Amazon.

at-fates-hands 8y ago

I recently had the same experience. In an effort to get completely off of Google, I moved my music library off of Google Music and was going to just use an MP3 player. I had some suggestions from friends (Sony, Phillips, Onkyo, Pioneer) and decided to search Amazon to see what I could find. When I did a search on Amazon, it was page after page after page of Chinese MP3 players, all under $50. Most of the Hi-Fi players my friends recommended were in the $4-$500 range and up. Even after searching for the specific models they recommended, I still couldn't find them. The search results would return the same sub $50 players. After a few minutes I gave up and went directly to the manufacturers site. Even more discouraging, when I was googling "Pioneer MP3 player" the Pioneer website was completely buried in the search results, but the first two pages of SERP's had a myriad of Amazon results. There was a time when you just expected a company to be on page 1 if you searched directly by the company name and product. And these were not fly-by-night companies nobody has heard of. These were major electronic and audio companies I was searching for. Depressing to say the least

zxcvvcxz 8y ago

"Amazon is going downhill quickly. Here's my anecdote of a niche product experience that doesn't even make up 0.0000000001% of their revenue." Here's my anecdote: I can't stand Amazon Canada. It's complete and utter crap. Actually everything in this country is a crappy watered-down version of the US: Amazon, Netflix, you name it.