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Her Amazon Purchases Are Real, the Reviews Are Fake

291 points by ilamont 7y ago

rantwasp 7y ago
not a big fan of ML but this sounds like the perfect case for it. Amazon could catch people like this pretty easily.
ceejayoz 7y ago
> But sometimes the products are worse, and Jessica still rates them 5 stars. “I haven’t found a thermometer by doing this that works correctly — they all give me different readings,” she said. Jessica is afraid to use the electronic appliances she receives, which often come with incomprehensible instructions written in both English and Chinese. She took photos of one product, a foot spa, without adding water or plugging it in. > Jessica also doesn’t trust health and beauty products on the site, because of her boyfriend, a chemist, who has found toxic ingredients in analyses of unregulated products. She'll happily give them five stars, though. Gross.
- bloopernova 7y ago
  Her thought process seems to be a disgusting combination of "I'm benefiting so it's fine" and "bad stuff only happens to other people". I hope Amazon investigates her, tracks people who contact her, and kicks the lot of them off the site. I also know that the chances of that happening are close to zero.
  - seunosewa 7y ago
    The pictures and names of the products she ‘reviewed’ or is ‘reviewing’ will probably make it easy to identify her.
    - nkrisc 7y ago
      She's an Amazon cardholder with a volume of purchases probably in some high percentile, probably an abnormally high review rate along likely near-exclusive 5-star ratings. Geographic clues aren't as narrow, since you can pretty much only rule out the far South where trees don't lose their leaves in fall. However when taking the above into account, I suppose you could filter the resulting addresses even further with map data as her house appears to be at the junction of a T-intersection. Article also mentioned an upstairs neighbor so her address might have a unit number as well. All said and done, identifying her doesn't sound like an impossible task for a motivated person with access to the necessary data on Amazon's end. And that's before even cross-referencing with specific items shown in the photos.
mothsonasloth 7y ago
The problem with reviews is even though they have a name, like "Bob Seymour, from Manchester" or "Tracy Hughes, from London". They're still impersonal. Unlike the reviews when you go around to a friends BBQ or are at an event, and you say "Oh hey Sarah, I see you are driving the new X". Then they proceed to tell you how great/bad or mediocre it is. Surprised no-one has been able to engineer a more personable review mechanic, then again with all the privacy concerns. Do you really want to know what your friends are buying, and equally for them to know what you are buying too.
- MichaelApproved 7y ago
  If comfortable writing a review about a product, I’m comfortable with friends knowing that I bought it. The bigger problem seems to be critical mass of friends reviews to make it a worthwhile endeavor. How many similar products have my friends bought? If that small group, how many have written reviews? That subset of a subset is probably too small to be meaningful.
- ipython 7y ago
  That's exactly right - this is the problem that we have with every online "social" network (I would include Amazon reviews in this label for the purposes of this comment). It's clear from the article that she retains two separate and unequal ratings of each product: one that she provides to her "online" persona, and one that she would provide to her "authentic" persona. It's clear that she would not purchase these products herself or recommend them to friends, yet rates them 5 stars on Amazon. As many will point out, the ability to do this is not new; the ability to do it at scale and with zero consequences (where consequences would be to your own personal reputation, for example) is the innovation. What's truly sad is that we're missing out on such a crucial piece of information that is available to her: namely, her boyfriend's expertise in chemistry. They could blow the lid off shoddy and downright dangerous products on Amazon and provide a valuable public service to boot, but hey, it's easier to run the grift, right?
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  Amazon used to have a reviewing system that was a lot more social: you could follow people, chat with them on message boards, read detailed bios and an explanation of why they review a certain niche of products, etc. Then, it was easy to notice trustworthy reviewers who were reviewing things for the simple pleasure of it. (Back in the day, it was mainly books, CDs, and DVDs being reviewed, not Chinese-made products like now.) Amazon eventually shut down the message boards, probably because it felt moderation cost more than the feature brought profit. Successive changes to the site's design obscured most of the other social aspects.
twgrp 7y ago
Why am I not surprised to see she's obese?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mosselman 7y ago
Schemes like this and people with lack of morals (admitted in the article), are what makes making online purchases so hard. Either the price has to be ridiculously low so that it doesn't matter if something is total crap (aliexpress comes to mind as a store where you do it) or you have to find some recommendation that you can trust. I usually look at reviews from the Consumer Associations of the Netherlands and Germany (Consumentenbond and Stiftung Warentest), which helps a lot. You usually end up with products of the same type of brands though (Bosch, Siemens, etc). Which isn't bad, but it makes it very hard for smaller brands to have a chance at some market share without resorting to scummy marketing techniques. Reviews on the German Amazon store used to be fairly trustworthy, but this has changed in recent years. As it is, you are better off going to physical stores where you can at least hold the products and see what the build quality is like.
- modzu 7y ago
  i pay for consumer reports for exactly this reason.
MichaelApproved 7y ago
Between these “authentic” fake reviews, the usual fake reviews and counterfeit products, Amazon seems open to serious competition. I’ve already started buying things from Target and Walmart for things that are commonly counterfeited, like batteries and SD cards. I know they have a marketplace too but I avoid them for these items. For me, the biggest thing Amazon has going for it is the dead-simple return policy. I’m comfortable rolling the dice with many products because I can easily return it, if it ends up being garbage. Repackaging and returning can sometimes be a pain, so I’ll be reluctant to gamble sometimes. However, I’ve been more lazily repacking items and it hasn’t been an issue.
- dgellow 7y ago
  Is the issue of counterfeit products a worldwide problem with Amazon? I'm just asking because I'm in Europe and use Amazon quite often for electronics, and haven't faced issues so far. Could it be that the problem is mostly in the US? It could be that I just avoided counterfeited goods by chance, or just didn't notice...
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I am in America and have yet to get screwed by a counterfeit. I wonder if you might be on to something though. Maybe the counterfeits are all stored in specific states and ship from there more frequently since I assume Amazon wants to ship from the closest warehouse to you. Would be good to know what state most of these people live in to see if thats just the pattern. I say this cause I have always heard you can buy counterfeits in NY of any major clothing brand or even electronics.
    - MichaelApproved 7y ago
      > I am in America and have yet to get screwed by a counterfeit. Well, how do you know? Maybe they’ve been good counterfeits? Another possibility is that you’ve never seen the genuine version, so you don’t know what to compare the counterfeit to.
mcphage 7y ago
> The spreadsheet helps Jessica make sure she’s on top of due dates and getting paid on time. BuzzFeed News reviewed the document, which showed 117 open orders that hadn’t been refunded yet. A column titled “Total currently out of pocket” — or what she’s still owed — amounted to $2,282.01. So not only is she getting lots of cheap crap, and having to fake reviews for it... she's paying over $2,000 to do so?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  No, it means she gets paid post-review, which means she tends to have an accounts receivable balance.
- LeonM 7y ago
  The brand reimburse the purchases, but only after the review. So this is money that is still due.
- AmVess 7y ago
  Further, she loses money with these reviews. Basically, she likes getting packages full of things she doesn't use and loses money on. What a weird hobby. “I really don’t think I’m making money on it at all. I’m pretty sure I’m losing money,” Jessica said while looking over her spreadsheet. “I’m pretty sure I’m at a 10% loss. But I’m okay with it, because I’ve gotten a whole bunch of new stuff.”
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Presumably, if they don't pay up on time, she can change the review to 1-star and blacklist the seller from the fraud scheme?
  - mcphage 7y ago
    Or would that just get her blacklisted?
    - logfromblammo 7y ago
      Getting blacklisted by a company that doesn't pay as promised is not really a bad thing. And I don't think they collaborate on shill management.
degenerate 7y ago
When I see a product with about ~50 reviews and they are all either GLOWING with praise, full of pictures, include videos, or otherwise clearly took more than a few minutes to write, it's a good tell the reviews are mostly paid for. I don't know how to handle this from Amazon's angle... how about limiting how many items a buyer can review from a certain seller? Or force them to contribute a 3- or 4-star review every so often, instead of all 5's? (this one's too easy to game - you just buy a 30¢ irrelevant item every now and then and review it poorly.) It's a hard problem to solve for Amazon, and I don't trust them to care enough to fix it. In the meantime, I stick with volume as my indicator for quality. It's very unlikely a company paid for nearly 2,000 5-star reviews, so products with LOTS of reviews are the ones I usually end up purchasing.
- edoo 7y ago
  I use https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ It isn't perfect but can confirm the bad ones.
- clemfromspace 7y ago
  I use https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/, I really like all the explanations they have for each of their metrics.
- inetsee 7y ago
  Now I'm confused. I used reviewmeta.com and www.fakespot.com for the first time on a product I'm thinking of buying (a fitness tracker). Reviewmeta gave a revised rating of 4.6, down from the Amazon rating of 4.8. Fakespot gave the product a rating of "F". How am I expected to believe that these metareview sites, or others like them, are providing any better information than the original Amazon reviews?
throwawaylolx 7y ago
Yes, paid reviews has been an industry since forever. What is the insight of this article?
- seunosewa 7y ago
  The article shows us exactly how it’s done.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tobltobs 7y ago
> but Jessica told BuzzFeed News she doesn’t think she’s gaming the system; she’s trying to help brands grow their businesses in Amazon’s massive marketplace. “I’m just a pawn in their marketing scheme,” she said. > Jessica’s activity, as far as Amazon is concerned, looks legitimate. She makes purchases from her own Amazon account and credit card, so her reviews are labeled as a “verified purchase.” Don't know if Jessica or Amazon is the bigger crook here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  The former.
- seunosewa 7y ago
  I can’t see how anyone could conclude that Amazon is the bigger crook from that quote. She gamed their system, as criminals do, and now they must improve.
  - Humdeee 7y ago
    A much larger entity actively doing nothing can have much bigger consequences than many small actors operating in bad faith. It's one thing to try and improve your system, it's another to ensure a proper system is there to begin with.
- Zenst 7y ago
  "In other words, third-party sellers aren’t the only ones paying her to leave fake reviews and superficially boost sales — Amazon is too." Would indicate that Amazon are and if they are in effect fiscally encouraging this practice then people like Jessica would take that as some form of legalised legitimacy. Which is not the case [edit add] [EDIT ADD] This is just cashback from Amazon credit card, just badly worded in article
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
nkrisc 7y ago
> “I definitely feel like I have to keep [the reviewing] a secret from people who have strong morals,” Jessica added. Age old scam that works because of people like Jessica who lack any moral compass and will help to screw over anyone for a buck.
- rantwasp 7y ago
  it’s hard to have a moral compass when your stomach is empty. even if that’s not the case you will always have bad actors. always. the question is: who has the right incentives to stop this kind of behavior?
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    And yet people poorer and more destitute than her avoid turning to crime. Read the article. She's not hungry, she likes getting stuff and having it be like Christmas everyday. It's simple greed.
    - rantwasp 7y ago
      to me it sounds like a person with some sort of addiction/mental health issue. she found a way to get her fix without starving (ie spending all her money on crap and being broke afterwards). it’s true that good people are not resolving to this crappy behavior. it’s also true that are a lot of people that do cheat the system. bottom line, this is a systematic issue and until the right incentives are in place this problem is not going to just fix itself.
  - MichaelApproved 7y ago
    Don't excuse her behavior with a made-up "stomach is empty" sob story. This is far from a "stealing bread to eat" situation. Jessica isn't scamming people for basic needs, she's conning people for luxury items. If it were about simply putting food on the table, she'd be reselling everything after she reviewed them, instead of leaving them in a pile in some corner.
    - 7y ago
porsche959 7y ago
Honestly Walmart has gotten so much better at competing versus a couple of years ago. Most items reach my door within 2-3 days (in nyc), and their customer service is now on par with amazon prime, which is to say, amazon has gotten much worse. I did not mind paying for the convenience of a "dont ask, dont tell" return policy, however, amazon has gotten more strict. If i wanted that, i would rather stick to traditional retailers.
jimhefferon 7y ago
I used to think for reasonably everyday items, not too expensive, that the number of real reviews and answers would overwhelm the number of fakes. But I recently asked a question about an item that I have bought before (a small appliance that I have been forced to find to be more a consumable than a durable). I asked if the vendor had fixed the flaw that made me throw out three prior ones. Within minutes there were three answers, assuring me that there was in fact no such flaw. These items were great. Perfect! Silly of me, I guess.
- brewdad 7y ago
  I'm not sure if that's better or worse than all of the questions that get answers of "I don't know" or "Sorry, I can't answer your question" How about just ignoring the question then and let someone else provide a useful answer.
  - harrygallagher4 7y ago
    I've always assumed this comes from older Amazon shoppers who interpret the emails asking if they can answer questions about some item they ordered as personally asking them to answer the questions.
exhilaration 7y ago
But she doesn’t consider reviews while browsing: “When I see an off-brand product that’s Amazon’s Choice, [that label] doesn’t mean anything to me anymore,” she said. Well I learned something new today. I didn't realize it was so easy to game that Amazon's Choice label.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Yeah, that label is entirely gamed. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/14/18679637/amazon-choice-rating-algorithm-recommendation-buying-decision https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/14/18679637/amazon-choi...
cabaalis 7y ago
Just a bad idea to let someone write an article about you. It could be possible for an Amazon employee to use clues from the photographs to identify this user.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  I was thinking the same. Amazon card, rough volume of purchases and kinds of purchases... that ought to be enough to narrow down a bit? Outside shots give geographic clues too (we can assume it's not Southern Florida).
dghughes 7y ago
Here in Canada the CBC show Marketplace showed how bold some people are at reviews some even posing as medical doctors. Many of them coming from people who work for a company called Fiverr. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/video-review-testimonial-marketplace-1.3953793 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/video-review-testimonial-ma...
windexh8er 7y ago
Amazon could root out these users rather quickly. If this "reviewer" is posting only 5-star reviews Amazon could implement a check box the user agrees to before submission. It would state that the user has not been paid or will not be paid for said review and that the review has not been influenced by the manufacturer or seller. If said user is found to be placing erroneous reviews (all 5 star reviews seems to be a dead giveaway) Amazon will remove all prior comments and ban commenting via the users account for X months. She states that she doesn't think what she's doing is wrong. It is wrong because it's a misrepresentation in many cases. Her gain is another person's loss of time and money based on what most people expect to be reasonably honest feedback. It's amazing what people will do for free junk. Cables are notorious for this - almost every knock off type cable I've purchased from Amazon has come with an envelope asking for a review and they will provide a free gift for me. Most of those purchases go back to Amazon and I try to review them accordingly, but it's hard to judge when you've got more than 200 reviews and averaging 4.5 stars on a very specific cable you're looking for (length, color, specs, etc). In these cases Amazon eats significant shipping costs for the send and return labels - you'd think they'd want to get this under control better. But if anything I'd say returning the item is the best way to get Amazon to crack down on this since these fake reviews then cost them time and money.
- MichaelApproved 7y ago
  > Amazon could implement a check box the user agrees to before submission. No need for a check box, fake reviews are already against their ToS and against the law. Amazon can take action anytime it wants.
  - patentatt 7y ago
    How are fake reviews against the law? And how do we know that they’re fake? She has the product, and tells her opinion of it. How do we judge if her opinion is fake? I know full well the circumstantial evidence argument, but from a legal point of view, I think you’d need more.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
rb808 7y ago
Its interesting that a few years back brands were losing their power. Why buy a Sony gadget when a XYZTech gadget has great reviews and apparently works even better. Now you can't trust reviews any more and the Sony product looks more like something you can trust.
AmVess 7y ago
Amazon reported that in 2018, customers spent $160 billion on items from third-party sellers — 58% of all sales on the site. More than 1 million sellers joined Amazon marketplaces around the world that year, according to e-commerce data firm Marketplace Pulse. In this year’s shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote: “Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly.” This tells me that Amazon is never going to fix the gamed reviews, or the counterfeit items, because doing so will impact their profits.
Nursie 7y ago
She's basically taking part in fraud. How she justifies it to herself is pretty irrelevant.
thefrog 7y ago
I can't believe people waste their time doing shit like this. I make well into 6 digits and I don't work that hard.
imgabe 7y ago
Seems like in addition to all the other problems this is enabling people with hoarder tendencies. Amazon needs to start losing business for this to change. Maybe all the big data collection could come in handy. Amazon could probably pay Facebook to find out all the people who are in these paid reviewer groups and ban them all, buyers and sellers.
walterstucco666 7y ago
How amazon could solve the problem block_accounts_in( select users.username, avg(reviews.stars), sum(order.amount) from reviews inner join users on reviews.uid=users.uid inner join orders on reviews.uid=orders.uid group by users.username having avg(reviews.stars)=5 and sum(orders.amount)>10000 )
jefftk 7y ago
Those pictures are not sufficiently anonymous; https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05314 https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05314 or just neighbors could easily see where she is. And the barcodes are easily visible on some of the boxes.
- ragazzina 7y ago
  Or Amazon could just check who bought any three items from the random assortment in the picture..
- ct0 7y ago
  Those barcodes are specifically for box identification, like size and shape, rather then buyer identification.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Sorry, barcodes on the labels on the boxes!
irrational 7y ago
I would be terrible at this. I purchased a set of headphones that sucked and left a 1 star review. The seller contacted me and sent me a new pair. They sucked too. But, the seller asked me to change my review to 5 stars. I refused. They actually sent me 2 more sets, each time encouraging me to change my review to 5 stars. Eventually they gave up (all the headphones had problems so I refused), but I was amazed at the lengths they would go through just to get one person to give them a 5 star review.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  One star is really harsh, don't you think? I guess this is just how people think though, everything is either 5 or 1 star right? Makes one wonder why we even have 5 star systems. Habit I suppose.
  - TheHypnotist 7y ago
    That's why I like Steam's thumbs up/down. Stars 2-4 are useless.
    - logfromblammo 7y ago
      Not exactly worthless. I usually assume that 1 and 5 star reviews are by competitors and shills, respectively, and mainly ignore the star value anyway. I read 2-star reviews first, and look for text descriptions of identifiable strengths and weaknesses, and these must be corroborated by other substantial reviews. If anyone, with any star value, says "I wasn't shipped what was advertised/listed", I just close the Amazon tab, and look at other retailers. I don't have time for counterfeiter roulette any more.
    - pizza234 7y ago
      They're not (all) useless. There are a lot of Steam reviews complaining about the lack of a "neutral thumb". In this perspective, a more usable Steam system would have three evaluations, which would be a gross equivalent of 1-, 3- and 5- star Amazon ratings. I agree with the judgment, in fact, several times, positive or negative is pretty much a coin toss. In other words, at least the 3-stars rating has a use.
stevespang 7y ago
Gaming Amazon: Her Amazon Purchases Are Real. The Reviews Are Fake. Fat Lady Living in Trailer made $15,000 so far this year and get's to keep the products. Stick that in your orifice, Bezos.
trenning 7y ago
Even if Amazon fixed this situation and the fake product stock would I wouldn't switch back to using them. Personally the customer trust is gone since it's been years now that I've been seeing articles and hn posts on this subject with nothing being done. The "world most customer obsessed company" really sold their customers out for profit over basic service and let fraud run rampant on the platform. At this point seeing these articles is like seeing another post about Facebook secretly being malicious with user data, it's known they're a shitty business and a risk to use.
Phillips126 7y ago
I wonder if she suffers from hoarding as well as she seems to be a bit in denial with her expenses. The article states: > Almost every day, Jessica’s boyfriend of eight years begrudgingly hauls Amazon packages in from the porch. “He hates it,” she told BuzzFeed News. But Jessica proudly points to all the items she's acquired for their new house: “I got our new showerhead, shower organizer, side tables, coat rack, coat hangers. … We would have had to pay for all that stuff.” Then it later states: > The spreadsheet helps Jessica make sure she’s on top of due dates and getting paid on time. BuzzFeed News reviewed the document, which showed 117 open orders that hadn’t been refunded yet. A column titled “Total currently out of pocket” — or what she’s still owed — amounted to $2,282.01. So she isn't _REALLY_ getting everything for free. According to her own records she is down $2,282.01 and it's quite possible she wont see that money. If this continues, that number will either grow into serious debt or "Jessica" will move on to something else. Sounds like an addiction.
- frandroid 7y ago
  She should be charging a fixed fee for the review itself. She has a whole bunch of things she clearly doesn't need and isn't even paid for her labour...
  - bdowling 7y ago
    > isn't even paid for her labour... The IRS considers payment in kind (goods in exchange for services) to be taxable income. [0] So, I’d say she’s getting paid. [0] https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420
    - hnick 7y ago
      Unless I'm misunderstanding it's more straightforward. The article says she is reimbursed, so the steps are (based on my Aus understanding, US tax law may vary): 1) Buy product - taxable expense for business/work purposes 2) Write review 3) Get sent money equal to purchase price - taxable income Net, the money cancels out to no taxable income but she has the product. It was bought with her own money and still belongs to her. It's like if I run a blog, I bought a new PC to do my blogging (business expense), wrote about how nice it was, then the company sent me some money or a gift as thanks. I wouldn't have to pay tax on the PC if this happened.
cptskippy 7y ago
Amazon has shown no interest in fixing this issue. I use custom emails for every service I use (e.g. amazon@<mydomain>) to manage spam. The only spam I get to my amazon address is for these scams. I've reported the issue to Amazon through a couple different channels and they always respond that it's just spam because I gave my email out. No, it's sellers on their marketplace soliciting customers who make an initial legitimate purchase and leave a positive review.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  I forgot to mention their responses usually contain a veiled threat about accepting such offers.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Amazon doesn't care, the FTC might.
stets 7y ago
Jessica sounds like an asshole from the quotes on the page. "I like getting free stuff" and thinking this kind of marketing is honest. Jeez...
pergadad 7y ago
The fame reviews are mostly easy to spot (although of xours sits impossible to know which ones you didn't spot...) - eg that they have photos is for me a clear indicator of fakes. But even if you actually recognise them, it wastes your lifetime and makes it more difficult to find authentically good products - in particular in the areas with high competition where you have fake positive and fake negative reviews (paid for by competitors), eg robot vacuums.
- dwoozle 7y ago
  Why is it fake if it has photos? I’ve included photos in my reviews.
excursionist 7y ago
I recently started noticing some sellers including a little brochure/paper along with the product with something like this written: 'Write a review for this product, rate 5 stars in all categories, send us an email at <qqq@qqq.com> with the review ID, and receive a free product.'
hamhand 7y ago
This is one of the limitations platforms have, it simply can't be fixed, and platforms often don't have incentives to fix it. What's important for platforms? GMV. Faking reviews is just the first step of gaming the platforms, next vendors will pay people to fake-buying, as what's happening on JD and Alibaba on an industrial scale. They already need the GMV and commissions generated, now that PinDuoDuo is popular for selling dirt-cheap things, they need to retain vendors now too, so they don't even pretend to punish these fakings. Alibaba's 11.11 shopping festival is a good example, it goes out of its way to make the GMV of that single day as big as possible, tactics including forbidding buyers to pay before that day(make them to delay weeks' purchase to that day), disabling refunding on 11.11, sales tagets for vendors.
ct0 7y ago
I stopped reading 5 star reviews. Using fakespot in combination with reviewing the 3 star reviews has proven pretty effective in combating the potential junk product that could show up.
markbnj 7y ago
I purchased an item last year, found it to be unsuited to my application, and posted a mildly negative review which essentially stated that the item was not as suited for the application as the manufacturers had claimed. Since that time I have gotten 2-3 emails per day from the vendor begging me to remove the review, and offering to reimburse the purchase cost and even add a bonus payment. I've ignored them all but they keep coming. My email was not associated with the purchase, but apparently there are tools vendors can use to match a review to an email address.
- growlist 7y ago
  Same here. Weeks' worth of emails imploring me to remove my negative review.
jamisteven 7y ago
You can always tell, its pretty easy to just click the users profile and see that they have reviewed seemingly unrelated products ad-nauseum and the frequency of purchases being through the roof, with most of them being 5 star reviews. Not to mention, what do you do with all that crap?! She isnt being paid, just reimbursed which means not only does she need time to do the review but time to sell all this junk. Terrible side hustle if you ask me.
Hokusai 7y ago
> Because of Amazon’s vast scale, inscrutable algorithms, and capricious enforcement of its own rules, unscrupulous sellers and paid shills largely get away with it. The only solution for it is regulation. Without regulations, asbestos will still be in our homes, lead paint will cover schools and pollution will fill our lungs. Most consumers do not have the time, money and education required to look for quality products. If we let Amazon sell crap, is crap what will be only available for most of the population. And Amazon has passed a long time ago the line between low quality and fraud.
- growlist 7y ago
  caveat emptor
wyldfire 7y ago
> With thousands of new sellers signing up every day, Does this end of the business have to be so frictionless? This seems like a "simple" reputation problem (†) and they turn a blind eye to Sybil attacks? (†) no, not really simple, but if anyone were up to the challenge it would seem Amazon is.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago
Oddly enough, the Amazon 'Vine' program could be more reliable than other reviews; that program rewards critical reviews just as much as positive ones. There is no quid pro quo.
Zelphyr 7y ago
"'I definitely feel like I have to keep [the reviewing] a secret from people who have strong morals,' Jessica added." But then she plays herself off as this cute, innocent girl who just does this for fun. She knows she's doing something immoral and unethical, she just doesn't care because she likes feeling "like its Christmas every day".
- stri8ed 7y ago
  We need to operate with the assumption that all vulnerabilities that can be exploited for profit, will be. People will be people. The only answer is mechanisms that make it less profitable.
polynomial 7y ago
Is this a problem something like Plaid could help with? (Assuming she used the same credit card.)
pepijndevos 7y ago
I would think it is extremely easy to spot fake reviews statistically. The other day I was browsing a Dutch website similar to Amazon, and they show a distribution of the ratings. For a given category, there were a few products at the top that had hundreds of 5 star reviews, a wide gap, and then a few 1 star reviews. Meanwhile, the other products had a fraction of the reviews with a more natural distribution.
MICHAELSEN 7y ago
I was in such a debacle recently. As I have developed a Stalwart Business Model. AIMING for 2020 as that seems to be the CLEAREST VISION for HITTING TARGET #'s & reducing OVERHEAD. Question = Is it imperative to FULLY staff right away? CUTTING CORNERS can be DEATH to a START UP like mine. I'm sure your familiar with the "honeymoon phase"? A lot of small minded/BIG EGO operations think they have it in their PALM. My mindset is that if it fits in my palm, its NOT BIG ENOUGH... FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING!
m3kw9 7y ago
I always read 10-20 authentic-look-like reviews and form an average. The more you read the better. Plus read outside reviews.
MICHAELSEN 7y ago
Try going back to school. Local libraries in your area offer FREE GED classes. At least you wouldn't be so EXPOSED & terribly obvious. I assume you aspire to be smarter? Hopefully you agree, who wouldn't. I actually am VOLUNTEERING my time to Educate Teachers/Professors on Emergency Evacuations. The POINT is, I want to AIM for the BEST that I can be. Don't turn your back for one second, charge forward & attack a better lifestyle. I deserve it & SO DO YOU!!! Cinnamon burns my tongue, it's like poison to my mouth, I still use it though. Snickerdoodle
dobleboble 7y ago
"“I definitely feel like I have to keep [the reviewing] a secret from people who have strong morals,” Jessica added." You'd think that would be a pretty good indication that you shouldn't be doing something...
- propter_hoc 7y ago
  "Don't do something you'd be ashamed to tell your grandmother about"
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/4K7v5 http://archive.is/4K7v5
gitdebug 7y ago
After I read those posts, ... Well, it's not only happen on Amazon, but on another sites too. As long as there's a seller, buyer, and medium, there's always a chance to do it. “That’s what makes spending money on free products worth it for these blackhat sellers,” Not only on online markets, even offline store does that. But, I apreciate for the long posts made by buzzfeeds
moron4hire 7y ago
I don't get it. Why is Amazon cracking down on this? They offer this very service of "free-shit-for-robo-reviews" to sellers through their own damn site. https://www.sellerapp.com/blog/amazon-promotions-explained/amp/ https://www.sellerapp.com/blog/amazon-promotions-explained/a... ... Oh.
RKearney 7y ago
> Amazon has banned giving away free products in exchange for reviews I didn't realize they banned this practice considering they themselves operate the Vine program. I know someone who receives upwards of a dozen products a week for free to review by Amazon. Everything from robot vacuums to cutlery sets.
- madelyn 7y ago
  Vine reviews are disclosed in the app or on the website, though. I don't really see that as malicious.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  Amazon isn't against paid reviews. They are against paid reviews THEY don't control. I'm sick of seeing news pieces where they focus on some mommy blogger who made $15k (which they play up like it's a tone of money) by providing conflict of interest reviews, while Amazon does that at 1,000,000x the scale with no one bating an eye. I'd say it's lazy if not biased and single sided bad journalism to not even mention the Vine program.
jedberg 7y ago
I got an offer to this out of the blue once. They wanted me to buy some cheap product and give it a good review. Of course I understand why this is wrong and unethical, so I tried to report it to Amazon. There is no way to report this to Amazon. They have no facility for reporting a product that someone tried to pay you to review positively. The only thing you can do is contact customer service who as far as I can tell do nothing with the report. All they need to do is add a category to their customer service section to report fraud. It blows my mind that they do not do this. But not really. They make more money by allowing this behavior, both from the fake buyer, as well as the other customers who are duped into buying highly reviewed items.
- Fezzik 7y ago
  I totally agree. But where do we draw the line for fraud? I just ordered a $5.00 product, a pair of interesting-looking-at-first-glance earplugs for swimming, that are utter garbage. Included was something I had never seen - instructions for leaving a positive review that would allow me to receive a $10.00 Amazon gift card. This clearly appears to me to be buying positive reviews... which should not be allowed... but is not fraud... I do not think. Given that the product is cheap, I can see how people would leave positive reviews - lo and behold, the product has nearly a 5-star rating with 100+ reviews! I can guarantee nobody who swims would rate this product above 2 stars. Online reviews are a wonky and game-able system.
  - asxd 7y ago
    It seems fraudulent in that it would evidently not be an honest review, complicated by the fact that the review would essentially be paid promotional content because you were paid for it.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    That sounds like a pretty clear case of fraud. It would only take one report with pictures of that coupon to remove the product. But why would they. They have your money already.
    - 7y ago
ineedasername 7y ago
This is why I almost always pay much more attention to negative reviews. How many there are, the reasons for the bad review, and so on. Positive reviews, even honest ones, are always so generic: "it's great, works as intended!" Bad reviews usually give a lot more detail that actually describes the experience in concrete detail.
iamleppert 7y ago
Eventually her boyfriend will get fed up with her bizarre habit and dump her. Probably sooner than later. Who puts up with that for long? She needs to get help before this wrecks her life.
w1nst0nsm1th 7y ago
I read review for ipad cable once. The reviews had nothing to do with cable. I wanted to report it to Amazon but there was no way to do so.
qwertz123456 7y ago
I wrote once a negative review for a product at Amazon, nothing offensive, like three sentences why I thought it was not what I expected. Amazon deleted my review and wrote me to contact the seller. Since than I do not comment at Amazon.
crescentfresh 7y ago
Wow, interesting read. For many years shopping on Amazon when looking for a preferred product I always a) click on the reviews, then 2) immediately jump to the 1-star reviews. For the most part they contain information that feels more authentic and relevant.
tmaly 7y ago
It seems plausible that Amazon could detect someone buying such a high volume of different stuff. Then examine the sellers and look for similar patterns of people who purchased same items.
aussiegreenie 7y ago
Amazon will die due to phoney products and reviews. Sometime in the future, Amazon will be held responsible for the lies and that is when the whole company will die. It will not happen today, tomorrow or next year but in a few years time either the copyright holders (Brands) will get them or other regulation. It will be charged under RICO, it does millions of wire frauds every day.
strenholme 7y ago
Just in case anyone else hasn’t brought it up, https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ is pretty good at catching fake reviews.

291 points by ilamont 7y ago

not a big fan of ML but this sounds like the perfect case for it. Amazon could catch people like this pretty easily.

> But sometimes the products are worse, and Jessica still rates them 5 stars. “I haven’t found a thermometer by doing this that works correctly — they all give me different readings,” she said. Jessica is afraid to use the electronic appliances she receives, which often come with incomprehensible instructions written in both English and Chinese. She took photos of one product, a foot spa, without adding water or plugging it in. > Jessica also doesn’t trust health and beauty products on the site, because of her boyfriend, a chemist, who has found toxic ingredients in analyses of unregulated products. She'll happily give them five stars, though. Gross.

bloopernova 7y ago
Her thought process seems to be a disgusting combination of "I'm benefiting so it's fine" and "bad stuff only happens to other people". I hope Amazon investigates her, tracks people who contact her, and kicks the lot of them off the site. I also know that the chances of that happening are close to zero.
- seunosewa 7y ago
  The pictures and names of the products she ‘reviewed’ or is ‘reviewing’ will probably make it easy to identify her.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    She's an Amazon cardholder with a volume of purchases probably in some high percentile, probably an abnormally high review rate along likely near-exclusive 5-star ratings. Geographic clues aren't as narrow, since you can pretty much only rule out the far South where trees don't lose their leaves in fall. However when taking the above into account, I suppose you could filter the resulting addresses even further with map data as her house appears to be at the junction of a T-intersection. Article also mentioned an upstairs neighbor so her address might have a unit number as well. All said and done, identifying her doesn't sound like an impossible task for a motivated person with access to the necessary data on Amazon's end. And that's before even cross-referencing with specific items shown in the photos.

mothsonasloth 7y ago

The problem with reviews is even though they have a name, like "Bob Seymour, from Manchester" or "Tracy Hughes, from London". They're still impersonal. Unlike the reviews when you go around to a friends BBQ or are at an event, and you say "Oh hey Sarah, I see you are driving the new X". Then they proceed to tell you how great/bad or mediocre it is. Surprised no-one has been able to engineer a more personable review mechanic, then again with all the privacy concerns. Do you really want to know what your friends are buying, and equally for them to know what you are buying too.

MichaelApproved 7y ago
If comfortable writing a review about a product, I’m comfortable with friends knowing that I bought it. The bigger problem seems to be critical mass of friends reviews to make it a worthwhile endeavor. How many similar products have my friends bought? If that small group, how many have written reviews? That subset of a subset is probably too small to be meaningful.
ipython 7y ago
That's exactly right - this is the problem that we have with every online "social" network (I would include Amazon reviews in this label for the purposes of this comment). It's clear from the article that she retains two separate and unequal ratings of each product: one that she provides to her "online" persona, and one that she would provide to her "authentic" persona. It's clear that she would not purchase these products herself or recommend them to friends, yet rates them 5 stars on Amazon. As many will point out, the ability to do this is not new; the ability to do it at scale and with zero consequences (where consequences would be to your own personal reputation, for example) is the innovation. What's truly sad is that we're missing out on such a crucial piece of information that is available to her: namely, her boyfriend's expertise in chemistry. They could blow the lid off shoddy and downright dangerous products on Amazon and provide a valuable public service to boot, but hey, it's easier to run the grift, right?
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
Amazon used to have a reviewing system that was a lot more social: you could follow people, chat with them on message boards, read detailed bios and an explanation of why they review a certain niche of products, etc. Then, it was easy to notice trustworthy reviewers who were reviewing things for the simple pleasure of it. (Back in the day, it was mainly books, CDs, and DVDs being reviewed, not Chinese-made products like now.) Amazon eventually shut down the message boards, probably because it felt moderation cost more than the feature brought profit. Successive changes to the site's design obscured most of the other social aspects.

twgrp 7y ago

Why am I not surprised to see she's obese?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

mosselman 7y ago

Schemes like this and people with lack of morals (admitted in the article), are what makes making online purchases so hard. Either the price has to be ridiculously low so that it doesn't matter if something is total crap (aliexpress comes to mind as a store where you do it) or you have to find some recommendation that you can trust. I usually look at reviews from the Consumer Associations of the Netherlands and Germany (Consumentenbond and Stiftung Warentest), which helps a lot. You usually end up with products of the same type of brands though (Bosch, Siemens, etc). Which isn't bad, but it makes it very hard for smaller brands to have a chance at some market share without resorting to scummy marketing techniques. Reviews on the German Amazon store used to be fairly trustworthy, but this has changed in recent years. As it is, you are better off going to physical stores where you can at least hold the products and see what the build quality is like.

modzu 7y ago
i pay for consumer reports for exactly this reason.

MichaelApproved 7y ago

Between these “authentic” fake reviews, the usual fake reviews and counterfeit products, Amazon seems open to serious competition. I’ve already started buying things from Target and Walmart for things that are commonly counterfeited, like batteries and SD cards. I know they have a marketplace too but I avoid them for these items. For me, the biggest thing Amazon has going for it is the dead-simple return policy. I’m comfortable rolling the dice with many products because I can easily return it, if it ends up being garbage. Repackaging and returning can sometimes be a pain, so I’ll be reluctant to gamble sometimes. However, I’ve been more lazily repacking items and it hasn’t been an issue.

dgellow 7y ago
Is the issue of counterfeit products a worldwide problem with Amazon? I'm just asking because I'm in Europe and use Amazon quite often for electronics, and haven't faced issues so far. Could it be that the problem is mostly in the US? It could be that I just avoided counterfeited goods by chance, or just didn't notice...
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I am in America and have yet to get screwed by a counterfeit. I wonder if you might be on to something though. Maybe the counterfeits are all stored in specific states and ship from there more frequently since I assume Amazon wants to ship from the closest warehouse to you. Would be good to know what state most of these people live in to see if thats just the pattern. I say this cause I have always heard you can buy counterfeits in NY of any major clothing brand or even electronics.
  - MichaelApproved 7y ago
    > I am in America and have yet to get screwed by a counterfeit. Well, how do you know? Maybe they’ve been good counterfeits? Another possibility is that you’ve never seen the genuine version, so you don’t know what to compare the counterfeit to.

mcphage 7y ago

> The spreadsheet helps Jessica make sure she’s on top of due dates and getting paid on time. BuzzFeed News reviewed the document, which showed 117 open orders that hadn’t been refunded yet. A column titled “Total currently out of pocket” — or what she’s still owed — amounted to $2,282.01. So not only is she getting lots of cheap crap, and having to fake reviews for it... she's paying over $2,000 to do so?

ceejayoz 7y ago
No, it means she gets paid post-review, which means she tends to have an accounts receivable balance.
LeonM 7y ago
The brand reimburse the purchases, but only after the review. So this is money that is still due.
AmVess 7y ago
Further, she loses money with these reviews. Basically, she likes getting packages full of things she doesn't use and loses money on. What a weird hobby. “I really don’t think I’m making money on it at all. I’m pretty sure I’m losing money,” Jessica said while looking over her spreadsheet. “I’m pretty sure I’m at a 10% loss. But I’m okay with it, because I’ve gotten a whole bunch of new stuff.”
logfromblammo 7y ago
Presumably, if they don't pay up on time, she can change the review to 1-star and blacklist the seller from the fraud scheme?
- mcphage 7y ago
  Or would that just get her blacklisted?
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    Getting blacklisted by a company that doesn't pay as promised is not really a bad thing. And I don't think they collaborate on shill management.

degenerate 7y ago

When I see a product with about ~50 reviews and they are all either GLOWING with praise, full of pictures, include videos, or otherwise clearly took more than a few minutes to write, it's a good tell the reviews are mostly paid for. I don't know how to handle this from Amazon's angle... how about limiting how many items a buyer can review from a certain seller? Or force them to contribute a 3- or 4-star review every so often, instead of all 5's? (this one's too easy to game - you just buy a 30¢ irrelevant item every now and then and review it poorly.) It's a hard problem to solve for Amazon, and I don't trust them to care enough to fix it. In the meantime, I stick with volume as my indicator for quality. It's very unlikely a company paid for nearly 2,000 5-star reviews, so products with LOTS of reviews are the ones I usually end up purchasing.

edoo 7y ago
I use https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ It isn't perfect but can confirm the bad ones.
clemfromspace 7y ago
I use https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/, I really like all the explanations they have for each of their metrics.
inetsee 7y ago
Now I'm confused. I used reviewmeta.com and www.fakespot.com for the first time on a product I'm thinking of buying (a fitness tracker). Reviewmeta gave a revised rating of 4.6, down from the Amazon rating of 4.8. Fakespot gave the product a rating of "F". How am I expected to believe that these metareview sites, or others like them, are providing any better information than the original Amazon reviews?

throwawaylolx 7y ago

Yes, paid reviews has been an industry since forever. What is the insight of this article?

seunosewa 7y ago
The article shows us exactly how it’s done.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

tobltobs 7y ago

> but Jessica told BuzzFeed News she doesn’t think she’s gaming the system; she’s trying to help brands grow their businesses in Amazon’s massive marketplace. “I’m just a pawn in their marketing scheme,” she said. > Jessica’s activity, as far as Amazon is concerned, looks legitimate. She makes purchases from her own Amazon account and credit card, so her reviews are labeled as a “verified purchase.” Don't know if Jessica or Amazon is the bigger crook here.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tempguy9999 7y ago
The former.
seunosewa 7y ago
I can’t see how anyone could conclude that Amazon is the bigger crook from that quote. She gamed their system, as criminals do, and now they must improve.
- Humdeee 7y ago
  A much larger entity actively doing nothing can have much bigger consequences than many small actors operating in bad faith. It's one thing to try and improve your system, it's another to ensure a proper system is there to begin with.
Zenst 7y ago
"In other words, third-party sellers aren’t the only ones paying her to leave fake reviews and superficially boost sales — Amazon is too." Would indicate that Amazon are and if they are in effect fiscally encouraging this practice then people like Jessica would take that as some form of legalised legitimacy. Which is not the case [edit add] [EDIT ADD] This is just cashback from Amazon credit card, just badly worded in article
- ceejayoz 7y ago

nkrisc 7y ago

> “I definitely feel like I have to keep [the reviewing] a secret from people who have strong morals,” Jessica added. Age old scam that works because of people like Jessica who lack any moral compass and will help to screw over anyone for a buck.

rantwasp 7y ago
it’s hard to have a moral compass when your stomach is empty. even if that’s not the case you will always have bad actors. always. the question is: who has the right incentives to stop this kind of behavior?
- nkrisc 7y ago
  And yet people poorer and more destitute than her avoid turning to crime. Read the article. She's not hungry, she likes getting stuff and having it be like Christmas everyday. It's simple greed.
  - rantwasp 7y ago
    to me it sounds like a person with some sort of addiction/mental health issue. she found a way to get her fix without starving (ie spending all her money on crap and being broke afterwards). it’s true that good people are not resolving to this crappy behavior. it’s also true that are a lot of people that do cheat the system. bottom line, this is a systematic issue and until the right incentives are in place this problem is not going to just fix itself.
- MichaelApproved 7y ago
  Don't excuse her behavior with a made-up "stomach is empty" sob story. This is far from a "stealing bread to eat" situation. Jessica isn't scamming people for basic needs, she's conning people for luxury items. If it were about simply putting food on the table, she'd be reselling everything after she reviewed them, instead of leaving them in a pile in some corner.
  - 7y ago

porsche959 7y ago

Honestly Walmart has gotten so much better at competing versus a couple of years ago. Most items reach my door within 2-3 days (in nyc), and their customer service is now on par with amazon prime, which is to say, amazon has gotten much worse. I did not mind paying for the convenience of a "dont ask, dont tell" return policy, however, amazon has gotten more strict. If i wanted that, i would rather stick to traditional retailers.

jimhefferon 7y ago

I used to think for reasonably everyday items, not too expensive, that the number of real reviews and answers would overwhelm the number of fakes. But I recently asked a question about an item that I have bought before (a small appliance that I have been forced to find to be more a consumable than a durable). I asked if the vendor had fixed the flaw that made me throw out three prior ones. Within minutes there were three answers, assuring me that there was in fact no such flaw. These items were great. Perfect! Silly of me, I guess.

brewdad 7y ago
I'm not sure if that's better or worse than all of the questions that get answers of "I don't know" or "Sorry, I can't answer your question" How about just ignoring the question then and let someone else provide a useful answer.
- harrygallagher4 7y ago
  I've always assumed this comes from older Amazon shoppers who interpret the emails asking if they can answer questions about some item they ordered as personally asking them to answer the questions.

exhilaration 7y ago

But she doesn’t consider reviews while browsing: “When I see an off-brand product that’s Amazon’s Choice, [that label] doesn’t mean anything to me anymore,” she said. Well I learned something new today. I didn't realize it was so easy to game that Amazon's Choice label.

ceejayoz 7y ago
Yeah, that label is entirely gamed. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/14/18679637/amazon-choice-rating-algorithm-recommendation-buying-decision https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/14/18679637/amazon-choi...

cabaalis 7y ago

Just a bad idea to let someone write an article about you. It could be possible for an Amazon employee to use clues from the photographs to identify this user.

nkrisc 7y ago
I was thinking the same. Amazon card, rough volume of purchases and kinds of purchases... that ought to be enough to narrow down a bit? Outside shots give geographic clues too (we can assume it's not Southern Florida).

dghughes 7y ago

Here in Canada the CBC show Marketplace showed how bold some people are at reviews some even posing as medical doctors. Many of them coming from people who work for a company called Fiverr. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/video-review-testimonial-marketplace-1.3953793 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/video-review-testimonial-ma...

windexh8er 7y ago

Amazon could root out these users rather quickly. If this "reviewer" is posting only 5-star reviews Amazon could implement a check box the user agrees to before submission. It would state that the user has not been paid or will not be paid for said review and that the review has not been influenced by the manufacturer or seller. If said user is found to be placing erroneous reviews (all 5 star reviews seems to be a dead giveaway) Amazon will remove all prior comments and ban commenting via the users account for X months. She states that she doesn't think what she's doing is wrong. It is wrong because it's a misrepresentation in many cases. Her gain is another person's loss of time and money based on what most people expect to be reasonably honest feedback. It's amazing what people will do for free junk. Cables are notorious for this - almost every knock off type cable I've purchased from Amazon has come with an envelope asking for a review and they will provide a free gift for me. Most of those purchases go back to Amazon and I try to review them accordingly, but it's hard to judge when you've got more than 200 reviews and averaging 4.5 stars on a very specific cable you're looking for (length, color, specs, etc). In these cases Amazon eats significant shipping costs for the send and return labels - you'd think they'd want to get this under control better. But if anything I'd say returning the item is the best way to get Amazon to crack down on this since these fake reviews then cost them time and money.

MichaelApproved 7y ago
> Amazon could implement a check box the user agrees to before submission. No need for a check box, fake reviews are already against their ToS and against the law. Amazon can take action anytime it wants.
- patentatt 7y ago
  How are fake reviews against the law? And how do we know that they’re fake? She has the product, and tells her opinion of it. How do we judge if her opinion is fake? I know full well the circumstantial evidence argument, but from a legal point of view, I think you’d need more.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago

rb808 7y ago

Its interesting that a few years back brands were losing their power. Why buy a Sony gadget when a XYZTech gadget has great reviews and apparently works even better. Now you can't trust reviews any more and the Sony product looks more like something you can trust.

AmVess 7y ago

Amazon reported that in 2018, customers spent $160 billion on items from third-party sellers — 58% of all sales on the site. More than 1 million sellers joined Amazon marketplaces around the world that year, according to e-commerce data firm Marketplace Pulse. In this year’s shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote: “Third-party sellers are kicking our first party butt. Badly.” This tells me that Amazon is never going to fix the gamed reviews, or the counterfeit items, because doing so will impact their profits.

Nursie 7y ago

She's basically taking part in fraud. How she justifies it to herself is pretty irrelevant.

thefrog 7y ago

I can't believe people waste their time doing shit like this. I make well into 6 digits and I don't work that hard.

imgabe 7y ago

Seems like in addition to all the other problems this is enabling people with hoarder tendencies. Amazon needs to start losing business for this to change. Maybe all the big data collection could come in handy. Amazon could probably pay Facebook to find out all the people who are in these paid reviewer groups and ban them all, buyers and sellers.

walterstucco666 7y ago

How amazon could solve the problem block_accounts_in( select users.username, avg(reviews.stars), sum(order.amount) from reviews inner join users on reviews.uid=users.uid inner join orders on reviews.uid=orders.uid group by users.username having avg(reviews.stars)=5 and sum(orders.amount)>10000 )

jefftk 7y ago

Those pictures are not sufficiently anonymous; https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05314 https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05314 or just neighbors could easily see where she is. And the barcodes are easily visible on some of the boxes.

ragazzina 7y ago
Or Amazon could just check who bought any three items from the random assortment in the picture..
ct0 7y ago
Those barcodes are specifically for box identification, like size and shape, rather then buyer identification.
- jefftk 7y ago
  Sorry, barcodes on the labels on the boxes!

irrational 7y ago

I would be terrible at this. I purchased a set of headphones that sucked and left a 1 star review. The seller contacted me and sent me a new pair. They sucked too. But, the seller asked me to change my review to 5 stars. I refused. They actually sent me 2 more sets, each time encouraging me to change my review to 5 stars. Eventually they gave up (all the headphones had problems so I refused), but I was amazed at the lengths they would go through just to get one person to give them a 5 star review.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
One star is really harsh, don't you think? I guess this is just how people think though, everything is either 5 or 1 star right? Makes one wonder why we even have 5 star systems. Habit I suppose.
- TheHypnotist 7y ago
  That's why I like Steam's thumbs up/down. Stars 2-4 are useless.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    Not exactly worthless. I usually assume that 1 and 5 star reviews are by competitors and shills, respectively, and mainly ignore the star value anyway. I read 2-star reviews first, and look for text descriptions of identifiable strengths and weaknesses, and these must be corroborated by other substantial reviews. If anyone, with any star value, says "I wasn't shipped what was advertised/listed", I just close the Amazon tab, and look at other retailers. I don't have time for counterfeiter roulette any more.
  - pizza234 7y ago
    They're not (all) useless. There are a lot of Steam reviews complaining about the lack of a "neutral thumb". In this perspective, a more usable Steam system would have three evaluations, which would be a gross equivalent of 1-, 3- and 5- star Amazon ratings. I agree with the judgment, in fact, several times, positive or negative is pretty much a coin toss. In other words, at least the 3-stars rating has a use.

stevespang 7y ago

Gaming Amazon: Her Amazon Purchases Are Real. The Reviews Are Fake. Fat Lady Living in Trailer made $15,000 so far this year and get's to keep the products. Stick that in your orifice, Bezos.

trenning 7y ago

Even if Amazon fixed this situation and the fake product stock would I wouldn't switch back to using them. Personally the customer trust is gone since it's been years now that I've been seeing articles and hn posts on this subject with nothing being done. The "world most customer obsessed company" really sold their customers out for profit over basic service and let fraud run rampant on the platform. At this point seeing these articles is like seeing another post about Facebook secretly being malicious with user data, it's known they're a shitty business and a risk to use.

Phillips126 7y ago

I wonder if she suffers from hoarding as well as she seems to be a bit in denial with her expenses. The article states: > Almost every day, Jessica’s boyfriend of eight years begrudgingly hauls Amazon packages in from the porch. “He hates it,” she told BuzzFeed News. But Jessica proudly points to all the items she's acquired for their new house: “I got our new showerhead, shower organizer, side tables, coat rack, coat hangers. … We would have had to pay for all that stuff.” Then it later states: > The spreadsheet helps Jessica make sure she’s on top of due dates and getting paid on time. BuzzFeed News reviewed the document, which showed 117 open orders that hadn’t been refunded yet. A column titled “Total currently out of pocket” — or what she’s still owed — amounted to $2,282.01. So she isn't _REALLY_ getting everything for free. According to her own records she is down $2,282.01 and it's quite possible she wont see that money. If this continues, that number will either grow into serious debt or "Jessica" will move on to something else. Sounds like an addiction.

frandroid 7y ago
She should be charging a fixed fee for the review itself. She has a whole bunch of things she clearly doesn't need and isn't even paid for her labour...
- bdowling 7y ago
  > isn't even paid for her labour... The IRS considers payment in kind (goods in exchange for services) to be taxable income. [0] So, I’d say she’s getting paid. [0] https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420
  - hnick 7y ago
    Unless I'm misunderstanding it's more straightforward. The article says she is reimbursed, so the steps are (based on my Aus understanding, US tax law may vary): 1) Buy product - taxable expense for business/work purposes 2) Write review 3) Get sent money equal to purchase price - taxable income Net, the money cancels out to no taxable income but she has the product. It was bought with her own money and still belongs to her. It's like if I run a blog, I bought a new PC to do my blogging (business expense), wrote about how nice it was, then the company sent me some money or a gift as thanks. I wouldn't have to pay tax on the PC if this happened.

cptskippy 7y ago

Amazon has shown no interest in fixing this issue. I use custom emails for every service I use (e.g. amazon@<mydomain>) to manage spam. The only spam I get to my amazon address is for these scams. I've reported the issue to Amazon through a couple different channels and they always respond that it's just spam because I gave my email out. No, it's sellers on their marketplace soliciting customers who make an initial legitimate purchase and leave a positive review.

cptskippy 7y ago
I forgot to mention their responses usually contain a veiled threat about accepting such offers.
colechristensen 7y ago
Amazon doesn't care, the FTC might.

stets 7y ago

Jessica sounds like an asshole from the quotes on the page. "I like getting free stuff" and thinking this kind of marketing is honest. Jeez...

pergadad 7y ago

The fame reviews are mostly easy to spot (although of xours sits impossible to know which ones you didn't spot...) - eg that they have photos is for me a clear indicator of fakes. But even if you actually recognise them, it wastes your lifetime and makes it more difficult to find authentically good products - in particular in the areas with high competition where you have fake positive and fake negative reviews (paid for by competitors), eg robot vacuums.

dwoozle 7y ago
Why is it fake if it has photos? I’ve included photos in my reviews.

excursionist 7y ago

I recently started noticing some sellers including a little brochure/paper along with the product with something like this written: 'Write a review for this product, rate 5 stars in all categories, send us an email at <qqq@qqq.com> with the review ID, and receive a free product.'

hamhand 7y ago

This is one of the limitations platforms have, it simply can't be fixed, and platforms often don't have incentives to fix it. What's important for platforms? GMV. Faking reviews is just the first step of gaming the platforms, next vendors will pay people to fake-buying, as what's happening on JD and Alibaba on an industrial scale. They already need the GMV and commissions generated, now that PinDuoDuo is popular for selling dirt-cheap things, they need to retain vendors now too, so they don't even pretend to punish these fakings. Alibaba's 11.11 shopping festival is a good example, it goes out of its way to make the GMV of that single day as big as possible, tactics including forbidding buyers to pay before that day(make them to delay weeks' purchase to that day), disabling refunding on 11.11, sales tagets for vendors.

ct0 7y ago

I stopped reading 5 star reviews. Using fakespot in combination with reviewing the 3 star reviews has proven pretty effective in combating the potential junk product that could show up.

markbnj 7y ago

I purchased an item last year, found it to be unsuited to my application, and posted a mildly negative review which essentially stated that the item was not as suited for the application as the manufacturers had claimed. Since that time I have gotten 2-3 emails per day from the vendor begging me to remove the review, and offering to reimburse the purchase cost and even add a bonus payment. I've ignored them all but they keep coming. My email was not associated with the purchase, but apparently there are tools vendors can use to match a review to an email address.

growlist 7y ago
Same here. Weeks' worth of emails imploring me to remove my negative review.

jamisteven 7y ago

You can always tell, its pretty easy to just click the users profile and see that they have reviewed seemingly unrelated products ad-nauseum and the frequency of purchases being through the roof, with most of them being 5 star reviews. Not to mention, what do you do with all that crap?! She isnt being paid, just reimbursed which means not only does she need time to do the review but time to sell all this junk. Terrible side hustle if you ask me.

Hokusai 7y ago

> Because of Amazon’s vast scale, inscrutable algorithms, and capricious enforcement of its own rules, unscrupulous sellers and paid shills largely get away with it. The only solution for it is regulation. Without regulations, asbestos will still be in our homes, lead paint will cover schools and pollution will fill our lungs. Most consumers do not have the time, money and education required to look for quality products. If we let Amazon sell crap, is crap what will be only available for most of the population. And Amazon has passed a long time ago the line between low quality and fraud.

growlist 7y ago
caveat emptor

wyldfire 7y ago

> With thousands of new sellers signing up every day, Does this end of the business have to be so frictionless? This seems like a "simple" reputation problem (†) and they turn a blind eye to Sybil attacks? (†) no, not really simple, but if anyone were up to the challenge it would seem Amazon is.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago

Oddly enough, the Amazon 'Vine' program could be more reliable than other reviews; that program rewards critical reviews just as much as positive ones. There is no quid pro quo.

Zelphyr 7y ago

"'I definitely feel like I have to keep [the reviewing] a secret from people who have strong morals,' Jessica added." But then she plays herself off as this cute, innocent girl who just does this for fun. She knows she's doing something immoral and unethical, she just doesn't care because she likes feeling "like its Christmas every day".

stri8ed 7y ago
We need to operate with the assumption that all vulnerabilities that can be exploited for profit, will be. People will be people. The only answer is mechanisms that make it less profitable.

polynomial 7y ago

Is this a problem something like Plaid could help with? (Assuming she used the same credit card.)

pepijndevos 7y ago

I would think it is extremely easy to spot fake reviews statistically. The other day I was browsing a Dutch website similar to Amazon, and they show a distribution of the ratings. For a given category, there were a few products at the top that had hundreds of 5 star reviews, a wide gap, and then a few 1 star reviews. Meanwhile, the other products had a fraction of the reviews with a more natural distribution.

MICHAELSEN 7y ago

I was in such a debacle recently. As I have developed a Stalwart Business Model. AIMING for 2020 as that seems to be the CLEAREST VISION for HITTING TARGET #'s & reducing OVERHEAD. Question = Is it imperative to FULLY staff right away? CUTTING CORNERS can be DEATH to a START UP like mine. I'm sure your familiar with the "honeymoon phase"? A lot of small minded/BIG EGO operations think they have it in their PALM. My mindset is that if it fits in my palm, its NOT BIG ENOUGH... FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING!

m3kw9 7y ago

I always read 10-20 authentic-look-like reviews and form an average. The more you read the better. Plus read outside reviews.

MICHAELSEN 7y ago

Try going back to school. Local libraries in your area offer FREE GED classes. At least you wouldn't be so EXPOSED & terribly obvious. I assume you aspire to be smarter? Hopefully you agree, who wouldn't. I actually am VOLUNTEERING my time to Educate Teachers/Professors on Emergency Evacuations. The POINT is, I want to AIM for the BEST that I can be. Don't turn your back for one second, charge forward & attack a better lifestyle. I deserve it & SO DO YOU!!! Cinnamon burns my tongue, it's like poison to my mouth, I still use it though. Snickerdoodle

dobleboble 7y ago

"“I definitely feel like I have to keep [the reviewing] a secret from people who have strong morals,” Jessica added." You'd think that would be a pretty good indication that you shouldn't be doing something...

propter_hoc 7y ago
"Don't do something you'd be ashamed to tell your grandmother about"

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/4K7v5 http://archive.is/4K7v5

gitdebug 7y ago

After I read those posts, ... Well, it's not only happen on Amazon, but on another sites too. As long as there's a seller, buyer, and medium, there's always a chance to do it. “That’s what makes spending money on free products worth it for these blackhat sellers,” Not only on online markets, even offline store does that. But, I apreciate for the long posts made by buzzfeeds

moron4hire 7y ago

I don't get it. Why is Amazon cracking down on this? They offer this very service of "free-shit-for-robo-reviews" to sellers through their own damn site. https://www.sellerapp.com/blog/amazon-promotions-explained/amp/ https://www.sellerapp.com/blog/amazon-promotions-explained/a... ... Oh.

RKearney 7y ago

> Amazon has banned giving away free products in exchange for reviews I didn't realize they banned this practice considering they themselves operate the Vine program. I know someone who receives upwards of a dozen products a week for free to review by Amazon. Everything from robot vacuums to cutlery sets.

madelyn 7y ago
Vine reviews are disclosed in the app or on the website, though. I don't really see that as malicious.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
Amazon isn't against paid reviews. They are against paid reviews THEY don't control. I'm sick of seeing news pieces where they focus on some mommy blogger who made $15k (which they play up like it's a tone of money) by providing conflict of interest reviews, while Amazon does that at 1,000,000x the scale with no one bating an eye. I'd say it's lazy if not biased and single sided bad journalism to not even mention the Vine program.

jedberg 7y ago

I got an offer to this out of the blue once. They wanted me to buy some cheap product and give it a good review. Of course I understand why this is wrong and unethical, so I tried to report it to Amazon. There is no way to report this to Amazon. They have no facility for reporting a product that someone tried to pay you to review positively. The only thing you can do is contact customer service who as far as I can tell do nothing with the report. All they need to do is add a category to their customer service section to report fraud. It blows my mind that they do not do this. But not really. They make more money by allowing this behavior, both from the fake buyer, as well as the other customers who are duped into buying highly reviewed items.

Fezzik 7y ago
I totally agree. But where do we draw the line for fraud? I just ordered a $5.00 product, a pair of interesting-looking-at-first-glance earplugs for swimming, that are utter garbage. Included was something I had never seen - instructions for leaving a positive review that would allow me to receive a $10.00 Amazon gift card. This clearly appears to me to be buying positive reviews... which should not be allowed... but is not fraud... I do not think. Given that the product is cheap, I can see how people would leave positive reviews - lo and behold, the product has nearly a 5-star rating with 100+ reviews! I can guarantee nobody who swims would rate this product above 2 stars. Online reviews are a wonky and game-able system.
- asxd 7y ago
  It seems fraudulent in that it would evidently not be an honest review, complicated by the fact that the review would essentially be paid promotional content because you were paid for it.
- jedberg 7y ago
  That sounds like a pretty clear case of fraud. It would only take one report with pictures of that coupon to remove the product. But why would they. They have your money already.
  - 7y ago

ineedasername 7y ago

This is why I almost always pay much more attention to negative reviews. How many there are, the reasons for the bad review, and so on. Positive reviews, even honest ones, are always so generic: "it's great, works as intended!" Bad reviews usually give a lot more detail that actually describes the experience in concrete detail.

iamleppert 7y ago

Eventually her boyfriend will get fed up with her bizarre habit and dump her. Probably sooner than later. Who puts up with that for long? She needs to get help before this wrecks her life.

w1nst0nsm1th 7y ago

I read review for ipad cable once. The reviews had nothing to do with cable. I wanted to report it to Amazon but there was no way to do so.

qwertz123456 7y ago

I wrote once a negative review for a product at Amazon, nothing offensive, like three sentences why I thought it was not what I expected. Amazon deleted my review and wrote me to contact the seller. Since than I do not comment at Amazon.

crescentfresh 7y ago

Wow, interesting read. For many years shopping on Amazon when looking for a preferred product I always a) click on the reviews, then 2) immediately jump to the 1-star reviews. For the most part they contain information that feels more authentic and relevant.

tmaly 7y ago

It seems plausible that Amazon could detect someone buying such a high volume of different stuff. Then examine the sellers and look for similar patterns of people who purchased same items.

aussiegreenie 7y ago

Amazon will die due to phoney products and reviews. Sometime in the future, Amazon will be held responsible for the lies and that is when the whole company will die. It will not happen today, tomorrow or next year but in a few years time either the copyright holders (Brands) will get them or other regulation. It will be charged under RICO, it does millions of wire frauds every day.

strenholme 7y ago

Just in case anyone else hasn’t brought it up, https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ is pretty good at catching fake reviews.