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> I have the manufacturer of a product (a @wirecutter pick, no less) that I reviewed 3 stars, who has been emailing me offers of increasing amounts of money to

> I have the manufacturer of a product (a @wirecutter pick, no less) that I reviewed 3 stars, who has been emailing me offers of increasing amounts of money to take it down. The most recent offer is well over what I spent on the product. I revised my review down to 1 star. Meta-scam: Buy cheap items that are review-scammed and write a thorough, plausible 1-star review, hold out for profit. Rinse, repeat.

rasz 6y ago
Your 1 star review will get auto deleted.
- 1024core 6y ago
  I've been an Amazon customer for 15 years. Have literally bought $50,000+ worth of stuff from them. In other words: rock solid reputation. Amazon has deleted even my critical reviews. Go figure.
  - damnencryption 6y ago
    While I understand that people find any reason to believe they hold status higher than others but they shouldn't believe that when they are faced with a company with billions of customers worldwide. If you continued to buy from Amazon (racked up $50K in spending for 15 years), it's clear that removing your review didn't matter to their bottom line so no reason to care.
    - ehsankia 6y ago
      Your missing the point. It has nothing to do with their identity, it's the fact that telling apart fake reviews from ones written by real people is a hard problem, but generally you won't find a bot account with 15 years of history. The implication here is that if Amazon truly cared about surfacing legitimate reviews only, they would've kept the one from that account since there's very low probability of it being fake.
      - damnencryption 6y ago
        > Your missing the point. I am not. You should re-read my point. Whether their review was rejected or not didn't stop them from spending $50k on amazon. They are as replaceable as warehouse workers.
        ben509 6y ago
        Businesses make decisions on the margin. The $50k is history, it's the next dollar that counts.
        1024core 6y ago
        We are not talking about whether I will continue to buy from Amazon or not; but whether my reviews could be fake or not, and whether there is signal in my reviews or not. That is what I meant with the words "rock solid reputation".
        ska 6y ago
        Your point (if coherent, hard to say) was not articulated well. The $50k thing has nothing to do with status, it has to do with amazon already possessing a very good signal as to whether or not this account is "real". It is potentially interesting in the context of whether or not amazon is in fact serious about improving SNR in their review system.
        damnencryption 6y ago
        I agree. I am just saying Amazon has no reason to differentiate between real people or bot people if the OP continued to buy from them despite their critical reviews being rejected. Amazon doesn't care about their past purchase history as long as they buy more from them in future. Whether they spent 50k or not didn't make a differentiating factor for Amazon.
        ehsankia 6y ago
        > if the OP continued to buy Again, the goal isn't to "stop bots from buying", but rather to stop them from posting fake reviews. You're reframing the whole discussion to something that has zero relevance to the discussion.
  - michaelyoshika 6y ago
    The question seems to be: what can we do to limit Amazon?
    - damnencryption 6y ago
      Buy from alternatives and give them feedback. Shopify has made it pretty easy for anyone to start a e-commerce site and then there are other places like etsy.
      - EugeneOZ 6y ago
        One little thing left: notify users about the existence of these sites.
        Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
        And good luck finding them on Google...
        friendlybus 6y ago
        Do we need to build a hackernews/social aggregator for new shops?
  - temp667 6y ago
    Same with me - I'm over $80K in purchases based on my data request to them (excluding business where I admin a business account with multiple purchasers). Critical reviews do get taken down (I've no idea why). My reviews are legit - I don't have time or interest in anything other than providing feedback. Most stuff is fine, but some is obviously fake or junk. I'm always specific, they could literally buy the product and test it themselves.
  - kirillzubovsky 6y ago
    What if friends of these fake review circles get themselves hired into Amazon to be on the teams that validate the reviews? It is possible that Amazon is so big, they would not detect this problem. You could be a good corporate drone and do your job for 97% of the time, and in 3% of the cases delete bad reviews for your friends. Unless someone is doing really great statistical analysis, this could fly under the radar for a very long time.
    - probably_wrong 6y ago
      I think it's possible. There was a case back in September [1] where six "third-party sellers consultant" were charged with allegedly bribing up to ten Amazon employees to restore deleted items. Of course, those people were caught and that goes against the "not detect this problem" part. But if you were to scale down this operation from 16 people down to just one or two, it seems like it could work. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-marketplace-fraud-scheme-six-indicted/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-marketplace-fraud-scheme...
      - hahajk 6y ago
        > Of course, those people were caught and that goes against the "not detect this problem" part. We just never heard about the ones that weren’t caught ;)
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Leave a 5 star review, but in the comments, make it clear extremely clear it's a 1-star product.
  - dhimes 6y ago
    I've actually seen this- I didn't know why they did it.
  - tempestn 6y ago
    Unfortunately when your review is lost in a sea of fake 5-star reviews, no one is likely to see it.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    Make it a 4 star reviews. I bet people who read reviews will skip the 5 stars and check the rest. I know I do that.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  Just adding information, I have had this happen
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    There is a different reason as well, most of these stores highlights reviews of 1 and 5 star. Some people (well I guess all people that leave reviews) like to be highlighted, so they only leave 5 or 1 star reviews. This was a pain when I was managing a Google app and part of the performance review was the average rating. This was a small app with few reviews so the jokers that liked the app but left 1 star review to be highlighted really made a negative difference. Just to be clear, I was OK with users leaving 1 star if they didn't like it or even better had some constructive feedback. But many were like "great app": 1 star, or "Hi single guy here, and ladies around?": 1 star.
    - o-__-o 6y ago
      If you force users to provide feedback, even if optional, expect many invalid results In my experience, users won’t go out of their way to leave a worthless review. So if your app doesn’t nag, you have less spam. But that also means you miss a lot of legitimate people who don’t have the time or knowledge to leave good reviews. Gift and curse etc
      - tempestn 6y ago
        > If you force users to provide feedback, even if optional, expect many invalid results I understand what you mean, but the phrasing of "forcing" someone to optionally do something is odd.
        o-__-o 6y ago
        A pop up is forcing users to acknowledge rating the app. It’s not truly optional when you get spammed once a day to submit a rating. So you get angry people submitting unhelpful ratings because they don’t understand the UX
      - 6y ago
- Shivetya 6y ago
  there are lots of current one star reviews that prove otherwise. If anything I surf one star and two star reviews of products I am buying and factor in the date of the review to see if a product improved or got worse. Now what I do find inexcusable are reviews that are obviously not for the product I am looking at. I will report abuse on those but I do admit that I do not go back and check if they removed
  - asddubs 6y ago
    I have in the past independently bought something on amazon and later found out the reviews were fake (because every single person leaving a review had left reviews on the same few products - it was only 7 reviews total or so, so it was easy to check) - I reported this and I also left a 1 star review on the product I had bought. It got taken down. The fake reviews stayed up
  - LorenPechtel 6y ago
    Yeah, I look more at the 1-3 star reviews and see what they are complaining about. A lot are bogus (they got what they ordered, not what they expected) or not related to the product (shipping errors etc) but once you weed out the junk they provide a much better picture of the product than the highly rated ones do.
cwkoss 6y ago
Yep, I got offered $50 to change my one star review on a ~$20 product.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Last cable I ordered I was offered $20 for a review on a $12 item.
  - joering2 6y ago
    We need a google spreadsheet shared with everybody. If I know of Amazon items I can buy, leave 1 star review and they will contact me to offer more than I paid, and keep an item - I need to know as many of these products as possible :)
    - cwkoss 6y ago
      I went to find the SKU for ya and was happy to find the seller is no longer on the Amazon marketplace! Maybe forwarding the emails they sent to jeff@amazon actually worked?
Thorrez 6y ago
Where is that quote from?
- bentcorner 6y ago
  Whoops, sorry I should have linked it: https://twitter.com/sharding/status/1325914278596112384 https://twitter.com/sharding/status/1325914278596112384

rasz 6y ago

Your 1 star review will get auto deleted.

1024core 6y ago
I've been an Amazon customer for 15 years. Have literally bought $50,000+ worth of stuff from them. In other words: rock solid reputation. Amazon has deleted even my critical reviews. Go figure.
- damnencryption 6y ago
  While I understand that people find any reason to believe they hold status higher than others but they shouldn't believe that when they are faced with a company with billions of customers worldwide. If you continued to buy from Amazon (racked up $50K in spending for 15 years), it's clear that removing your review didn't matter to their bottom line so no reason to care.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    Your missing the point. It has nothing to do with their identity, it's the fact that telling apart fake reviews from ones written by real people is a hard problem, but generally you won't find a bot account with 15 years of history. The implication here is that if Amazon truly cared about surfacing legitimate reviews only, they would've kept the one from that account since there's very low probability of it being fake.
    - damnencryption 6y ago
      > Your missing the point. I am not. You should re-read my point. Whether their review was rejected or not didn't stop them from spending $50k on amazon. They are as replaceable as warehouse workers.
      - ben509 6y ago
        Businesses make decisions on the margin. The $50k is history, it's the next dollar that counts.
        1024core 6y ago
        We are not talking about whether I will continue to buy from Amazon or not; but whether my reviews could be fake or not, and whether there is signal in my reviews or not. That is what I meant with the words "rock solid reputation".
      - ska 6y ago
        Your point (if coherent, hard to say) was not articulated well. The $50k thing has nothing to do with status, it has to do with amazon already possessing a very good signal as to whether or not this account is "real". It is potentially interesting in the context of whether or not amazon is in fact serious about improving SNR in their review system.
        damnencryption 6y ago
        I agree. I am just saying Amazon has no reason to differentiate between real people or bot people if the OP continued to buy from them despite their critical reviews being rejected. Amazon doesn't care about their past purchase history as long as they buy more from them in future. Whether they spent 50k or not didn't make a differentiating factor for Amazon.
        ehsankia 6y ago
        > if the OP continued to buy Again, the goal isn't to "stop bots from buying", but rather to stop them from posting fake reviews. You're reframing the whole discussion to something that has zero relevance to the discussion.
- michaelyoshika 6y ago
  The question seems to be: what can we do to limit Amazon?
  - damnencryption 6y ago
    Buy from alternatives and give them feedback. Shopify has made it pretty easy for anyone to start a e-commerce site and then there are other places like etsy.
    - EugeneOZ 6y ago
      One little thing left: notify users about the existence of these sites.
      - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
        And good luck finding them on Google...
      - friendlybus 6y ago
        Do we need to build a hackernews/social aggregator for new shops?
- temp667 6y ago
  Same with me - I'm over $80K in purchases based on my data request to them (excluding business where I admin a business account with multiple purchasers). Critical reviews do get taken down (I've no idea why). My reviews are legit - I don't have time or interest in anything other than providing feedback. Most stuff is fine, but some is obviously fake or junk. I'm always specific, they could literally buy the product and test it themselves.
- kirillzubovsky 6y ago
  What if friends of these fake review circles get themselves hired into Amazon to be on the teams that validate the reviews? It is possible that Amazon is so big, they would not detect this problem. You could be a good corporate drone and do your job for 97% of the time, and in 3% of the cases delete bad reviews for your friends. Unless someone is doing really great statistical analysis, this could fly under the radar for a very long time.
  - probably_wrong 6y ago
    I think it's possible. There was a case back in September [1] where six "third-party sellers consultant" were charged with allegedly bribing up to ten Amazon employees to restore deleted items. Of course, those people were caught and that goes against the "not detect this problem" part. But if you were to scale down this operation from 16 people down to just one or two, it seems like it could work. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-marketplace-fraud-scheme-six-indicted/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-marketplace-fraud-scheme...
    - hahajk 6y ago
      > Of course, those people were caught and that goes against the "not detect this problem" part. We just never heard about the ones that weren’t caught ;)
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Leave a 5 star review, but in the comments, make it clear extremely clear it's a 1-star product.
- dhimes 6y ago
  I've actually seen this- I didn't know why they did it.
- tempestn 6y ago
  Unfortunately when your review is lost in a sea of fake 5-star reviews, no one is likely to see it.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Make it a 4 star reviews. I bet people who read reviews will skip the 5 stars and check the rest. I know I do that.
colechristensen 6y ago
Just adding information, I have had this happen
- kmonsen 6y ago
  There is a different reason as well, most of these stores highlights reviews of 1 and 5 star. Some people (well I guess all people that leave reviews) like to be highlighted, so they only leave 5 or 1 star reviews. This was a pain when I was managing a Google app and part of the performance review was the average rating. This was a small app with few reviews so the jokers that liked the app but left 1 star review to be highlighted really made a negative difference. Just to be clear, I was OK with users leaving 1 star if they didn't like it or even better had some constructive feedback. But many were like "great app": 1 star, or "Hi single guy here, and ladies around?": 1 star.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    If you force users to provide feedback, even if optional, expect many invalid results In my experience, users won’t go out of their way to leave a worthless review. So if your app doesn’t nag, you have less spam. But that also means you miss a lot of legitimate people who don’t have the time or knowledge to leave good reviews. Gift and curse etc
    - tempestn 6y ago
      > If you force users to provide feedback, even if optional, expect many invalid results I understand what you mean, but the phrasing of "forcing" someone to optionally do something is odd.
      - o-__-o 6y ago
        A pop up is forcing users to acknowledge rating the app. It’s not truly optional when you get spammed once a day to submit a rating. So you get angry people submitting unhelpful ratings because they don’t understand the UX
    - 6y ago
Shivetya 6y ago
there are lots of current one star reviews that prove otherwise. If anything I surf one star and two star reviews of products I am buying and factor in the date of the review to see if a product improved or got worse. Now what I do find inexcusable are reviews that are obviously not for the product I am looking at. I will report abuse on those but I do admit that I do not go back and check if they removed
- asddubs 6y ago
  I have in the past independently bought something on amazon and later found out the reviews were fake (because every single person leaving a review had left reviews on the same few products - it was only 7 reviews total or so, so it was easy to check) - I reported this and I also left a 1 star review on the product I had bought. It got taken down. The fake reviews stayed up
- LorenPechtel 6y ago
  Yeah, I look more at the 1-3 star reviews and see what they are complaining about. A lot are bogus (they got what they ordered, not what they expected) or not related to the product (shipping errors etc) but once you weed out the junk they provide a much better picture of the product than the highly rated ones do.

cwkoss 6y ago

Yep, I got offered $50 to change my one star review on a ~$20 product.

MattGaiser 6y ago
Last cable I ordered I was offered $20 for a review on a $12 item.
- joering2 6y ago
  We need a google spreadsheet shared with everybody. If I know of Amazon items I can buy, leave 1 star review and they will contact me to offer more than I paid, and keep an item - I need to know as many of these products as possible :)
  - cwkoss 6y ago
    I went to find the SKU for ya and was happy to find the seller is no longer on the Amazon marketplace! Maybe forwarding the emails they sent to jeff@amazon actually worked?

Thorrez 6y ago

Where is that quote from?

bentcorner 6y ago
Whoops, sorry I should have linked it: https://twitter.com/sharding/status/1325914278596112384 https://twitter.com/sharding/status/1325914278596112384