11 ms·

Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon

• HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Disruptive solution proposal: Get rid of the review system entirely. Stars, comments, user pictures; eliminate all of it. For everyone. There. Problem solved.
  • pid_0 6y ago
    That would be very stupid
    • HenryKissinger 6y ago
      I thought this place liked disruption.
      • osrec 6y ago
        Disruption often means to offer an alternative, better solution to a poorly solved problem. You seem to be suggesting we don't try and solve the product validation problem at all!
        • bombcar 6y ago
          Replace reviews with raw data - total number of purchases (at this price and version), return rate, etc.
          • osrec 6y ago
            How does that tell you if the product is any good though? Popularity doesn't automatically imply quality.
            • bombcar 6y ago
              It doesn’t - but if 80% of purchases end in returns you’d know to stay away.
              • loonster 6y ago
                A reputable distributor would stop carrying it.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • ibraheemdev 6y ago
    And how exactly does that solve the problem?
    • throwawayboise 6y ago
      Because the truth is that the reviews are probably almost all fake. Who the f**k IRL takes the time to log back in and leave a product review when the product arrives? I've never done it, and I used to buy from Amazon quite a lot.
      • antonzabirko 6y ago
        Unfortunately some people are dumb enough to give Amazon free business. I used to be that naive myself.
      • ibraheemdev 6y ago
        > Who ... takes the time to log back in and leave a product review when the product arrives? Nice people who want to help others out, and angry people who want their money back.
      • mrfusion 6y ago
        I do it. It’s easy because the site prompts me to do it. And I’m happy to help future buyers.
      • sn41 6y ago
        This is somewhat true. I review only when am highly impressed or thoroughly disgusted with a product. So-so products where I got more or less what I hoped for, and which is not too highly differentiated from alternatives, I don't bother with reviewing them.
      • parasubvert 6y ago
        This was what most people did when they bought things online even 15 years ago. I used to leave reviews for almost everything in the 90s and early 2000s. Amazon was a community. At some point of scale that changed.
  • TylerE 6y ago
    I don't think reviews are bad, but I think 5 stars is. Should just be thumbs up, thumbs down. Maybe a "meh" in between. Alternatively, ask for ratings as 5 star, treat 4 as a meh, and anything 3 or below as a thumbs down.
    • stevekemp 6y ago
      There are lots of weird things that happen in reviews (from real people). I've often come across three-star reviews which say: "Product was awesome, but shipping took three days, not one". There are other reviews I've found useful, for example ones that point out minor flaws. That ability would be lost if you had a simple "good/bad" reaction only.
    • JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
      No please don’t Netflix the Amazon reviews. There is a huge advantage in granularity. Everything in life isn’t so binary, where you either loved or hated it. There is so much gray area in between that makes ratings useful. Netflix neutered their whole rating system when they introduced the thumbs up and down system.
      • TylerE 6y ago
        I don't find it useful granularity. It just adds noise. Product has <huge major flaw>. 4 stars. Product was a slightly different shade than the picture. 1 star
      • 8note 6y ago
        Stars are also not very granular, vs stuff related to the product itself. Google's "does this place offer wifi?" type questions seem better than reviews
  • Proven 6y ago
    We already have that today (we can simply ignore reviews)
  • csa 6y ago
    This is half of an idea... people still want/need guidance on purchases. High quality, curated, independent reviews is probably something that most people would enjoy and appreciate. That said, the current system is fairly worthless, and what little worth it has is based on hacking it by looking at a specific subset of reviews.
    • wyre 6y ago
      > people still want/need guidance on purchases It’s funny because Amazon normalized folks needing reviews on things before buying it.
      • tempestn 6y ago
        In a way, before Amazon you effectively did have 'quality, curated reviews' - in the form of what products brick and mortar stores chose to stock. Most decent stores aren't going to stock complete garbage, so if you found an item with the attributes you're looking for, it would probably work.
        • lifeisstillgood 6y ago
          That is a deep and wise point :-)
      • unishark 6y ago
        There was also ebay feedback which was key to shopping for a lot longer I'd say.
  • dreamer7 6y ago
    This comment isn't entirely without merit. If Amazon could guarantee the genuineness of every product and description, and delivery times, is there any need for star ratings? Reviews are better because it's easier to differentiate between fake and real reviews for now ( as fake reviews usually contain grammatically incorrect sentences, multiple copies with different names etc ) That's what we have done at the marketplace I'm running in the UK. There are no seller ratings and users are encouraged to share feedback.
  • mrfusion 6y ago
    Good idea. Just list percent returns instead.
    • d3nj4l 6y ago
      I don't know about elsewhere, but Amazon India has been slowly phasing out returns for replacements. It used to be fairly easy to get a return on Amazon, but now almost every product I've bought in the past year or so (and that's a lot of stuff in a variety of categories, thanks to the pandemic) has been replacement-only. If someone gets a fake product, I doubt they'll look for a "replacement", so I'm not sure switching to a return% will be good enough either. This is, of course, in addition to other issues with removing reviews, such as lacking nuance on why something was returned, etc. I've seen some stellar reviews on Amazon that went out of their way to list the minutiae of a product and the experience of using it, and that's helped me out a lot in the past.
• osrec 6y ago
  I would presume that most people that buy reviews for their own products would ask for them to be 5 stars. I wonder if anyone is deliberately paying for bad reviews of their competitors' products?
  • pfundstein 6y ago
    Or perhaps disgruntled customers [possibly who purchased an artificially inflated 5 star item only to find it garbage].
    • osrec 6y ago
      To me, that's actually the correct use of the system. I was thinking more in terms of people deliberately gaming the review system.
  • serial_dev 6y ago
    I'm sure some do, happens in the restaurants and hotel ratings systems, too (yelp, Google, trip advisor). It would be interesting to know how often this happens compared to buying the 5 star reviews. My guess would be that the fake negative reviews for competitors are less than 10% of the total fake reviews.
• wvenable 6y ago
  My mother-in-law no longer buys anything of significance from Amazon after being burned with counterfeit materials. I carefully check reviews, use fakespot, etc. There is a point where the eroding of trust will be significant enough to affect the bottom line. Eventually most people know to not trust Amazon reviews, soon it will be.
  • spullara 6y ago
    How are so many people buying counterfeit stuff on Amazon? What are they buying? Why would someone copy it? Are they just looking at price?
    • ianmcgowan 6y ago
      Certain things it's impossible to avoid - I'm trying to buy 18650 batteries for a flashlight and it's overwhelming trying to find legit sellers. There are some classes of products where it's really hard to tell what's real (reviews not matching product description, obviously fake 5-star and 1-star reviews etc.)
      • cookiecaper 6y ago
        This is where independent resellers via Shopify, their own cart system, etc. have a chance. There's no way to be sure you're getting a real battery from Amazon so I always buy this type of thing from a community-trusted independent vendor that has a real account with authorized suppliers. It might cost more in shipping and delivery time, but it's strongly preferable to having my desk catch fire due to missing or defective safety components, which are very common among knockoffs. At least there's someone to sue if that happens with an authentic battery.
        • saargrin 6y ago
          Shopify is a clusterfu*k of scripted random generated pop-up stores that have no intention of delivering what they promise, most shopify stores are worse than wish.com in my experience
• throwaway2048 6y ago
  Considering that after almost 25 years there is still no functionality for reporting listings as being fraudulent or counterfeit, that tells you exactly where amazon's priorities lie.
  • onion2k 6y ago
    As soon as they implement that feature they'll be swamped with reports on every product regardless of whether it's fake or not. Rival sellers will use it to try to monopolise a product, annoyed customers will use it to take revenge on genuine sellers, and occasionally people will report an actual fake. Unless it's much better than a simple report function it won't work.
• ianmcgowan 6y ago
  I'm sure Amazon has some smart people looking at the numbers on this, but as just one anecdata, my family has been buying a ton of stuff from Amazon since they were just books. Now we buy things that are repeat purchases or a couple of trusted brands (e.g. Amazon Basics or Anker). For bigger purchases (like a medium-basic coffee machine) we're either looking at Costco and Target, or researching a lot on Consumer Reports. Wirecutter used to be good, but hard to trust these days too. We definitely spend less at Amazon because of lack of trust and counterfeit concerns, and it seems directionally true for the HN crowd. That's got to be a worry for anyone at Amazon - if the people who were early adopters are starting to leave your platform, that's got to be concerning...
  • rexf 6y ago
    Definitely, if it's food or health/medical, I'll skip Amazon & buy it from Target or Walmart directly (not a 3rd party seller on their platforms). Other categories like memory cards, kids products, I'll also avoid Amazon (especially since Amazon reviews of those products often claim they received a fake).
    • kgc 6y ago
      The online version of Walmart now sources from a range of suppliers like Amazon does. I was tracking down the supplier of a used laptop and discovered an eBay posting with exactly the same text and photos.
  • rblatz 6y ago
    I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, some of it I know is a cheap knockoff, but at least I’m paying cheap knockoff prices. But things I won’t buy on Amazon are SD cards or water filters for my fridge. You end up paying full price for a cheap knockoff. I’m sure there are others, but these two stand out in my mind.
  • projectileboy 6y ago
    Also just anecdata, but I’m the same way. I don’t mind buying commodity goods off of Amazon, but if I need to know that I’m truly getting product X of brand Y, I now typically go elsewhere, because I just cannot trust that I’m not going to get a counterfeit product. Over the years, I’ve received two counterfeit books and three counterfeit hardgoods from Amazon. That may not seem overwhelming, but it’s enough to break my confidence.
• shalmanese 6y ago
  > Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. Do they? It's not immediately clear that an Amazon where the average item has 4.7 stars would sell more stuff than an Amazon where the average is 4.2 stars. Consumers mostly compare items against others on the same site and it's possible that all grade inflation does is make the top performing items harder to separate out and makes buying harder. As a counterpoint, Uber suffers from ridiculous grade inflation and it doesn't appear to have made riders love them any more. It's simply resulted in everyone adapting to 5 = slightly above average, 4.9 = average, 4.8 = run away screaming.
  • retsibsi 6y ago
    > It's simply resulted in everyone adapting to 5 = slightly above average, 4.9 = average, 4.8 = run away screaming. Just out of curiosity from someone who doesn't use Uber, is this an exaggeration or meant pretty much literally? (Not with regard to running away screaming... but is 4.8 genuinely a terrible score?)
    • Rebelgecko 6y ago
      IIRC Uber will put drivers on notice if they're rating approaches 4.6
      • Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
        Jesus Christ. What's even the point of a 5-star system then? It should be a very simple two option system. Was the ride safe? Did you get where you were going? Then hit the thumbs up button. Otherwise hit the thumbs down button. Or even better, no rating system at all and just provide the option to file reports in bad cases, with that report information being made public in some sense. This idea that rideshare drivers need to be offering entertainment while they drive in order to ensure 5 stars is offensive. When people took cabs, nothing like this happened. A cab pulled up, you got in, they drove, if they tried to take a long route you complained, then you paid your money and got out. End of transaction. Most were good, some were bad. The fact that the cabbie was able to hold and maintain their job was the source of trust you needed to have confidence you would arrive intact.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• centimeter 6y ago
  Amazon has become exceedingly dishonest over the last few years. They deleted my negative review of the Kindle with no explanation or recourse. Since maybe November, a couple of things I've ordered (shipped and sold by Amazon) were listed as new but were very clearly used. One of these items was a piece of safety-critical equipment that was dangerously damaged and could very likely have caused death or dismemberment if someone with less experience had received the item and tried to use it. I assume some clueless Amazon warehouse worker eyeballs returns and tries to figure out if they can plausibly trick the customer into thinking it's a new item, and if so they put it back up for sale as "new".
• hntrader 6y ago
  I don't get why Amazon loves fake five star reviews. It's put me off them completely and I'm no longer a customer. Are you sure that this is accurate?
• permo-w 6y ago
  If you look at the review average, Amazon skews the numbers anyway. It’s a weighted average. If they sorted this out and the average reviews started to drop, they could very easily adjust this algorithm and never tell anyone and they’d be fine. I don’t think this is the problem