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Amazon disallows pointing out paid reviews

• Karunamon 6y ago
  This is an entirely reasonable stance. A given product could have n(bignum) sellers. A review telling me that a seller is doing shady things tells me nothing about the product. Amazon told him to go review the seller in the appropriate section. What's the problem?
  • kmod 6y ago
    Right now there are only two sellers
  • thedanbob 6y ago
    When I've encountered this before the shady seller was also the manufacturer.
  • jx47 6y ago
    Because the bad seller is also tainting the product reviews. Is (in the case of OP) the camera really a five star product? Or is it a five star product because one seller basically bought x percent of the positive reviews?
  • pmiller2 6y ago
    The problem is that product reviews are right up front on the product page. Seller reviews are 2 more clicks past that, effectively hidden.
    • joombaga 6y ago
      They'll remove product ratings for a particular seller if enough people complain.
      • pmiller2 6y ago
        So? That doesn't address the issue I pointed out.
        • joombaga 6y ago
          So seller reviews are useful even if buyers can't read them at all.
          • pmiller2 6y ago
            What kind of twisted logic leads you to believe this? The whole point of reviews is that you can read them and use them to influence your purchasing decision.
            • joombaga 6y ago
              Because they'll remove product ratings for a particular seller if enough people complain. That's a secondary use.
              • deleted 6y ago
                [deleted]
              • pmiller2 6y ago
                That's not relevant. You were talking about seller reviews, not product reviews before. Why are you trying to avoid the question? Do you think choosing a reputable seller is a "secondary" concern after choosing a product? If so, why?
                • joombaga 6y ago
                  > Why are you trying to avoid the question? I wasn't trying to avoid a question. Sorry if I missed one. > You were talking about seller reviews, not product reviews before. I was actually talking about both types of reviews. Amazon will remove illegitimate product reviews if their existence is made known through seller feedback mechanisms, and seller reviews are one such mechanism. > Do you think choosing a reputable seller is a "secondary" concern after choosing a product? If so, why? Usually I'd pick the product first, then find a reputable seller. If there's no reputable seller, I may choose a different product, or choose a disreputable seller if I think their reputation is undeserved, or if I'm willing to take a risk to get the particular product. I'm not sure if that's what you mean by "secondary concern", but I wouldn't call it that. They're both considerations.
  • ogre_codes 6y ago
    > A given product could have n(bignum) sellers. Most likely a seller paying for reviews like this has an exclusive on the product, it's likely a product sold directly by the maker.
  • Voloskaya 6y ago
    > A review telling me that a seller is doing shady things tells me nothing about the product It's not telling you anything about the product, but it also making you aware that those other review you thought were telling you something about the product, actually are not. In essence you are saying that it is a reasonable stance to remove off-topic bad reviews, but keep off-topic good reviews.
    • Spivak 6y ago
      Wait I don't see how this is inconsistent. - "Seller was great and delivered on time!" - "Seller is doing shady things and posting fake reviews" It seems like both of these would be removed.
      • mlyle 6y ago
        I think the concern is -- seller A (or manufacturer) has created lots of gamed reviews for product A. Putting a negative review on seller A is much less visible, and leaves the fake reviews in place, so that when successor-scammy-seller-B sells the product everyone is still deceived.
  • Ajedi32 6y ago
    The review tells you that the _product's_ rating is compromised by paid reviews. From that perspective it doesn't really matter which seller is the one at fault. Buying from that shady seller won't get you a worse product, or even necessarily worse service. It's just that the product overall is likely of worse quality than what the other reviews might indicate, regardless of which seller you buy it from.
  • drzaiusapelord 6y ago
    Almost half the things I buy on amazon come with a little postcard thing that tells me I'll get anywhere between $10-$30 back as cash if I leave a 5 star review. If I wasn't in a slightly comfortable place financially, and not so lazy, I would absolutely do this. None of those products deserved a 5 star review, and perhaps 1/3rd were returned by me for poor quality. This is absolutely a real problem. The few review sections where people point this out means I won't buy and I probably saved myself a ton of returns by doing that, but now that is no longer an option. Amazon is cultivating a lot of bad will with this. I imagine their sellers will claim they don't do this (even when they do), then Amazon feels obligated to pull those reviews to please the sellers and in a conflict between sellers and customers, Amazon will tend to pick sellers in fear of them just moving to Aliexpress and hurting Amazon. and as others have said, these are OEM's, this is their product and no one else sells it. Amazon is pretty much a sales portal for Chinese manufacturers, some of whom are shady like this, to get into the states with minimum overhead, hassle, and oversight.
  • benjaminkitt 6y ago
    The problem is that the card specifically asks the customer to give the "product a positive review with 5 stars." If the card was asking for a seller review, that would be reasonable. But the money is being paid for a product review, hence skewing those reviews.
  • Triv888 6y ago
    I dont buy much from amazon anymore but arent very clear if the review is for the product or the seller...
  • jdu9 6y ago
    Exactly. It would have only been justified if the manufacturer and seller were the same entity. He should have given a honest review based on the product itself and then it would have been appropriate to point out that some of the reviews might be paid. Or better yet: report the seller to Amazon. But the way he wrote the review makes it sound like he rated the item with 1 star solely based on the malpractice of a seller. Companies like Logitech are usually not involved in shady business like that (they hire professional reviewers through third parties, not entice regular customers with 10 bucks, jk :D).
• ALittleLight 6y ago
  Seems similar to how hackernews doesn't allow calling people "paid shills". The review doesn't have any evidence or proof attached. Perhaps reporting the seller to Amazon is a better approach.
  • kmod 6y ago
    My review included the picture of the card, they just didn't reattach it to my rejection email
  • yenwodyah 6y ago
    I got the same kind of card ordering a laptop charger earlier this year. Tried to report it to Amazon. Got back a canned response telling me to report individual reviews. Amazon doesn't care.
    • drzaiusapelord 6y ago
      Worse, there's no such thing as 'free' money. If they can pay us $20 per item to write reviews, they are over-charging us $20 per item. So whoever doesn't do this is over-paying $20. If you buy 100 items like this a year, you're burning $2,000. That's non-trivial money for most people.
      • AlexandrB 6y ago
        Solution: don't shop on Amazon.
      • ninju 6y ago
        Sorta true, You were still willing to pay the listed price. The fact that you were subsidizing their reward program doesn't diminish the fact that it was cheap enough for you to buy. Also they maybe doing this promotion as a loss-leader to build marketshare/brand recognition and are willing to work with lower net profit.
      • notafraudster 6y ago
        It doesn't follow that if they can pay you $20, they can pay everyone $20. They have an expected uptake, and they have a model for how the reviews translate to more sales. I agree that it's likely that at least some of this marketing is priced into the price and there's some inflation, but I suspect the overall uptake of stuff like this is <20% and it generates non-zero additional sales, so I would guess the margin is more like $2-4 or so.
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  There is a basic problem that if you see an obvious problem with a product listing on AMZN but you didn't buy the product they could care less. Sometimes the listing is obviously a scam, sometimes it is is just something that could be better: somebody is selling a box of assorted TTL ICs for $30 which were ill chosen for any use than testing your logic tester. (e.g. with $30 of quad-NANDs you can build a lot) In the early 2000's I would avoid Staples to avoid crap brands like VTech and go online to seek out Plantronics instead. AMZN got a reputation as a fair dealer for things like HDMI cables compared to a place like Best Buy which might only stock a $99 monster cable. Slowly AMZN got worse and I have less trust in the marketplace products than I did before,
  • ljf 6y ago
    I've totally given up on amazon, it is now impossible to know if what you are getting is of any quality - I wanted a good kitchen knife - but wading through the reviews and search was so painful. In the end I went to John Lewis and bought by price - hoping that gave me a good idea of quality and so far I am damn happy, which is far more than I can say for my last 20 or so amazon purchases.
    • ogjunkyard 6y ago
      I'm in a similar situation for the most part. If I remotely care about the quality of the item, I'm not buying it from Amazon. Otherwise, if pretty much any brand will suffice (such as dog waste bags), I might still pick it up on Amazon, but I have already chosen not to renew my Prime subscription based on the major drop in quality of sellers.
      • ljf 6y ago
        For a while I did that (my wife still does) but for any low value stuff it is nearly always cheaper on ebay or Aliexpress - there is literally no benefit to me buying from amazon any more. My wife still buy a huge amount from there though, but returns a fair amount.
    • rytis 6y ago
• tomerico 6y ago
  If you want to read more about how shady sellers abuse the system, and why it's so hard to deal with it, I recommend this well written medium article: https://medium.com/swlh/unaccountable-chinese-retailers-threaten-american-consumer-safety-and-business-outdated-laws-are-c75ee4e7d90b https://medium.com/swlh/unaccountable-chinese-retailers-thre...
  • csnover 6y ago
    Why does Amazon even allow FBA sellers to be registered in another country like this? Forget about counterfeiting and taxes, what about basic issues of safety and liability? A family member of mine recently bought a wearable electronic device from Amazon.com. I got a phone call from them asking what charger to use because it came with a USB cable and a note saying to use only a 1A charger. (Hang on, that’s not how USB charging is supposed to work!) I looked up the “company” selling this product; their web site is a Shopify site with no address, no phone number, masked whois. Their “returns” page is lorem ipsum. Amazon’s public seller record says the company is actually just a random dude in Ukraine, but I was unable to verify that the registered address is even real. The product itself is the first result on Alibaba when doing a search for this kind of wearable. When the battery in this cheap crap explodes because it has clearly shoddy power management, who’s going to be liable? Good luck collecting damages from someone halfway around the world. There’s currently zero incentive for anyone in this supply chain to ensure the products are even minimally safe. Most consumers are completely unaware of the distinction between a product sold by Amazon and a product that is being sold using FBA.
    • donmcronald 6y ago
      I think I'm actually paying MORE for chargers and cables now than before Amazon existed because the market is so flooded with garbage that it's hard to find a brand that isn't there just to mug you. It's hilarious (or terribly sad) how we used to laugh at the the garbage house brands at stores like BestBuy, but now those are the "good quality" products on the market.
    • xnyan 6y ago
      > because it came with a USB cable and a note saying to use only a 1A charger. I might not understand, but current-limited power supplies are a real thing. In America/UL speak its called LPS (limited power supply, the limit being current/amperage).
• _kst_ 6y ago
  It's possible they rejected it simply because it didn't review the product. A review that expresses an opinion about the product and also mentions that other reviewers are being paid might be accepted.
  • einrealist 6y ago
    Thought so too. The mistake was to not write an honest review about the product and to mention, that a $10 refund was offered for doing so. That would have been the smart thing to do. Just claiming that other reviews are bought was probably the reason for not accepting the review.
  • jandrese 6y ago
    If this were the case I wish Amazon would be more vigilant about these kinds of reviews in general. "1 Star! Mailman delivered the package to my neighbor and it got soaked in the rain! The product wasn't harmed but the box was totally gross to touch!"
  • jlarocco 6y ago
    Yeah, it seems like a reasonable policy, IMO. The sellers can change even if the product doesn't, so don't pollute the reviews with that information. Report it to Amazon and let them deal with it.
• dangoor 6y ago
  I wonder if the review would have been allowed if it was focused on the actual product and then mentioned that the company pays for reviews. What if the product is great and people are giving it 5 star reviews because it's great, and not just the $10?
• api 6y ago
  For certain types of products Amazon is degenerating into a virtual big-box warehouse store, one of those places where you basically have this giant pile of crap to sift through.
  • Xamayon 6y ago
    Hundreds of which are actually the same one or two re-badged items at hugely varying prices or quantities, burying any real results which might exist.
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Also known as Aliexpress.com
• ilamont 6y ago
  I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different. I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller. I documented everything including photos, my exchange with Amazon customer service, and the confirmation from the seller that they would pay me $20 for a 5-star review. I did not take the money offered ... I was appalled at the situation and more than a little angry that I had been tricked by bogus reviews. Here's what happened when I reported the seller: Me: Hi. The box for this product contained a card that says “Amazon $20 gift card” and looks like a gift card, but the back says I have to give a 5 star review and send my order information to an outlook email address. Is this legitimate? Is it really a $20 Amazon gift card? Amazon: Thank you so much for your information on this, I will certainly pass it along here so that we can check this promotion or offer directly with the seller. Because I am not seeing that advertised on the item at all And would not be capable of confirming if that is a legit Amazon gift card because, I do not see that offer on the item Me: So what should I do? Amazon: My best suggestion would be to contact the seller directly for this through this link [redacted] So that you can confirm directly with them if this is legit or not Certainly giving away gift cards for good reviews is not professional And I have to report the seller for that Me: I thought this type of offer was forbidden by Amazon’s own policies for sellers. But I will contact them using the link you sent to ask them if that’s what you recommend. Even though the CSR reported the seller, and I confirmed with the seller through Amazon's own communication system that they were paying $20 per 5 star review, nothing happened to the seller. The item (a webcam) is still for sale on Amazon, with thousands of additional 5-star reviews - more than 12,000 now, compared to 3,266 when I let Amazon know how they were gaming the reviews in September. Once again, the good guys (in the case, customers and honest sellers) lose out while the bad guys win, with no repercussions.
  • jandrese 6y ago
    This is really common, although it's not often a straight up Amazon gift card. I've seen offers for Steam bucks for a favorable review for example.
  • 6y ago
• Uptrenda 6y ago
  Too little data for such a bold claim...
• gnopgnip 6y ago
  Product reviews are only for reviewing the product, not the shipping, or the seller's practices. There are other ways to report this to Amazon, and you can report it to the FTC
  • jandrese 6y ago
    It seems like it should be reasonable to have a review warning people reading them that many of the 5 star reviews are suspect as the reviewer was compensated by the seller.
    • rafaelreinert 6y ago
      No, because amazon is a marketplace, for example, a product can have more than one seller. because that the review is about the product and not about the seller. The right thing to do is complain about the seller on feedback and amazon delete all reviews from this specific seller buyers.
      • zerocrates 6y ago
        Wouldn't this kind of thing generally be coming straight from the manufacturer, or at least a fairly dominant seller for the product? Since they're paying for 5-star reviews of the product.
        • rafaelreinert 6y ago
          Could be, heh. I'm using amazon brazil, and here amazon isn't tooooo strong like USA. here in Brazil amazon works with other sellers in order to expand, but in a near future I really believe amazon will works like in USA.
  • heavyset_go 6y ago
    Each state's Attorney General's office usually has a department of consumer protection that will hear these complaints. I've reported Amazon to my AG more than once.
• TavsiE9s 6y ago
  I've shifted quite a lot of shopping to eBay after Amazon shifted their focus to being a marketplace.
  • RachelF 6y ago
    Be aware that eBay now censors low star reviews. I've had my 1-star review of fake products removed twice from eBay.
    • TavsiE9s 6y ago
      Good to know, thank you for pointing that out.
• cwkoss 6y ago
  This exact same thing happened to me, except the seller sent me two postcards separate from my order offering money for good reviews.
• duxup 6y ago
  I've repeatedly been offered a free product in exchange for removing a non perfect review. Meanwhile the cards that offer rewards for a 5 star review remain pretty common....
• phs318u 6y ago
  I tend to ignore Amazon reviews and if the item is worth more than a few bucks I typically search for commentary on Reddit. Alternatively if I’m after something from a specific category, I’ll check out Choice.com.au (to which I’m a subscriber), and let that be my guide for brand and model.
  • marcandre 6y ago
    Sellers are catching on. I searched on reddit for range hoods comments. I found "reviews" that were written in a style I found suspicious (too elaborate, detailed and "business-like"). Clicking on these two users revealed other comments that made it clear this was actually astroturfing.
• noname120 6y ago
  It's entirely reasonable. If Amazon allowed to submit reviews claiming that seller X is providing gifts for reviews, then inevitably sellers Y and Z would do fake reviews with bogus — yet convincing — evidence to ruin the reputation of seller X or a competing product.
• goatcode 6y ago
  "Amazon does not accept product reviews based on anything except the product" would be a more accurate title. There is another way to review sellers - perhaps this would be a better place for reviewing a seller.
  • chrismcb 6y ago
    And yet half the reviews seem to be about shipping or something
    • goatcode 6y ago
      Hm, they may be rule lawyering, then... preferring certain sellers over others, and applying the rules in an inconsistent way to benefit favorites while squishing people they have something else against. All this is speculation on my part, of course, but wouldn't surprise me if accurate. TIL Amazon comment regulation is apparently run by reddit mods.
• rsync 6y ago
  Now I remember ... The previous review practice that outraged me was when someone here at HN was producing very detailed analysis of LED bulbs (spectral analysis, etc.) and proving that lots of bulbs on Amazon had CRI and color temperature ratings that were way off. He then described how he posted that in some reviews and they were all taken down. Which is to say, crummy LED bulb on Amazon with an inflated CRI cannot have a review describing the inflated CRI.
  • donmcronald 6y ago
    China Export [1] are the only two words anyone should ever need to know about Amazon when it comes to safety and quality. 1. https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-How-To-Distinguish-A-Real-CE-Mark-From-A-Fake-Chinese-Export-Mark https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H...
    • judge2020 6y ago
      This has nothing to do with reviews.
    • teddyh 6y ago
      Fake urban legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export
      • donmcronald 6y ago
        Thanks for the link. I feel dumb for falling for that :-(
    • segfaultbuserr 6y ago
      It's an urban legend. The reality is more boring than what people believe - it's simply that the manufacturers who falsely declare CE compliance don't even bother to get the correct drawing of the CE symbol (which is the maximum possible level of non-compliance, not even the logo!). Yes, the logo is a forgery, and the nickname "China Export" is a humorous way to describe it, but it must be emphasized that there's no "China Export" symbol - it simply doesn't exist, not defined by any government agency or trade association in China.
• DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  I'm frustrated that most of the really well-paying positions in my area of specialization are with companies like this. TL;DR Sometimes Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft posts a job opening with very special skill requirements, which I probably satisfy. And sometimes I'm actually tempted to apply. But (fortunately) I always get a reality check regarding what kinds of business practices I'd be working to facilitate. Suddenly the grass on my side of the fence looks a lot greener.
• nyxtom 6y ago
  I wonder if anyone has done any analysis on marketplace diversity for a given product. One of the absolute sore points of buying anything on Amazon is when you run into the issue where the product clearly looks the exact same yet there are seemingly dozens and dozens of brands all with hundreds of 4-5 star reviews.
  • t-writescode 6y ago
    Isn’t that just a common, white-labeling manufacturer?
    • nyxtom 6y ago
      That would certainly make sense. I'd like to see if there was any "illusion of choice" type graphic that looked at all the white labeling brands and even Amazon's own private label brands for products into a graphic or visual.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kazinator 6y ago
  Amazon is right here. If such a review were allowed, the first people to exploit that would be the the scummy vendors themselves. They would post fake one-star reviews against competing products, claiming that all the good reviews of those products are from bribes. Always consider the secondary effects, like back-scatter from replying to a spam e-mail to give them a piece of your mind!
  • zentiggr 6y ago
    So lobby for Amazon's policy to not allow stars, but just report fakes/fraud. Every item is taken down when flagged, until manually reviewed by Amazon staff. If a flagged item is restored, those that flagged it are banned, proportional to the number of false flags they get hit for. First round, Amazon's listings drop by 95 percent as bad actors go hog wild blocking competitors. Second round, Amazon is forced to triage item restorations in order to put best sellers back up first. Third round, the bad flag bans help flush out the jackasses, and minimize the incentive to come back and try again. It'll never happen, but it's possible it could restore Amazon's reputation re caring about delivering good quality and a clean platform.
• fuzxi 6y ago
  Archive link (site won't load): https://web.archive.org/web/20201217194447/http://blog.kevmod.com/2020/12/amazon-disallows-pointing-out-paid-reviews/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201217194447/http://blog.kevmo...
• SmokeyHamster 6y ago
  Yeah, this is a problem for a long time on Amazon, especially with a lot of the cheap Chinese stuff posted on there. When some cheap looking product has a dozen reviews all like "very good super high quality!!!!!" you know it's just astroturfing.
  • willis936 6y ago
    It goes far deeper than that. The last time I trusted amazon, I ended up getting a counterfeit book and having to fight tooth and nail to get a refund. This set me down a path of trying to find out how the reviews lied to me and how widespread the issue is. I would see items that had been listed for years suddenly balloon to thousands of 5-star reviews, then disappear. I would see old reviews of a product that were reviewing a completely different product. There is no oversight. Amazon is the house in a a casino where the only rule is that the house always wins. The solution: stop using amazon.
• annoyingnoob 6y ago
  Amazon is sealing its own fate here. I don't want the AliExpress experience, which is what Amazon offers now. I know where to find cheap products and bad information and I don't need Amazon for that. I find it odd that Amazon clings to bad vendors over long standing customers. They are no longer the most customer focused company, if they ever were. What does it say about your company when your company abandons its goals?
  • safetyengineer 6y ago
    Amazon is essentially dead to me due to the bad review system, featured/promoted products, and high priced products. Need a laptop? Bestbuy online Need kids stuff? Walmart online Need electronics? digikey The expensive alternative to all of these? Amazon
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    or the range of customers has simply broadened and includes way more casual shoppers now who like to buy from third party vendors rather than wanting a sort of premium experiences, after all AliExpress is pretty damn popular. I personally for example have always ordered mostly cheap stuff from Amazon without high expectations and for convenience, and when I want to buy something where I want to be 100% sure I go to their actual store (either digital or physical).
    • annoyingnoob 6y ago
      Thats cool, Amazon does not have to want me as a customer. Its opening opportunities for competition. Customers like me made Amazon into what it is today, I've had an account since at least 1999. Amazon set my expectations and then failed to live up to them over time.
  • Slikey 6y ago
    Amazon is truly the AliExpress of the west and they are running the quality down faster and faster. A dead giveaway is the fact that there are tons of rebrands of the same product whenever you look for something. If I want the China product I go directly to AliExpress and get the unbranded version and don't need to pay the 100-300% premium on Amazon.
• kronks 6y ago
  I return 90% of the things I buy on Amazon. I love to have them try and trick me into buying their garbage rebranded Chinese scam items. I do buy them. I use the fuck out of them - and then I return it so the seller can lick my asshole.
• zug_zug 6y ago
  Amazon should pay you if you report offers of false reviews (at least 2x what you were being offered). This money should come out the seller's pocket. After a certain thresh-hold the seller should lose increasing amounts of money until it's no longer profitable.
  • tandr 6y ago
    Seller will just rise prices accordingly to offset 1000 items sold with 1 bad feedback. So, like 10 cents per item?
• skept 6y ago
  I had a very similar experience last month. I ordered this toaster[1]. When I received it I noticed that in their user manual they were offering a "gift" in return for an Amazon review. Although to be fair they didn't explicitly demand that the review had to be positive. I submitted this 4-star review [2] to Amazon: I received the toaster not too long ago. It looks just like in the advertised pictures and works fine. But the language on the last page of the user manual (see picture) makes it clear that LOFTER is offering customers a "gift" in return for leaving a review. Perhaps they're within their right to do that but it makes me not trust the rest of the reviews on this product. A few days later I got an email from Amazon identical to the one in the submitted blog post[3]. I've stopped trusting positive reviews on Amazon. These days I only look at the negative reviews to see if there's a consistent complaint about the product. [1] www.amazon.com/dp/B07S3TXD9H/ [2] https://cutt.ly/lhLZQ5o https://cutt.ly/lhLZQ5o [3] https://cutt.ly/JhLZTjZ https://cutt.ly/JhLZTjZ
  • pavon 6y ago
    The thing you have to know about Amazon is that they combine all the reviews for all sellers of the same product (to the extent that Amazon thinks it is the same product). As such, reviews aren't an appropriate place to leave feedback about a seller, and leaving your review up would have been misleading. The reviews are only supposed to be about the product. You can leave feedback for sellers by clicking on their name in the listing. This has pros and cons. It does allow you to see more reviews about the product you are purchasing, making it easier to find the gem reviews that are most helpful. On the other hand I think Amazon is too aggressive about combining reviews for similar but different products - different translations of the same book, different DVD sets of the same movie, etc. And seller ratings are deliberately not shown on the listing page, so few people click through to check the seller rating before buying on Amazon, let alone provide seller feedback. I think the bigger problem is that the employees that rightfully deleted these reviews aren't required to instead migrate them to seller feedback, and forward them to folks that enforce seller policies.
    • pm215 6y ago
      If the thing about reviews-for-vouchers was in the user manual though then it really is related to the product, not the seller...
• zapzupnz 6y ago
  The product review is for the product, not the seller. Seller reviews are for the seller, not the product. Not rocket science. The post title seems needlessly inflammatory and definitive. The content of the blog really is a whinge about an isolated incident, not any real assertions convincing me that Amazon is silencing anything on purpose in the reviews section. No doubt Amazon has much to answer for, but not this. When half the reviews are something like "I don't know what this is" because of Amazon's confusing email language, it seems to me that properly enforcing the use of a review section would be ideal, no?
• herodotus 6y ago
  I downloaded an iOS App from the Apple App Store. The modal "rate this App" screen would not go away unless I gave the App at least 3 stars. I have reported this to Apple - be interesting to see if they take any action.
• fmajid 6y ago
  This and the runaway counterfeiting problem is why I stopped buying anything electric from Amazon and order from reputable companies like B&H Photo, KC Tool Co etc.
• twblalock 6y ago
  Paid reviews have been a weapon on Amazon for a long time. False accusations of paying for reviews would also be weaponized. What would stop a dishonest seller from smearing a competitor, by paying people to write reviews on the competitor's product page which falsely accuse the competitor of paying for reviews?
  • thewebcount 6y ago
    Nothing would stop them from trying it, but I think it would ultimately be a lot less effective. I think your average consumer would write a 5 star review for $20 back. I don't think your average consumer would write a 1 star review for a competitor for $20 back. Some would, but I think it would be far fewer.
  • coryrc 6y ago
    Amazon just opens the package to see if the claims are true.
• hourislate 6y ago
  When purchasing anything on AMZN, never trust the reviews. Buy only name brand but shop around, they have become expensive. Try to give others your business at the same time. I intentionally buy from companies like NEWEGG or RockAuto even if AMZN has the same price and 1-2 day shipping. I also try to buy directly from companies (ex: thorne) if possible even if I have to wait, why give your all your business to AMZN and make these companies pay them a fee. AMZN has enough business, we need to support everyone else.
• neilv 6y ago
  Just last night, I was looking to buy some kind of less-expensive version of Apple AirPods, but for each item I checked on reviewmeta.com, they were filtering out 70%+ of the reviews as suspicious. I decided I'd had enough of the appearance of sketchiness for now, and instead bought the cheap (supposedly genuine) Apple wired earbuds as an interim measure.
• Guest19023892 6y ago
  Why doesn't Amazon hire an independent third-party company to review and compare products and then highlight those in the review section? At least it would make it seem like they care about increasing the trustworthiness of reviews and restore some confidence in the system.
• oxfordmale 6y ago
  It is likely the seller flagged your review as off topic as it doesn't actually cover the product. Any minor reference to the delivery (package arrived damaged) is reason for rejection. I had to rewrite a few negative reviews as they got initially rejected based on such technicalities. For one of the negative reviews I rewrote, the vendor contacted me and offered a refund for removing the negative review. Another vendor, who never delivered the package to my parents, tried to emotionally blackmail me suggesting their business would go bust and they would lose their house if I didn't remove my negative review. I forwarded this to Amazon, but apparently this was all within the guidelines as no action was taken.
  • Razengan 6y ago
    The world has become excessively oPtImIzEd for screwing people over after money has been exchanged, and minimizing the ways the prey can warn each other.
• 0x262d 6y ago
  Amazon exists to increase shareholder profits. The reviews are not exempt from that. They exist to encourage customers to buy things and to increase sales volume. When Amazon was up and coming against a lot of other competitors it was relatively more important that reviews provide a good signal for customers. Now that they are more hegemonic, that is less important relative to facilitating increased sale volume, and there is also more incentive for sellers to fake them. Everyone's incentives are cleanly aligned for the short-medium term, except for those of consumers and workers.
  • xtracto 6y ago
    I don´t know why you are being downvoted. Amazon could very easily invest in decreasing fake reviews and fake items but they don't. They don't care because it doesn't give them any more profit, instead it will give them unhappy sellers.
• mikehollinger 6y ago
  There's a second chapter to this story that the OP didn't get to see! If you leave a bad review on a genuinely-bad experience (for example the 3rd-party Apple stylus that I tried) - you'll find that after a few days you get a drip-drab of offers of giftcards to take the review down, promising that the item's been fixed. The offers escalated each time, and went up to US$50.00. I still occasionally get an email about it. Each time it's from a different email address, and each time it's a different sad story. I told Amazon, a helpful CSR offered me an email, I fwd'd it, and they took the item down. Of course it was re-posted a bit later from a "different seller."
• maxk42 6y ago
  I'm seeing similar things everywhere. I stood in line for a food truck a couple years ago that offered a promotion "$2 off your order if you show us your 5-star review of our truck on [site]." Obviously, you have to do this before you even order your food so I was intensely put-off by this. I gave them a 5-star review with no comment, received my discount, then after I tried the food I edited the review to 1-star with an explanation that it probably would've been a 4-star review had they legitimately just prepared good food but gaming the reviews was a sleazeball move. The review was removed. Every single game on the Google Play store does this now, too. Instead of just letting people review honestly, they show a pop-up saying "Are you enjoying this game?" if so, they ask you to review it on the store. If not, they ask you to review it via their own private feedback system. Not quite as bad as requiring a 5-star review, but obviously this alters the score the app would otherwise receive.
  • vmception 6y ago
    My favorite is seeing 5 star reviews that are hijacking the top to complain. I've also seen 1 star reviews that are exalting reviews. But my all time ongoing pet peeve is how recommendation engines especially on video streaming and video game series use numbers and star systems that are not based on any other human's input. Not a critic, not a user score, just an algorithm's confidence score on similarities.
    • runawaybottle 6y ago
      The 1 star review that loves the product but hated the way it was shipped. Someone needs to write a textbook on the pathology of those people.
      • JamesSwift 6y ago
        No no no, we need to better understand the people who respond in the Q & A section with variants of "I don't know"
        • Jermaine_Jabi 6y ago
• jorblumesea 6y ago
  I never understand why this is done. All it does is completely undermine the entire ecosystem that took years and billions to make. What a shortsighted move. Even more confusing, Amazon LPs say they want to be customer and user focused. Are the end users not the real users here?
  • Ericson2314 6y ago
    it doesn't undermine it if there is no alternative.
• handedness 6y ago
  > I've chatted with an Amazon rep on the issue, and to their credit they seemed to take it seriously and "noted the report violation against the seller" I was deliberately scammed by a seller, and the wave of bad reviews they received after I purchased made me think I was not the only one with whom they dealt dishonestly. I contacted Amazon and received a similar reaction the author of the article received, except they were even more explicit in telling me they were going to shut the seller down over it. They seemed to take it very seriously, but I was still skeptical anything would come of it. That was months ago, the seller is still around, and is still getting terrible reviews. Amazon has come a long way on a lot of fronts, but in terms of being customer-focused they are so much worse than they used to be. Edit: I also ordered something that died during the warranty period. Manufacturer/seller (one in the same) was utterly worthless. Wouldn't respond to a single inquiry. They released a revised version, emailed their customer list, and I responded saying I'd buy it if they hadn't already demonstrated that they were so dishonest. They asked me to place a paid order on the new model, email them the receipt and the link to my 5-star review, and insisted they would directly PayPal me my purchase price afterwards. (Of the new, less expensive version. Not the original I paid ~2x for.) They also refused to honor their warranty and send me another one, or even just mail me the cheaper replacement model as a compromise. They just had to get a 5-star review out of the whole deal. I put all this into a review and it was promptly deleted by Amazon. At this point, I consider 4-star reviews the new 1-star. I have a few more stories like this from the last year or so. I used to be a very vocal supporter of them, but I'm increasingly developing a visceral hatred for them.
  • einpoklum 6y ago
    > Amazon has come a long way on a lot of fronts You mean, the various fronts in the struggle for world domination? :-(
    • handedness 6y ago
      Sure, but to be entirely fair, they do execute pretty well on some things where others either didn't, or still don't. I'm happy to give credit where due, but as a zero-hassle way of ordering things, between their fakes, their absurd experimentation with insufficient packaging, their sub-par regional delivery networks, their broken review system, their clamping down on independent sellers across many categories, and about two dozen other things I could probably come up with, their star has fallen as far for me as their share price has increased. They're entering their hydra phase and abandoning so much of what made them good to deal with before.
• stevage 6y ago
  I hate it when people give 1 star reviews for something other than the product quality. I'm glad the review was rejected. It sounds like the review should have been 3 or 4 stars ("fine but not amazing").
• rossdavidh 6y ago
  There is a general principle, that a metric which is used to determine [important decisions, e.g. pay, promotion, sales, etc.] will soon cease to be a reliable metric. If your neighbor tells you that a product is good, they probably really think that, because not enough people go to your neighbor to ask their opinion, to be worth spending $$ to change your neighbor's opinion. Amazon ratings, quite a long time ago, became way to influential to be a reliable metric, because the incentives to game it or outright pay for a better rating are too high. Oddly, by aggregating many opinions just like your neighbor, it becomes LESS reliable than if it were just a single data point.
• mariopt 6y ago
  I got a similar paid review offer but I'm allowed to give any review rating I wish. Given that Amazon hasn't forced me to give 5 start to a product, it is a step in the right direction: If a product has few reviews, you give an incentive for buyers to post a review about a product they actually bought.
• syndacks 6y ago
  Not seeing anyone here complain about censorship; is this any different than YouTube taking down conspiracy theories about US presidential election? Nope! Yet this thread is silent on the matter.
• objektif 6y ago
  Amazon banned me for something similar for pointing out how bad a product was.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  Doesn't the FTC require disclosing paid reviews?
• RyanGoosling 6y ago
  Amazon is out for the sale. SELL SELL SELL. I went on there a week ago and front page they were advertising me $18 face masks... TL;DR stick to Costco
• LinuxBender 6y ago
  Amazon removed my feedback on selling opened video card boxes and replacing the cards with a different models (sourced by Amazon, not a 3rd party). This prompted me to start providing feedback on sites that Amazon does not control. Not as many people will see it, but Amazon can't censor it.
• thelandofrandom 6y ago
  This is terribly frustrating - and rampant throughout the world of Amazon Reviews. Many sellers use this kind of hack to get ahead. I know it's horribly cliche to say "we need blockchain for reviews" but I believe some kind of independent review system would be a killer app, so to speak. From Google to Amazon, the review cannot often be trusted.
• billyjobob 6y ago
  Wasn't all this supposed to be solved in the 90s with "web of trust"? Rather than trusting every review, you only trust those from your personal circle of friends, and then from their friends but with less weight, etc.
• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  The reviews are Rigged.
• wavefunction 6y ago
  Eh, I got an insert in a product I purchased offering me a set of magnetized screwdrivers if I sent their social media a screenshot of my positive review. Not exactly paid but it incentivized me to take a picture of my already positive review and send it to the company.
• novok 6y ago
  I think amazon does this because they want to commoditize sellers and make them barely noticeable on their page. A bunch of reviews about one bad seller that they remove will reduce sales for an otherwise ok product. Maybe make 'seller' reviews upfront? Hard to say.
• soheil 6y ago
  > For example I feel quite helped when a review for chocolate mentions that the chocolate arrived melted -- this is not a review about the product intrinsically, but is still very helpful for deciding whether or not to buy the item So this could go either way. First there are often multiple sellers for one item on Amazon, to have reviews reflect the shipment or seller experience would kind of invalidate the feedback about the item. To ask Amazon to revamp their entire feedback system is quite an ask and clearly not what first comes to mind from reading the title of this post. Secondly if some users are being encouraged to leave a positive review for money that's a morally offensive act by them as well, which no one here seems to be pointing out so far. It's not too dissimilar to lying about something and then asserting that someone pays others when they lie and it's really their fault. Lying is bad in itself.
• JohnTHaller 6y ago
  This happens all the time with Amazon products from smaller brands/sellers. Amazon has also blocked reviews pointing out when a product is counterfeit, which I have experienced firsthand. I'm helping a friend try to return fake Bose headphones purchased on Amazon now.
• aledalgrande 6y ago
  During the first phase of COVID I wanted to report sellers selling single toilet paper rolls at outrageous prices. Think I found a link to do that?
• harry8 6y ago
  A five star review on Amazon is also a review in part of purchasing on Amazon. Amazon have an incentive to bump those scores up. They'll agressively remove any bad reviews on little pretext and ignore utterly bogus 5 star reviews. This way, potential customers of Amazon are decieived into believing many more people are having excellent purchasing experiences using Amazon than is really the case. It's systemic. It's a deliberate false and misleading practise. I don't know what the law states or which ones might apply but on any ethical basis a pursued policy of deception like that to get sales is fraud. It's one of the many ugly things Amazon do with their resources rather than paying tax and acting decently. But they do use computers so nobody involved in public policy, law and enforcement can think about it at all. "I just mug them at the bus stop. It's legal because it's with a computer." Then of course we get the overreaction the other way from policy makers, that also gets captured by the big players like amazon, so it makes it even harder for smaller businesses, who pay workers and pay tax to compete. Libertarains and socialists have a lot in common to explore.
• asfarley 6y ago
  Delight the customer, eh Bezos?
• intricatedetail 6y ago
  Because of this I mostly read negative reviews to see what kind of problems I may face.
• ggm 6y ago
  If the only acceptable response is a 5 star review, or nothing, it's not a scale: its a binary measure. If the review response is mandatory, its not a review. Hoardes of people tell me to stick to 2 and 4 star reviews for honest assessment of the good and bad in things. I think they may be on to something.
• wnevets 6y ago
  I've been trying my best to avoid having reviews on sites like amazon decide what I buy. For bigger ticket items like power tools, I'll use videos from youtubers like project farm [1] who actually try to test the products. Youtubers can be bought and/or influenced [2] but it is still better than just looking at the number of stars or picking the "amazon choice" product. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GyaSfOi6fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GyaSfOi6fs
• ArtDev 6y ago
  Hopefully consumers catch on and expect that all reviews are fake or manipulated. Honest reviews are hard to come by.
• dawnerd 6y ago
  They also remove reviews if you point out fake SD cards. It might be up for a few days but the seller will have it removed under the reason “you didn’t purchase this item”. I’m really close to buying, and leaving reviews all while doing a return. Sad part is amazon knows about this. They just don’t care because they’re making money and most people won’t blame the card for being fake they’ll just assume their camera or whatever corrupted the clips.
• prasooncc 6y ago
  A home appliance was getting 1 star reviews in Amazon because they didn’t include customary “starter” kit of baking dishes. Nothing against the product . The reviews are also worthless. Think from the perspective of sellers. If a number generated by an algorithm that is influenced by bitter people who were pissed off by someone that day is deciding your product placement and fate. You will do whatever is required to make it right.
• achenatx 6y ago
  I bought a lot of amazon basics AAA batteries, they all leaked in the package after just a year or two. I posted a review with pictures and amazon killed it saying it didnt meet their community guidelines.
• kwonkicker 6y ago
  Considering 90% ( thats what it feels like) of amazon shops are dropshippers who resell alibaba products but for 10x the cost, with no extra value, it is no wonder it starts to bug more and more people every day. US needs to figure it's sh*t out. How a teenager buy a publicly avaiable chinese toy for 69 cblents and sell it in US for an obscene amount (14$) is beyond me. The system is broken.
  • tsjq 6y ago
    isn't this information arbitrage ?
• arikrak 6y ago
  It seems many categories on Amazon are overwhelmed by low quality products and unreliable reviews. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't done more to counter this, as it affects the trust people have in the site. For example, Amazon could check some actual packages to make sure the products are not paying for reviews.
• mixcocam 6y ago
  That seller is going to have a very bad day, week and potentially quarter because of the contact with the rep.
• pugworthy 6y ago
  I do not agree with the article. Reviews are for the product, not the seller or the tactics. I once bought some snow chains off Amazon, and the ones their system recommended didn't in fact fit my car. SImilar to the OP, I also did a low review and got it removed. But then yes, my review was not of the product, it was of the algorithm so I understood.
• system2 6y ago
  Amazon lets sellers leave review for products that are not launched yet. For instance, every Garmin product is "coming soon" but still have at least 2 to 5 5-star reviews by default mostly saying "previous generation was good!". Amazon is scummy and I am slowly moving to other marketplaces.
• amai 6y ago
  The review system is basically broken on the internet. Paid reviews and fake reviews (positive and also negative) are everywhere. A good solution could be if shops would simply allow only reviews, but without a grade. Just some text. This would reduce the incentive of trying to game the grading system of reviews, but still give consumers some information about the pros and cons of a product.
• noja 6y ago
  Where's the stick? None of us are going to stop buying from there, so why should they change?
• zelly 6y ago
  Reviews from randoms cannot be trusted. Word of mouth is king. Second is the word of professional reviewers too well-paid to be bought, like Siskel & Ebert. When a top-tier reviewer on YouTube endorses a product, it sells out instantly. Amazon reviews are good for getting the actual details and pictures of a product that the seller couldn't be bothered to include in the description.
• known 6y ago
  1. Buy a Product 2. Give 5 star rating as Verified Buyer 3. Return the Product Amazon doesn't remove my review;
• StreamBright 6y ago
  Isn't this an opportunity to create an external review site? Imagine if we had actual number on how bad this is.
• alkonaut 6y ago
  Rule number one of reviews: never trust them if they are on the site selling you something. It's pretty simple. If you want a toaster, then google "Toaster X review". If all you can find is reviews on sales sites, ignore them. If you can find an in-depth review on toaster-aficionado.com with full disclosure of sponsorships etc - great. People are just lazy to expect to see a set of stars on a product page informing them on whether a product has good quality or not. Just give up that expectation.
• Uhrheber 6y ago
  Amazon sellers keep complaining, that more and more users only bother to write reviews when something is wrong with the product, but not when everything is OK. Well, I wrote three 5 star reviews during the last year, and I put a real effort into them, giving others tips how to avoid common mistakes when using the product, and correcting common misconceptions. I could do this, because I know this class of devices well. The outcome was in every case, that I got a message back, that Amazon has to check and approve the reviews, which never happened. It's obvious, that they either don't want thorough reviews, even if they are 5 star, or are just not able to understand them. After that, I understandably stopped to write reviews. In fact, I deleted my Amazon account, because I had some cases of defective products and dubious dealers, in which Amazon wasn't helpful at all, and that seems to become more and more common recently.
  • z3t4 6y ago
    You should post the review on your own web page. There are several specialed review sites making a million or more per year on ads alone, so it could be a nice side gig.
• jillesvangurp 6y ago
  Under some legislations this could be considered a form of hidden advertising, that is not allowed. E.g. youtubers are getting in trouble in the Netherlands for not properly disclosing their sponsorships. You could argue this is the same in principle. The practice of buying positive reviews is misleading. Stuff like this would be a lot less attractive if it would have to come with a disclaimer from the seller. Better still, since AWS makes money from the transaction, they could be liable here as well. Right now AWS just looks the other way because it's not their problem and their revenue depends on people getting tricked into spending their cash so they won't go out of their way trying to stop that.
• hellweaver666 6y ago
  They also disallow pointing out fraudulent products. I got something that was clearly fake, said so in the review and they rejected the review on the basis of being against their community standards.
• noneeeed 6y ago
  Amazon appears to be determined to make itself an untrustworthy place to buy stuff. It's like it's actively trying to get itself lumped in with eBay as a "tat-bazaa" as The Register likes to call it. I've become increasingly wary of buying things on Amazon for this very reason. I recently bought several pieces of electrical/elecronic gear, and didn't buy either from Amazon. I don't trust that the named brand stuff will be genuine, and I don't trust that the unknown-brand stuff will be any good, irrespective of the reviews. I've had too many cards with my orders promising freebies for positive reviews to trust anything I read there now. I now pretty much only buy low-risk stuff on amazon.
• entropea 6y ago
  It doesn't really matter, you're still going to shop there anyway. They're making hand over fist in cash, the absolutely insignificant amount of people who even care don't really matter and are offset by new happy customers every single day, why change anything at all?
• geekraver 6y ago
  I have pointed out both paid and bait and switch reviews (where the seller uses a cheap product to be able to use a farm for fake “verified purchase” reviews then changes the product). Never been rejected, but maybe that’s because I review product too. Amazon seems to bump up positive reviews though so I suspect not many people see mine unless you’re like me and explicitly focus on reading negative reviews first.
• devchix 6y ago
  I've made it a principle to leave accurate, detailed, and positive reviews on Amazon for products I really like. I think I've mostly given up, I don't think they can move the smallest needle if the environ is so deeply poisoned. The only honest and constructive feedback commerce site I still use and participate in is King Arthur Flour, probably because the stake is so small. I mean, how many reviews for a $18 bread pan can one flog? It reminds me of Goodreads, before Amazon. The larger question though, is whether or not high-trust systems can ever scale, or even be extended to cover an adjacent domain.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Every metric will be gamed