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This is the best drone according to Amazon? – The HS100

205 points by Separo 8y ago

chrischen 8y ago
> Instead, they contract low-cost Chinese manufacturers to provide a custom logo on a drone that already exists. Then Holy Stone puts the drone up on Amazon at a significant markup. Seems like Amazon is filled with "fake" brands like these. Is just so that if some brand messes up, they can just put out the same product under a new brand?
- TorKlingberg 8y ago
  It's mostly to stop people from shopping around for a lower price. You can't sell something for $300 if somebody else is selling the same thing for £150. Amazon will even merge your listings. But if you rebrand it you get your own listing, your own reviews (that you paid for) etc.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Brick-and-mortar stores sometimes use similar tactics. I recall reports of Media Markt and Saturn (two German electronics store chains) selling household appliances (washing machines, refrigerators, etc.) under changed model numbers. Still with the same brand name (because brand recognition is important), but with a different model number so that you cannot find the same model for a lower price somewhere else.
    - goodcanadian 8y ago
      The different model number may indicate a store specific version of that model. There is an appliance company I'm familiar with that has a reputation for low quality products even though they sell the same brands as everyone else. Sure enough, the model numbers of the versions they sell are slightly different to everyone else. On a similar note, when buying a scooter for my daughter, I found the "same" scooter in Toys-R-Us and Walmart. Despite identical branding and packaging, the Walmart version was of noticeably poorer quality (different materials and so on). I didn't check model numbers / SKUs, but I would expect them to be different.
      - Spooky23 8y ago
        Different consumers care about different things. I worked at a retailer who would position certain brands as junk (and they were). The junk label would be used to upsell to a better product or sell a high margin extended warranty. The pricing was usually engineered to make the warranty marginally cheaper.
    - imglorp 8y ago
      We see the same thing in the US for matresses, appliances, and especially electronics like TVs. Even well known large brands will be sold with long, and different, model numbers. The B&Ms know that people are comparison shopping, even as they browse the store: they'll be on their phones looking up model numbers to compare to online and at nearby stores. As we all know, a moat is preferable to competition, even if you have the same or inferior product.
    - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
      Dixons Group are notorious for this in the UK.
    - neor 8y ago
      They do this a lot, they ask manufacturers to create custom versions. With computers or laptops it could be a unique configuration, a combination of harddisk size and memory not sold elsewhere. This way the store can give you a "lowest price guarantee". Find it lower priced elsewhere, and we will pay you the difference! Easy to give such a guarantee if you're 100% sure no other store sells the exact model.
      - davnicwil 8y ago
        This also happens in the UK, except that many of the stores themselves are owned by the same conglomerate. Also easy to offer a lowest price guarantee when you know that customers are likely to only shop around at the high street 'competitors' which you also own. Will they bother to shop around? Doesn't really matter - heads you win, tails you win. Although this probably works less well with much of the demographic of people who buy computers in the online shopping age.
        codetrotter 8y ago
        Norway too
    - stevehawk 8y ago
      Not only can you not price match those situations but often times they get advertised as "exclusive" and maybe have one small feature change to warrant it.
    - wincy 8y ago
      IKEA rebrands appliances in the US. However, I consider this a value add because IKEA has an excellent warranty policy. Sometimes rebranding makes sense when you have some sort of value to add to ownership.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    This doesn't stop the people who go on eBay (or anywhere else with an equally powerful search tool) and sort by price to get the same imported product without the custom branding.
- Steve44 8y ago
  In some companies and industries there is a very good good reason. The supplier will test and QC a range of products and when they find one which matches the spec they need they will have it branded and brought into their range. Although it's primarily a generic product they have put the time & effort into sourcing it and are [more] responsible for maintaining the quality and compatibility with their other offerings.
- somecallitblues 8y ago
  A lot of electronics are just rebranded Chinese goods. I remember some years back a DLink, Netgear, Netcomm etc. modem routers all came from the same supplier in a different case. I used to work for one of them and we’d purchase competitors product, open it up and it’s look the same inside. We could even install our firmware onto their box.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    A lot of items period are like this. I've seen my same fridge with an LG, Electrolux, and Whirlpool logo on it. My grandpa worked at a factory (here in the US) that made chocolate-covered cherries and mid-shift every day they'd have a switch-over on the boxes to switch which brand they were producing. The boxes were the only thing they changed, the chocolate and the cherries were still the same. Even car companies do that, the Chevrolet Aveo was made by Daewoo and branded as a Chevrolet, Daewoo, Holden, Pontiac, Ravon, and Suzuki.
    - wincy 8y ago
      That’s interesting with the cars. I drive a used Camry and my cousin drives a brand new Yaris, and while I’ve had precisely 0 problems with the Camry she has constant problems with the “budget” Toyota model. Googling it, it looks like Mazda makes at least some of the Yaris line, which used to be the Scion brand before that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/04/09/2018-toyota-yaris-se-its-surprisingly-ok/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/04/09/2018-t...
      - masonic 8y ago
        Yaris and Scion are different badgings that coexisted at the same time.
    - rpeden 8y ago
      I'm not sure how it is in other industries, but in automotive this is usually referred to as badge engineering. It results in some interesting vehicles. In the US, GM used to sell Toyota Corolla badged as Geo Prisms. And in Japan, Toyota sold Chevrolet Cavaliers rebadged as Toyota Cavaliers.
- laumars 8y ago
  This practice of rebranded stuff is as old as the cheap consumer electronics industry. Back in the 90s myself and a friend had the exact same bedroom TV but they were different brands because they were bought from different high street stores. What worries me more is fake reviews because that makes it harder to trust anything sold.
  - digitalengineer 8y ago
    Can you trust the reviews? "Our engine has detected that Amazon has altered and removed reviews from this listing. We approximate total reviews removed to be 182. Previous analysis of this listing was an C grade." https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/
    - laumars 8y ago
      > Can you trust the reviews? I can't tell if your comment is intended to be a counterargument (it seems to read that way) but you're actually agreeing with the point I was making: Personally speaking re-branded products doesn't really bother me however the way reviews are abused does. I think your link is a little disingenuous in the way it's worded too because I don't think Amazon actually remove or alter any reviews themselves. What I think happens is sellers contact customers and ask them to remove bad reviews in favour of a refund (or whatever). At least that was how negative reviews used to be purged a few years back. Of course you could still argue that Amazon should take a more proactive stance to customer bribery (just as Amazon should against fake reviews too) but I'm just directly addressing the phrasing "Amazon has altered or removed reviews" as seen in your citation.
      - digitalengineer 8y ago
        I should have taken more time to write the comment. I copy/pasted the text "Amazon has altered or removed reviews" from the report the tool provided when I copied the URL from the Amazon Product Page and ran it to check the reviews.
        8y ago
- andypants 8y ago
  I recently tried to buy a new mouse on amazon. I found page after page of cheap identical rebranded products: https://i.imgur.com/KRNTBDB.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KRNTBDB.jpg I did not buy a new mouse on amazon.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    I don’t know how much success you were hoping for in buying a commodity item from no-name brands like that. That’s always going to be a free for all. If you look for mice from reputable companies the results on Amazon are fine.
    - nkrisc 8y ago
      But then you're playing counterfeit roulette as you figure out what seller to buy from and who is even selling it anyway.
      - sp00ls 8y ago
        Are counterfeits listed as brand names that big of a problem on Amazon? I make most of my electronics purchases from Amazon (tons in the last few years) and have never received a counterfeit item to the best of my knowledge.
        snuxoll 8y ago
        Certain categories of items are ripe with them, fake Sandisk SD cards have been a problem for years, for example.
        nkrisc 8y ago
        That's precisely the problem: I don't know how big of a problem it is, and I'm not keen to find out. I know it's enough of a problem that it's easier to simply shop elsewhere. I personally know a few people who have gotten counterfeit items, even including consumables like protein powder. I don't have to buy from Amazon so it's just a chance I'm not going to take until such a time I can be convinced it's not a problem. It's not any more difficult or even expensive for me to shop elsewhere so I don't have to be particularly rational or thorough about it (I don't have time for that!).
- moltar 8y ago
  It’s called white-labelling. There’s an entire cottage industry around that.
Theodores 8y ago
From the article: "I also think Holy Stone must be doing something to appease unhappy customers in exchange for not providing a negative review. It’s just too good to be true. Just 6% of reviews of the HS100 have 1, 2, or 3-star rating." So there are nefarious ways to achieve this. But you do not need to do sneaky things to get excellent reviews from pissed off customers. It is easy to assume that the more underhand ways have gotten the good reviews and I am sure you can go to a fake reviews bot to prove the thesis. But it is actually easier and more cost efficient to get those excellent reviews for an average product from pissed off customers by good old customer service. Most companies have their customer service team at the bottom of the food chain, outsourced and on the minimum wage. From my experience of Google products I suspect that this goes on in a lot of companies that genuinely make wonder products. We all know the story, you struggle to find out how to complain, you struggle filling in an online form and, if you are lucky, you get an automated response. They then make resolution of your complaint as hard as possible, divorce proceedings could be easier. Most companies don't go the 'full Google' on lousy customer service, however it still takes a while. You get there in the end. They actually have a good product so the complaints are a relatively rare thing for them. Consequently they don't have to major on customer service, the customer service guys are one or two grunts in the company and the whole thing is seen as a cost rather than a revenue centre. If a company does have a real problem with the product and there are a lot of warranty claims then they have to shape up and get good at customer service. Otherwise they are doomed to go out of business. So they throw people at the problem and more people and are still not winning. The next step is to automate the hell out of it. So you have extremely polite letters sent to customers to get the information needed to process a warranty claim. Customers receive these and the process rolls real quick. They provide required information and the highly automated customer service process just requires some human operator to approve the claim. The warehouse (FBA) then sends the customer out replacement product on the same day. Again, sensible communication goes out and the customer again thinks that for once in their freaking life they have been listened to. Maybe, up until then they have had 'Google grade' customer service and felt left out in the cold. At this point they don't really care so much about the product - most products are commodities anyhow - they just get wowed by the instant response. There is social engineering in this, the customer can also be led to believe that they are the first person to notice that the 'plastic could be moulded better' and they think that their feedback will be passed along to the 'design team' to help make a better product. They feel involved. Next the follow up email goes out, asking the customer if their experience with customer service was good enough. By now they have 'bonded' with 'Debbie' or whomever they thought those nice emails were from. They don't realise that 'Debbie' can't spell to save her life and cares more about watching Netflix than their problems with the product. 'Debbie' just clicked a button with automated systems and email templates doing the rest. But because they think they know 'Debbie' they obligingly write a really nice thank you and give five stars. A review is a review, on the site - Amazon or other - there are no silos for reviews breaking them down into 'customer service' and 'product', it all goes into the same pot. 'Debbie' might reject some warranty claims but for these people 'Debbie' can click a different tick box that sends out a discount code for the customer to buy a replacement. So whatever happens, thanks to automation put in place due to the lousy nature of the product, the customer always gets something far beyond what the 'good' companies would do. These reviews all look formulaic praise for the company because there is a high likelihood that people will write the same stuff, e.g. 'fab, utterly delighted, will buy again'. What else are they going to write? Then some fake review spotting bot comes along and goes 'ahem... these reviews are all the same!' which implies something dastardly. Nothing dastardly has gone on at all, this is assigning conspiracy when a more plausible explanation is possible. No customers have been bribed, no begging for reviews has gone on, the hustle is far more sophisticated than that. Obviously there is a lot of product that has to be sent out for warranty claims however, in this customer service model there is no huge team of people weighed down with a massive queue of complaints and not knowing what to do, only to ever let people down. Every complaint is dealt with in real time and there is no backlog. So then think anti-pattern here. If you can convert 99% of complaints into raving reviews then you kind of need more complaints as that is the best way to get awesome reviews. Happy normal customers don't usually care to write a review, they have better things to do. Pissed off customers that get delightful, not seen before, utterly speedy customer service will go that extra mile and forgive human and product failings to write reviews. These reviews provide the social proof other people need to buy the product. Clearly the product is not better and can't be for this gaming of the system to work. I am not saying this has gone on in this instance with this product - I don't work for this drone company and have no idea how they work behind the scenes. However I do know that the above technique works and that nobody is going to scan the page to notice 'all these reviews are as a result of customer service'. Even the Google bot won't notice. Most proper companies don't put the grunts of customer service high up in the food chain, some companies selling so-so commodity items have to. So off-brand products can win reviews remarkably easily with nothing being faked in the underhand ways people with no skin in the game can imagine. I have to say American consumers are the easiest 'marks' for this type of shenanigans, YMMV in Europe.
Smrchy 8y ago
It would be really nice to have a browser extension that shows the amount of other reviews every reviewer has in the last n months. Someone with 20+ review can not really be trusted and can be filtered out. Or even better: If Amazon would spend some of their AI departments time and delete those fake reviews on a daily basis. So tired of them.
- chumali 8y ago
  Might be worth checking out ReviewMeta - it scans Amazon product reviews for unnatural review patterns and provides a report highlighting suspicious activity. They also offer a browser extension.
- sequence7 8y ago
  The article actually mentions Fakespot [1] which has a chrome extension as well as ReviewMeta [2] which as far as I can tell doesn't. Neither do exactly what you're asking but they seem quite useful from a quick investigation and highlight some of the issues highlighted in the article when you look at the linked product. [1] https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ [2] https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/
DrNuke 8y ago
Shameless plug: as an advisor for DronesBench http://www.dronesbench.it/en http://www.dronesbench.it/en, which tests the electro-mechanical compliance of consumer drones, I suggested them to work on test drives of these cheap, dangerous drones to make the general public aware of the low quality level in the market. Their answer was that the general public does not care anyway, it is a war you cannot win because low prices trump all.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  Since a drone can potentially violate restricted airspace, I could see some regulatory body eventually requiring approval/certification before a drone aircraft can be sold. I can imagine private pilots aren't too keen on running into some out of control flying piece of garbage at a few thousand feet.
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    > requiring approval/certification before a drone aircraft can be sold Drones are like computers, you can buy all the individual parts and build it yourself. They only have a few parts: flight controller, PDB, ESCs, motors, propellers, radio receiver, camera, video transmitter, and a frame to hold everything together. These vendors of cheap drones are just putting them together themselves and add a fancy canopy on top.
    - RankingMember 8y ago
      Kit planes are the same way, but they still need to be certified before they can fly.
    - DrNuke 8y ago
      That’s it. That’s also why DronesBench comes with a novel, single efficiency benchmark for the electro-mechanical compliance of the drone as a system http://www.dronesbench.it/en/fomdrone/ http://www.dronesbench.it/en/fomdrone/ . Just measure it at factory and write it on the plate or stick it somewhere on the frame, then measure again periodically during its operational life: significant decreases express hidden defects, thus becoming a preventive tool for flight safety.
mikehollinger 8y ago
Is this a new thing, “Review engine ‘optimization?’” So what’s the real fix here? If I report the company then it’ll shut down and reopen under a different name. If I leave a review it’ll drown it out with fake reviews. If I shame the company - no one will see it. mom trusts ama son because ten years ago I told her to look at the reviews there.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  >So what’s the real fix here? Dump the reviews? Perhaps return rates would be a better metric.
  - mikehollinger 8y ago
    Yeah, but I can pay someone to keep the item and trash it.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Yes, but you can't stop dissatisfied customers returning theirs.
- credit_guy 8y ago
  The real fix is for Amazon to have a department of curation. Beyond a certain scale, you can't only be a passive intermediary. There are all sorts of negative actors. Just like HN has some curation (great work, Dang) Amazon needs some too, but obviously on a completely different scale.
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    Why should Bezos care? He's worth $160 Billion so something must be working for him. Why would he feel the need to change? Amazon is making money, he's happy, investors are happy, so ... who cares about a few unhappy customers?
    - 8y ago
Terretta 8y ago
The tiny Holy Stone drones come with one tiny 6 min battery. A package insert offers three more batteries free, and by the way, don’t forget you can give happy reviews. The implications probably play out well for them. // The HS170G for $30 is a hoot to zip around indoors to practice your “Mode 2” controller chops, certainly worth 5 stars for entertainment per dollar: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0762GZR25/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0762GZR25/
flavor8 8y ago
To give Holy Stone credit, they have good customer service. I bought one of their crappier models when I was first exploring the quadcopter marketplace a few years ago. They did the usual thing of proactively emailing and asking for a review after a few days, but then actually replied to my email rant about quality control with suggestions to debug the issue. Finally, once I'd crashed it one too many times and destroyed it, they sent me a new drone free of charge. I suspect they're probably doing similar to anybody who leaves a bad rating in order to groom their listings. (Don't get me wrong - their customer service doesn't make up for their poor products. Never buy a drone with injection molded frames, since they're not serviceable. Carbon fiber with replaceable frame parts all the way.)
- paulgb 8y ago
  I've had something similar happen (with another product). I think it's the flip side of fake reviews that people don't consider: you might be able to fake your way to five stars with a new product, but keeping it actually requires a decent product and being responsible to unsatisfied customers (usually with one of those "contact us directly if you have any concerns" cards in the box)
  - smt88 8y ago
    Their reviews inevitably tank, so they start selling the same product under a new brand.
amai 8y ago
Just use https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/ to validate Amazon scores of products. When you do it on HS100 it immediately gives you a warning: "Unnatural reviews possible" . Fakespot shows a Fakespot Grade F and a corrected rating of 1.3: https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-with-1080p-fhd-camera-5g-fpv-live-video-and-gps-return-home-function-rc-quadcopter-for-beginners-kids-adults-with-follow-me-altitude-hold-intelligent-battery https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-wit... It seems to me that Reviewmeta and FakeSpot do work. It is just Amazon that is too lazy to do anything against fake reviews.
- josefresco 8y ago
  To put this in perspective, the DJI Phantom 3 mostly passes: https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ
- brink 8y ago
  So if I want to harm a competitor's product on ReviewMeta, review it a bunch of times, then delete the reviews. Got it. This is a crappy game of cat and mouse, and if producers are willing to exploit Amazon's system, they'll exploit ReviewMeta. The only thing that protects ReviewMeta at this point is that it's a niche service. It'd be nice to see a mechanism that recognizes trusted reviewers, but even that can be exploited I suppose.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Depends on how effective the corrected score mechanism is. If it's taking out the scores it deems fake then recalculating the score based on the remaining scores that campaign will only hurt their FakeSpot score while still leaving their overall score mostly intact. If they drop the score just because of fake reviews the attack would work but if it basically just filters out spam reviews it's much less attackable.
  - ReviewMeta 8y ago
    That's not exactly how it would work. As stated on the reports, deleted reviews don't actually affect our adjusted rating or pass/fail/warn result. Technically speaking, of course ReviewMeta can be "gamed", but it would require much more effort on the part of the seller to generate reviews in such a way that it wouldn't set off any warnings on our side. Basically force them to be very deliberate in their efforts. It would just add yet another hoop for sellers to jump through, making it that much more difficult on their part.
drewg123 8y ago
This reminds me why I use https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ analysis of Amazon reviews for products that I'm unfamiliar with. I see they mentioned fakespot in the article, which is nice.
buboard 8y ago
some iPhones have bigger margins than these drones.
phyller 8y ago
A lot of comments about existing tools to spot fake reviews, and wondering why Amazon doesn't use them because the fake reviews that are dominating Amazon are clearly hurting consumers. The long play for Amazon might just be that consumers gravitate towards the products that are actually sold by Amazon, because they can be sure that it should at least work. Eventually Amazon doesn't just control the marketplace, but is the only major vendor as well, and actually controls everything from the factory to the consumer.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- comboy 8y ago
  It's also that fake reviewers probably don't try to game 3rd party sites rating systems. It seems plausible that if you implemented the same algo that some spotting-fake-reviews site uses on Amazon, sellers would quickly find a way around it.
  - phyller 8y ago
    Yea that's a really good point. The best way for Amazon to deal with the problem is to curate the reviewers, not the reviews, in my opinion.
bhuga 8y ago
There's one upside to the Amazon shopping experience devolving into a primordial sludge of counterfeits and random whitelabel garbage. These vendors have no discoverability beyond Amazon reviews, so their desperation to prevent your 1-star review is drastic. If you leave a 1-star review, they'll often get in touch with you and offer you another item for free, as often as it takes, however long it takes. The products are garbage, but most of the prices are already pretty good. When you realize the prices are for two at the cost of a review, they're even better. I still get emails trying to give me free stuff to change a one-star review I left a year ago for a one-ear bluetooth earbud. On the other hand, I don't see how you can buy quality on Amazon anymore. I've started shopping on niche sites for things that I want to work, and I'd never buy expensive electronics. The risk of a counterfeit is just too high.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  > If you leave a 1-star review, they'll often get in touch with you and offer you another item for free But is it at the price of removing your 1-star review? They are buying your honesty?
  - zip1234 8y ago
    Sounds like the ultimate 1-star review for these types of situations should note that they will give you a free one if you 1 star the product. People will start doing that just for free ones.
- masonic 8y ago
  The products are garbage, but most of the prices are already pretty good To me, there is no such thing as a "good" price for a "garbage" product.
dalbasal 8y ago
Ok so erm... we all know what to expect when an amazon article hits HN. Amazon has devolved. Counterfeits. Fake reviews. Crap quality.... IDK if this is true. That is, IDK if amazon's meaningfully worse than traditional big department stores or the brick-and-mortar sector generally. But, say it's true. Amazon has jumped the shark. This is HN. This isn't the place for customer complaints. It's the place to hatch plans to kill amazon. What's the bridgehead (à la pg) to a full-scale invasion of amazon territory? Reviews? Some product subset? Discovery? How would you build the company that replaces amazon?
- Brushfire 8y ago
  Curation. If the Wirecutter had a store, I'd use it. Instead they just link off to Amazon.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >If the Wirecutter had a store, I'd use it I would once too. Then I found out this "curation" ain't that well curated... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408 https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to-play-model https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
    - Brushfire 8y ago
      Sure, the Wirecutter is just an example. You probably need a membership model that people pay for, that also grants them the Amazon prime shipping benefits and covers the cost of reviews etc...
  - luddaite 8y ago
    Isn't this approach that merchants such as Massdrop are taking? They have a small number of product categories that are heavily curated by the staff and the users.
- kurthr 8y ago
  I assume this is tech-shaming... some giant product owned by the (second?) richest person in the world has some obvious flaws. Trying to embarrass Amazon into fixing it (like Facebook, Twitter, et al) by buying one of the addons services that prevent blatant abuse is a strategy... and possibly a profitable one both as a customer and acquiree.
wolfgke 8y ago
Just a consideration: Isn't it at least somewhat plausible that some products attract people who are satisfied more easily and thus write good reviews? In this scenario, lots of these reviews might be honest, but nevertheless not helpful to you, since the good review only implies that you will be satisfied if you are of a similar demographic.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ryanmarsh 8y ago
Anyone old enough to recall Walmart’s rise to power will find amazon’s trend towards cheap crap familiar. Walmart sold dirt cheap Chinese stuff of dubious quality but customer service would replace it at the drop of a hat (similar to how these companies keep bad reviews down). As shown by Walmart’s success most people don’t care they just want cheap crap. It took a while for Target to rebrand itself as the less crappy source of overpriced but better quality cheap crap store for the middle and upper-middle class. Perhaps someone will come along and do this to Amazon online. Whereas Amazon clearly doesn’t care that it’s selling cheap crap, someone could come along and apply a little more curation to the offering.
sethhochberg 8y ago
Man, when I read the headline I seriously thought this was going to be a report on drones that Amazon had been evaluating for commercial delivery purposes, not just an aggregate customer review article... sometimes this habit of referring to Amazon users as "Amazon" or reddit users as "reddit" has problems.
yohann305 8y ago
This year, media was focusing on taking down Facebook, i'm forecasting 2019 will be the year media will focus on Amazon. Let's see

205 points by Separo 8y ago

> Instead, they contract low-cost Chinese manufacturers to provide a custom logo on a drone that already exists. Then Holy Stone puts the drone up on Amazon at a significant markup. Seems like Amazon is filled with "fake" brands like these. Is just so that if some brand messes up, they can just put out the same product under a new brand?

TorKlingberg 8y ago
It's mostly to stop people from shopping around for a lower price. You can't sell something for $300 if somebody else is selling the same thing for £150. Amazon will even merge your listings. But if you rebrand it you get your own listing, your own reviews (that you paid for) etc.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Brick-and-mortar stores sometimes use similar tactics. I recall reports of Media Markt and Saturn (two German electronics store chains) selling household appliances (washing machines, refrigerators, etc.) under changed model numbers. Still with the same brand name (because brand recognition is important), but with a different model number so that you cannot find the same model for a lower price somewhere else.
  - goodcanadian 8y ago
    The different model number may indicate a store specific version of that model. There is an appliance company I'm familiar with that has a reputation for low quality products even though they sell the same brands as everyone else. Sure enough, the model numbers of the versions they sell are slightly different to everyone else. On a similar note, when buying a scooter for my daughter, I found the "same" scooter in Toys-R-Us and Walmart. Despite identical branding and packaging, the Walmart version was of noticeably poorer quality (different materials and so on). I didn't check model numbers / SKUs, but I would expect them to be different.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Different consumers care about different things. I worked at a retailer who would position certain brands as junk (and they were). The junk label would be used to upsell to a better product or sell a high margin extended warranty. The pricing was usually engineered to make the warranty marginally cheaper.
  - imglorp 8y ago
    We see the same thing in the US for matresses, appliances, and especially electronics like TVs. Even well known large brands will be sold with long, and different, model numbers. The B&Ms know that people are comparison shopping, even as they browse the store: they'll be on their phones looking up model numbers to compare to online and at nearby stores. As we all know, a moat is preferable to competition, even if you have the same or inferior product.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Dixons Group are notorious for this in the UK.
  - neor 8y ago
    They do this a lot, they ask manufacturers to create custom versions. With computers or laptops it could be a unique configuration, a combination of harddisk size and memory not sold elsewhere. This way the store can give you a "lowest price guarantee". Find it lower priced elsewhere, and we will pay you the difference! Easy to give such a guarantee if you're 100% sure no other store sells the exact model.
    - davnicwil 8y ago
      This also happens in the UK, except that many of the stores themselves are owned by the same conglomerate. Also easy to offer a lowest price guarantee when you know that customers are likely to only shop around at the high street 'competitors' which you also own. Will they bother to shop around? Doesn't really matter - heads you win, tails you win. Although this probably works less well with much of the demographic of people who buy computers in the online shopping age.
      - codetrotter 8y ago
        Norway too
  - stevehawk 8y ago
    Not only can you not price match those situations but often times they get advertised as "exclusive" and maybe have one small feature change to warrant it.
  - wincy 8y ago
    IKEA rebrands appliances in the US. However, I consider this a value add because IKEA has an excellent warranty policy. Sometimes rebranding makes sense when you have some sort of value to add to ownership.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This doesn't stop the people who go on eBay (or anywhere else with an equally powerful search tool) and sort by price to get the same imported product without the custom branding.
Steve44 8y ago
In some companies and industries there is a very good good reason. The supplier will test and QC a range of products and when they find one which matches the spec they need they will have it branded and brought into their range. Although it's primarily a generic product they have put the time & effort into sourcing it and are [more] responsible for maintaining the quality and compatibility with their other offerings.
somecallitblues 8y ago
A lot of electronics are just rebranded Chinese goods. I remember some years back a DLink, Netgear, Netcomm etc. modem routers all came from the same supplier in a different case. I used to work for one of them and we’d purchase competitors product, open it up and it’s look the same inside. We could even install our firmware onto their box.
- freehunter 8y ago
  A lot of items period are like this. I've seen my same fridge with an LG, Electrolux, and Whirlpool logo on it. My grandpa worked at a factory (here in the US) that made chocolate-covered cherries and mid-shift every day they'd have a switch-over on the boxes to switch which brand they were producing. The boxes were the only thing they changed, the chocolate and the cherries were still the same. Even car companies do that, the Chevrolet Aveo was made by Daewoo and branded as a Chevrolet, Daewoo, Holden, Pontiac, Ravon, and Suzuki.
  - wincy 8y ago
    That’s interesting with the cars. I drive a used Camry and my cousin drives a brand new Yaris, and while I’ve had precisely 0 problems with the Camry she has constant problems with the “budget” Toyota model. Googling it, it looks like Mazda makes at least some of the Yaris line, which used to be the Scion brand before that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/04/09/2018-toyota-yaris-se-its-surprisingly-ok/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2018/04/09/2018-t...
    - masonic 8y ago
      Yaris and Scion are different badgings that coexisted at the same time.
  - rpeden 8y ago
    I'm not sure how it is in other industries, but in automotive this is usually referred to as badge engineering. It results in some interesting vehicles. In the US, GM used to sell Toyota Corolla badged as Geo Prisms. And in Japan, Toyota sold Chevrolet Cavaliers rebadged as Toyota Cavaliers.
laumars 8y ago
This practice of rebranded stuff is as old as the cheap consumer electronics industry. Back in the 90s myself and a friend had the exact same bedroom TV but they were different brands because they were bought from different high street stores. What worries me more is fake reviews because that makes it harder to trust anything sold.
- digitalengineer 8y ago
  Can you trust the reviews? "Our engine has detected that Amazon has altered and removed reviews from this listing. We approximate total reviews removed to be 182. Previous analysis of this listing was an C grade." https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/
  - laumars 8y ago
    > Can you trust the reviews? I can't tell if your comment is intended to be a counterargument (it seems to read that way) but you're actually agreeing with the point I was making: Personally speaking re-branded products doesn't really bother me however the way reviews are abused does. I think your link is a little disingenuous in the way it's worded too because I don't think Amazon actually remove or alter any reviews themselves. What I think happens is sellers contact customers and ask them to remove bad reviews in favour of a refund (or whatever). At least that was how negative reviews used to be purged a few years back. Of course you could still argue that Amazon should take a more proactive stance to customer bribery (just as Amazon should against fake reviews too) but I'm just directly addressing the phrasing "Amazon has altered or removed reviews" as seen in your citation.
    - digitalengineer 8y ago
      I should have taken more time to write the comment. I copy/pasted the text "Amazon has altered or removed reviews" from the report the tool provided when I copied the URL from the Amazon Product Page and ran it to check the reviews.
      - 8y ago
andypants 8y ago
I recently tried to buy a new mouse on amazon. I found page after page of cheap identical rebranded products: https://i.imgur.com/KRNTBDB.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KRNTBDB.jpg I did not buy a new mouse on amazon.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  I don’t know how much success you were hoping for in buying a commodity item from no-name brands like that. That’s always going to be a free for all. If you look for mice from reputable companies the results on Amazon are fine.
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    But then you're playing counterfeit roulette as you figure out what seller to buy from and who is even selling it anyway.
    - sp00ls 8y ago
      Are counterfeits listed as brand names that big of a problem on Amazon? I make most of my electronics purchases from Amazon (tons in the last few years) and have never received a counterfeit item to the best of my knowledge.
      - snuxoll 8y ago
        Certain categories of items are ripe with them, fake Sandisk SD cards have been a problem for years, for example.
      - nkrisc 8y ago
        That's precisely the problem: I don't know how big of a problem it is, and I'm not keen to find out. I know it's enough of a problem that it's easier to simply shop elsewhere. I personally know a few people who have gotten counterfeit items, even including consumables like protein powder. I don't have to buy from Amazon so it's just a chance I'm not going to take until such a time I can be convinced it's not a problem. It's not any more difficult or even expensive for me to shop elsewhere so I don't have to be particularly rational or thorough about it (I don't have time for that!).
moltar 8y ago
It’s called white-labelling. There’s an entire cottage industry around that.

Theodores 8y ago

From the article: "I also think Holy Stone must be doing something to appease unhappy customers in exchange for not providing a negative review. It’s just too good to be true. Just 6% of reviews of the HS100 have 1, 2, or 3-star rating." So there are nefarious ways to achieve this. But you do not need to do sneaky things to get excellent reviews from pissed off customers. It is easy to assume that the more underhand ways have gotten the good reviews and I am sure you can go to a fake reviews bot to prove the thesis. But it is actually easier and more cost efficient to get those excellent reviews for an average product from pissed off customers by good old customer service. Most companies have their customer service team at the bottom of the food chain, outsourced and on the minimum wage. From my experience of Google products I suspect that this goes on in a lot of companies that genuinely make wonder products. We all know the story, you struggle to find out how to complain, you struggle filling in an online form and, if you are lucky, you get an automated response. They then make resolution of your complaint as hard as possible, divorce proceedings could be easier. Most companies don't go the 'full Google' on lousy customer service, however it still takes a while. You get there in the end. They actually have a good product so the complaints are a relatively rare thing for them. Consequently they don't have to major on customer service, the customer service guys are one or two grunts in the company and the whole thing is seen as a cost rather than a revenue centre. If a company does have a real problem with the product and there are a lot of warranty claims then they have to shape up and get good at customer service. Otherwise they are doomed to go out of business. So they throw people at the problem and more people and are still not winning. The next step is to automate the hell out of it. So you have extremely polite letters sent to customers to get the information needed to process a warranty claim. Customers receive these and the process rolls real quick. They provide required information and the highly automated customer service process just requires some human operator to approve the claim. The warehouse (FBA) then sends the customer out replacement product on the same day. Again, sensible communication goes out and the customer again thinks that for once in their freaking life they have been listened to. Maybe, up until then they have had 'Google grade' customer service and felt left out in the cold. At this point they don't really care so much about the product - most products are commodities anyhow - they just get wowed by the instant response. There is social engineering in this, the customer can also be led to believe that they are the first person to notice that the 'plastic could be moulded better' and they think that their feedback will be passed along to the 'design team' to help make a better product. They feel involved. Next the follow up email goes out, asking the customer if their experience with customer service was good enough. By now they have 'bonded' with 'Debbie' or whomever they thought those nice emails were from. They don't realise that 'Debbie' can't spell to save her life and cares more about watching Netflix than their problems with the product. 'Debbie' just clicked a button with automated systems and email templates doing the rest. But because they think they know 'Debbie' they obligingly write a really nice thank you and give five stars. A review is a review, on the site - Amazon or other - there are no silos for reviews breaking them down into 'customer service' and 'product', it all goes into the same pot. 'Debbie' might reject some warranty claims but for these people 'Debbie' can click a different tick box that sends out a discount code for the customer to buy a replacement. So whatever happens, thanks to automation put in place due to the lousy nature of the product, the customer always gets something far beyond what the 'good' companies would do. These reviews all look formulaic praise for the company because there is a high likelihood that people will write the same stuff, e.g. 'fab, utterly delighted, will buy again'. What else are they going to write? Then some fake review spotting bot comes along and goes 'ahem... these reviews are all the same!' which implies something dastardly. Nothing dastardly has gone on at all, this is assigning conspiracy when a more plausible explanation is possible. No customers have been bribed, no begging for reviews has gone on, the hustle is far more sophisticated than that. Obviously there is a lot of product that has to be sent out for warranty claims however, in this customer service model there is no huge team of people weighed down with a massive queue of complaints and not knowing what to do, only to ever let people down. Every complaint is dealt with in real time and there is no backlog. So then think anti-pattern here. If you can convert 99% of complaints into raving reviews then you kind of need more complaints as that is the best way to get awesome reviews. Happy normal customers don't usually care to write a review, they have better things to do. Pissed off customers that get delightful, not seen before, utterly speedy customer service will go that extra mile and forgive human and product failings to write reviews. These reviews provide the social proof other people need to buy the product. Clearly the product is not better and can't be for this gaming of the system to work. I am not saying this has gone on in this instance with this product - I don't work for this drone company and have no idea how they work behind the scenes. However I do know that the above technique works and that nobody is going to scan the page to notice 'all these reviews are as a result of customer service'. Even the Google bot won't notice. Most proper companies don't put the grunts of customer service high up in the food chain, some companies selling so-so commodity items have to. So off-brand products can win reviews remarkably easily with nothing being faked in the underhand ways people with no skin in the game can imagine. I have to say American consumers are the easiest 'marks' for this type of shenanigans, YMMV in Europe.

Smrchy 8y ago

It would be really nice to have a browser extension that shows the amount of other reviews every reviewer has in the last n months. Someone with 20+ review can not really be trusted and can be filtered out. Or even better: If Amazon would spend some of their AI departments time and delete those fake reviews on a daily basis. So tired of them.

chumali 8y ago
Might be worth checking out ReviewMeta - it scans Amazon product reviews for unnatural review patterns and provides a report highlighting suspicious activity. They also offer a browser extension.
sequence7 8y ago
The article actually mentions Fakespot [1] which has a chrome extension as well as ReviewMeta [2] which as far as I can tell doesn't. Neither do exactly what you're asking but they seem quite useful from a quick investigation and highlight some of the issues highlighted in the article when you look at the linked product. [1] https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ [2] https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/

DrNuke 8y ago

Shameless plug: as an advisor for DronesBench http://www.dronesbench.it/en http://www.dronesbench.it/en, which tests the electro-mechanical compliance of consumer drones, I suggested them to work on test drives of these cheap, dangerous drones to make the general public aware of the low quality level in the market. Their answer was that the general public does not care anyway, it is a war you cannot win because low prices trump all.

RankingMember 8y ago
Since a drone can potentially violate restricted airspace, I could see some regulatory body eventually requiring approval/certification before a drone aircraft can be sold. I can imagine private pilots aren't too keen on running into some out of control flying piece of garbage at a few thousand feet.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  > requiring approval/certification before a drone aircraft can be sold Drones are like computers, you can buy all the individual parts and build it yourself. They only have a few parts: flight controller, PDB, ESCs, motors, propellers, radio receiver, camera, video transmitter, and a frame to hold everything together. These vendors of cheap drones are just putting them together themselves and add a fancy canopy on top.
  - RankingMember 8y ago
    Kit planes are the same way, but they still need to be certified before they can fly.
  - DrNuke 8y ago
    That’s it. That’s also why DronesBench comes with a novel, single efficiency benchmark for the electro-mechanical compliance of the drone as a system http://www.dronesbench.it/en/fomdrone/ http://www.dronesbench.it/en/fomdrone/ . Just measure it at factory and write it on the plate or stick it somewhere on the frame, then measure again periodically during its operational life: significant decreases express hidden defects, thus becoming a preventive tool for flight safety.

mikehollinger 8y ago

Is this a new thing, “Review engine ‘optimization?’” So what’s the real fix here? If I report the company then it’ll shut down and reopen under a different name. If I leave a review it’ll drown it out with fake reviews. If I shame the company - no one will see it. mom trusts ama son because ten years ago I told her to look at the reviews there.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
>So what’s the real fix here? Dump the reviews? Perhaps return rates would be a better metric.
- mikehollinger 8y ago
  Yeah, but I can pay someone to keep the item and trash it.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Yes, but you can't stop dissatisfied customers returning theirs.
credit_guy 8y ago
The real fix is for Amazon to have a department of curation. Beyond a certain scale, you can't only be a passive intermediary. There are all sorts of negative actors. Just like HN has some curation (great work, Dang) Amazon needs some too, but obviously on a completely different scale.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  Why should Bezos care? He's worth $160 Billion so something must be working for him. Why would he feel the need to change? Amazon is making money, he's happy, investors are happy, so ... who cares about a few unhappy customers?
  - 8y ago

Terretta 8y ago

The tiny Holy Stone drones come with one tiny 6 min battery. A package insert offers three more batteries free, and by the way, don’t forget you can give happy reviews. The implications probably play out well for them. // The HS170G for $30 is a hoot to zip around indoors to practice your “Mode 2” controller chops, certainly worth 5 stars for entertainment per dollar: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0762GZR25/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0762GZR25/

flavor8 8y ago

To give Holy Stone credit, they have good customer service. I bought one of their crappier models when I was first exploring the quadcopter marketplace a few years ago. They did the usual thing of proactively emailing and asking for a review after a few days, but then actually replied to my email rant about quality control with suggestions to debug the issue. Finally, once I'd crashed it one too many times and destroyed it, they sent me a new drone free of charge. I suspect they're probably doing similar to anybody who leaves a bad rating in order to groom their listings. (Don't get me wrong - their customer service doesn't make up for their poor products. Never buy a drone with injection molded frames, since they're not serviceable. Carbon fiber with replaceable frame parts all the way.)

paulgb 8y ago
I've had something similar happen (with another product). I think it's the flip side of fake reviews that people don't consider: you might be able to fake your way to five stars with a new product, but keeping it actually requires a decent product and being responsible to unsatisfied customers (usually with one of those "contact us directly if you have any concerns" cards in the box)
- smt88 8y ago
  Their reviews inevitably tank, so they start selling the same product under a new brand.

amai 8y ago

Just use https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/ to validate Amazon scores of products. When you do it on HS100 it immediately gives you a warning: "Unnatural reviews possible" . Fakespot shows a Fakespot Grade F and a corrected rating of 1.3: https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-with-1080p-fhd-camera-5g-fpv-live-video-and-gps-return-home-function-rc-quadcopter-for-beginners-kids-adults-with-follow-me-altitude-hold-intelligent-battery https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-wit... It seems to me that Reviewmeta and FakeSpot do work. It is just Amazon that is too lazy to do anything against fake reviews.

josefresco 8y ago
To put this in perspective, the DJI Phantom 3 mostly passes: https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ
brink 8y ago
So if I want to harm a competitor's product on ReviewMeta, review it a bunch of times, then delete the reviews. Got it. This is a crappy game of cat and mouse, and if producers are willing to exploit Amazon's system, they'll exploit ReviewMeta. The only thing that protects ReviewMeta at this point is that it's a niche service. It'd be nice to see a mechanism that recognizes trusted reviewers, but even that can be exploited I suppose.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Depends on how effective the corrected score mechanism is. If it's taking out the scores it deems fake then recalculating the score based on the remaining scores that campaign will only hurt their FakeSpot score while still leaving their overall score mostly intact. If they drop the score just because of fake reviews the attack would work but if it basically just filters out spam reviews it's much less attackable.
- ReviewMeta 8y ago
  That's not exactly how it would work. As stated on the reports, deleted reviews don't actually affect our adjusted rating or pass/fail/warn result. Technically speaking, of course ReviewMeta can be "gamed", but it would require much more effort on the part of the seller to generate reviews in such a way that it wouldn't set off any warnings on our side. Basically force them to be very deliberate in their efforts. It would just add yet another hoop for sellers to jump through, making it that much more difficult on their part.

drewg123 8y ago

This reminds me why I use https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ analysis of Amazon reviews for products that I'm unfamiliar with. I see they mentioned fakespot in the article, which is nice.

buboard 8y ago

some iPhones have bigger margins than these drones.

phyller 8y ago

A lot of comments about existing tools to spot fake reviews, and wondering why Amazon doesn't use them because the fake reviews that are dominating Amazon are clearly hurting consumers. The long play for Amazon might just be that consumers gravitate towards the products that are actually sold by Amazon, because they can be sure that it should at least work. Eventually Amazon doesn't just control the marketplace, but is the only major vendor as well, and actually controls everything from the factory to the consumer.

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comboy 8y ago
It's also that fake reviewers probably don't try to game 3rd party sites rating systems. It seems plausible that if you implemented the same algo that some spotting-fake-reviews site uses on Amazon, sellers would quickly find a way around it.
- phyller 8y ago
  Yea that's a really good point. The best way for Amazon to deal with the problem is to curate the reviewers, not the reviews, in my opinion.

bhuga 8y ago

There's one upside to the Amazon shopping experience devolving into a primordial sludge of counterfeits and random whitelabel garbage. These vendors have no discoverability beyond Amazon reviews, so their desperation to prevent your 1-star review is drastic. If you leave a 1-star review, they'll often get in touch with you and offer you another item for free, as often as it takes, however long it takes. The products are garbage, but most of the prices are already pretty good. When you realize the prices are for two at the cost of a review, they're even better. I still get emails trying to give me free stuff to change a one-star review I left a year ago for a one-ear bluetooth earbud. On the other hand, I don't see how you can buy quality on Amazon anymore. I've started shopping on niche sites for things that I want to work, and I'd never buy expensive electronics. The risk of a counterfeit is just too high.

jobigoud 8y ago
> If you leave a 1-star review, they'll often get in touch with you and offer you another item for free But is it at the price of removing your 1-star review? They are buying your honesty?
- zip1234 8y ago
  Sounds like the ultimate 1-star review for these types of situations should note that they will give you a free one if you 1 star the product. People will start doing that just for free ones.
masonic 8y ago
The products are garbage, but most of the prices are already pretty good To me, there is no such thing as a "good" price for a "garbage" product.

dalbasal 8y ago

Ok so erm... we all know what to expect when an amazon article hits HN. Amazon has devolved. Counterfeits. Fake reviews. Crap quality.... IDK if this is true. That is, IDK if amazon's meaningfully worse than traditional big department stores or the brick-and-mortar sector generally. But, say it's true. Amazon has jumped the shark. This is HN. This isn't the place for customer complaints. It's the place to hatch plans to kill amazon. What's the bridgehead (à la pg) to a full-scale invasion of amazon territory? Reviews? Some product subset? Discovery? How would you build the company that replaces amazon?

Brushfire 8y ago
Curation. If the Wirecutter had a store, I'd use it. Instead they just link off to Amazon.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >If the Wirecutter had a store, I'd use it I would once too. Then I found out this "curation" ain't that well curated... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408 https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to-play-model https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...
  - Brushfire 8y ago
    Sure, the Wirecutter is just an example. You probably need a membership model that people pay for, that also grants them the Amazon prime shipping benefits and covers the cost of reviews etc...
- luddaite 8y ago
  Isn't this approach that merchants such as Massdrop are taking? They have a small number of product categories that are heavily curated by the staff and the users.
kurthr 8y ago
I assume this is tech-shaming... some giant product owned by the (second?) richest person in the world has some obvious flaws. Trying to embarrass Amazon into fixing it (like Facebook, Twitter, et al) by buying one of the addons services that prevent blatant abuse is a strategy... and possibly a profitable one both as a customer and acquiree.

wolfgke 8y ago

Just a consideration: Isn't it at least somewhat plausible that some products attract people who are satisfied more easily and thus write good reviews? In this scenario, lots of these reviews might be honest, but nevertheless not helpful to you, since the good review only implies that you will be satisfied if you are of a similar demographic.

deleted 8y ago
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ryanmarsh 8y ago

Anyone old enough to recall Walmart’s rise to power will find amazon’s trend towards cheap crap familiar. Walmart sold dirt cheap Chinese stuff of dubious quality but customer service would replace it at the drop of a hat (similar to how these companies keep bad reviews down). As shown by Walmart’s success most people don’t care they just want cheap crap. It took a while for Target to rebrand itself as the less crappy source of overpriced but better quality cheap crap store for the middle and upper-middle class. Perhaps someone will come along and do this to Amazon online. Whereas Amazon clearly doesn’t care that it’s selling cheap crap, someone could come along and apply a little more curation to the offering.

sethhochberg 8y ago

Man, when I read the headline I seriously thought this was going to be a report on drones that Amazon had been evaluating for commercial delivery purposes, not just an aggregate customer review article... sometimes this habit of referring to Amazon users as "Amazon" or reddit users as "reddit" has problems.

yohann305 8y ago

This year, media was focusing on taking down Facebook, i'm forecasting 2019 will be the year media will focus on Amazon. Let's see