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It's nice to see hard evidence of this, but anecdotal evidence is plain to see on Amazon.com reviews. For example, a product gets a lot of 5 star reviews statin

It's nice to see hard evidence of this, but anecdotal evidence is plain to see on Amazon.com reviews. For example, a product gets a lot of 5 star reviews stating that the buyer bought it for their child/relative/friend and they are just sure that they will love it... 5 stars! Or "I just got this delivered yesterday and I haven't used it yet but it looks really great!"... 5 stars. These are then immediately followed by a 1 star review along the lines of "This is the biggest piece of junk I've ever bought online. Will be returning to Amazon. DO NOT BUY!" These aren't to be confused with the indiscriminate idiots who can't be bothered to use their brains, who leave mindless reviews such as "This is junk but it was cheap and kinda works... 5 stars!" Right. Most times this trend of 5's followed by 1's is seen even in the first page of reviews. It's a serious problem with the platform. I usually search for reviews written by people who have had the product for a week or two and give the pros/cons along with a less than 5 star rating. That helps me avoid the fakes and the idiots. This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious.

mschuster91 5y ago
In the pre-Internet world there would be someone at the store who would a) do a checkout of the product prior to listing and b) evaluate customer returns and act upon them, in order to protect the integrity of the store. Delivering crap would lead to consequences (in the worst case de-listing) for the vendor. Amazon doesn't do either - sellers are allowed to put up basically everything that's legal to sell somewhere on the world (including propaganda materials for all kinds of questionable groups including right-wing terrorism), and they don't care at all about complaints from customers about fake products or shoddy quality. They only seem to care when big media representatives short-circuit the system and raise a stink at the PR team.
shagie 5y ago
> These aren't to be confused with the indiscriminate idiots who can't be bothered to use their brains, who leave mindless reviews such as "This is junk but it was cheap and kinda works... 5 stars!" Right. I wouldn't say that they were indiscriminate nor not bothered to use their brains. One of the all too often seen things is a card for "leave a 5 star review and get a $10 amazon gift card" in the package. Yes, its part of an effort to get 5 star reviews since the sorting of the product on amazon is more important than the text in the reviews below the fold. Yes, that's unscrupulous on both the buyer's and the seller's part. But it is not indiscriminate or brainless on the part of the reviewer. It's selfish.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  And yet! And yet, like Google, Amazon now prefixes my search results with "Amazon's Choice" or some other marketing crap. Man, I remember when you could trust reviews, search for an item, filter anything below 4 stars and get a decent, reliable list of products to choose from. You felt like you had some of the best damn kitchen knives your budget could afford.
- geocrasher 5y ago
  True, but "Selfish indiscriminate idiots" just doesn't have the same ring to it ;-)
dazc 5y ago
'This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious.' Cynically, turn a blind-eye to misdemeanours of third-party sellers so long as there is data to be mined. Gradually replicate best-selling merchandise through your own-brand labels and then slowly dispose of the third-party sellers whilst retaining evidence of how they were systematically breaching the program terms in order to mitigate any chance of a class-action law suit.
- unloco 5y ago
  I wish I didnt read this. Now I feel dirty because it's exactly what's happening.
  - ryantgtg 5y ago
    I also think there’s an element of balancing investments and returns. If Amazon is missing out (or “losing”) $50 million per year from eroded trust, then they should invest $49.9 million in fighting the fraud regaining that trust. But they need not invest more.
thereddaikon 5y ago
Companies are amoral, they will usually only do something if there is profit. Amazon has no reason to crack down on fake reviews because they don't effect their bottom line either way. They want people to buy stuff using their site, they don't really care what it is they buy as long as they keep buying. There isn't a viable alternative so competition isn't the issue. So they can get away with a lot before people choose to leave.
- tsm 5y ago
  > Amazon has no reason to crack down on fake reviews because they don't effect their bottom line either way. For various things (certain electronics/peripherals, certain tools) I deliberately avoid Amazon because I want something I can trust and don't have energy to decide which of the fifteen similar-looking things on Amazon is well-made and which is a fake or just crap.
  - beardbound 5y ago
    I don't buy very much on Amazon anymore. Mostly name brand stuff that isn't often counterfeited. Guitar strings, books, moisturizer and such. It is still very good for grabbing random widgets (I just bought a knob puller for my guitars). Other than that I mostly order from places that I know stock quality product. Sur La Table for cooking stuff comes to mind.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      The problem comes when you don't know. I needed a new battery for my Dyson vacuum - out of stock at Dyson, but online has a lot of third parties for half the price (and often more capacity) - but what do I trust as real? I ended up at Amazon because they will probably ship me something and if it doesn't work I have a chance to return it. I was tempted to try that Vietnamese company directly, but how do I know?
      - coldpie 5y ago
        I've mostly switched back from shopping online to shopping in local retail. If you're actually stocking shelves, instead of just running a digital flea market, you have to be choosy about what you stock. There's a ton of value in having someone filter out the trash and buy from reliable sources. I'm happy to pay more for that service, and usually I can get the item same-day since I'm already there in the store. For example you may have a local vacuum/appliance shop who has a direct relationship with Dyson and so can buy genuine parts on your behalf, or even have them in stock wholesale.
ziml77 5y ago
> I usually search for reviews written by people who have had the product for a week or two and give the pros/cons along with a less than 5 star rating. That helps me avoid the fakes and the idiots. Might only help somewhat with the fake reviews. From the "Avoiding Detection" section: "Fraudulent businesses give reviewers specific criteria to follow to avoid detection on Amazon. These criteria are designed to present the reviews as legitimate. In this ElasticSearch server, vendors asked reviewers to wait a few days before publishing a review. They also request substantial reviews that are longer than just a few words, and may even outline certain details that should be included in the review."
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> For example, a product gets a lot of 5 star reviews stating that the buyer bought it for their child/relative/friend and they are just sure that they will love it... 5 stars! Or "I just got this delivered yesterday and I haven't used it yet but it looks really great!"... 5 stars. Exclamation points are the giveaway in most fake reviews. The same goes for Glassdoor. The more exclamation points in a 5-star review of a company, the more likely it was written by an HR person or the CEO.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Another suspicious element is the extremes of 1 and 5. At best its a 'you either love it or hate it', at the very least it is controversial. Amazon could flag it as such.
slantyyz 5y ago
The PayPal reimbursement thing has been going on since Amazon changed their review rules a couple of years ago. If you ask me, the new Verified Purchase shill reviews since the rules changes are worse for shoppers than the shill reviews with disclaimers (which were always easy to spot and ignore). It's a good example of "be careful what you wish for".
emodendroket 5y ago
If you were going to write a fake review wouldn’t you praise the item instead of just writing one that makes you sound like an idiot who doesn’t get the purpose of a review?
- delecti 5y ago
  A review that makes the author sound like an idiot still contributes to an item's star rating, and that's all a lot of people look at.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Perhaps but if you’re paying you probably want it to be credible (the article describes vendors coaching people on what kind of reviews to write). I find it pretty plausible that people writing “bought it as a gift, haven’t gotten it yet!” kind of reviews are probably genuine.
pessimizer 5y ago
> This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious. Because there are absolutely no consequences, and general boosterism increases sales. If you go to site X and there are a mix of good and bad reviews for a product, but then go to Amazon and see all good reviews a similar product, you buy at Amazon. Especially if you have Prime, which you might just have because you like a tv show. If a systematic fraud is exposed, accounts are banned, Amazon press-releases a "crackdown", new accounts are quietly created by new business entities owned by the same people, process continues. What's the cost?
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Disagree. Amazon's reviews were the reason I would buy online, wait several days, vs. driving home from Best Buy with a new TV. I remember even walking into a brick and mortar store, confused because I had no way to judge, for example, one rice cooker against another. As the reliability of Amazon's reviews has waned, so has my loyalty. If I'm just rolling the dice now, I might as well roll the dice on eBay or aliexpress.....
  - ct0 5y ago
    I have to agree with this sentiment. In general, I look for long term use reviews, any sign that a product will fail both beyond the return period and warranty period. If my trust in long term reviews erode, I'm inclined to buy less. Word of mount is a powerful tool that amazon has harnessed with reviews, and has seemingly replaced the need to see a product in person before a purchase.
  - baccheion 5y ago
    They do have some basic algorithm that weighs each review/reviewer. The average shown isn't a raw one. Some reviews count more than others. Then add in fakespot.com..
  - gccs 5y ago
    When you roll the dice on amazon, you can return it if you don't like it. Its harder to do that on ebay, and impossible to do on aliexpress.
moksly 5y ago
Maybe the reason they aren’t cracking down on it is exactly because of their analytical genius? I’m not sure how Amazon operates in the US, but in Northern Europe it’s main target very clearly isn’t the informed customer, but the people who’s next step is going on one or the Chinese sites like wish. Maybe having a lot of fake reviews is simply better than having few reviews for their target audience? Hell, half the stuff on Amazon.de is resales of things that are clearly imported from China, so maybe Amazon’s role is simply to broker these wares in a manner that’s not as prone to getting the buyer scammed? Or maybe shit reviews is just better for sales than no reviews?
- anovikov 5y ago
  What's the problem with the Chinese sites? Whole large businesses are based on simply buying on them and reselling offline... Yes they sell crap, but these days, everyone sells crap. It's just a difference between poorly advertised cheap crap and well-advertised expensive crap.
  - shawnz 5y ago
    I think that's exactly their point: Amazon uses fake reviews to make the poorly advertised cheap crap look like well advertised expensive crap. Therefore, you're more likely to trust Amazon instead of buying the exact same product from Aliexpress.
GordonS 5y ago
> These are then immediately followed by a 1 star review along the lines of "This is the biggest piece of junk I've ever bought online. Will be returning to Amazon. DO NOT BUY!" Sometimes I wonder about even these ones though - they could have been written by those with a competing product being sold on Amazon.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Yeah, exactly. And now suddenly the whole review feature of Amazon is dead.
jader201 5y ago
> For example, a product gets a lot of 5 star reviews stating that the buyer bought it for their child/relative/friend and they are just sure that they will love it... 5 stars! Or "I just got this delivered yesterday and I haven't used it yet but it looks really great!"... 5 stars. That doesn’t sound necessarily fake, that just sounds like humans being humans. You see this in many reviews on other sites, as well. Not saying they’re not fake, but my understanding was that the fake reviews usually go through a little more effort than that.
moftz 5y ago
I always like seeing the most recent reviews since it can sometimes show that people have started receiving knockoffs or that there's been a rapid change in quality of a product. The most helpful review is like months to a year old so it sometimes doesn't accurately reflect the product anymore. Some people really are just idiots and either purchased something very cheap expecting high quality or they give high ratings for a product when they outline serious flaws in the review. I usually don't buy random junk off of amazon all the time like some do so when I make a purchase, I already know exactly what I want and it's something totally necessary.
Sebb767 5y ago
> These aren't to be confused with the indiscriminate idiots who can't be bothered to use their brains, who leave mindless reviews such as "This is junk but it was cheap and kinda works... 5 stars!" Right. What's wrong with that? If you buy a pair of headphones for 2$, you simply can not expect good sound. But if it works well enough to hear what you need to hear, this sounds pretty fair.
- sodality2 5y ago
  I got $15 bluetooth headphones from a r/buildapcsales post, everyone in the comments said it would sound like shit, but I've been using them for over a year and I couldn't be happier. it's got noise cancellation, battery lasts for close to a week with my heavy usage, and it's got really good quality. Maybe just to me, but I'm young, so my ears shouldn't be that degraded yet. But I have gotten pairs for my friends and family and they are all happy. Sure, they aren't XM4's, but they are literally $15, and I have gotten way more than that in value.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    What's the model?
    - sodality2 5y ago
      Hetyre HT9's, they are now listed for $40 but were at one point $30 with a half-off coupon.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Xeronate 5y ago
    Objectively, I’m sure they aren’t great quality. You just don’t seem to care, which is great for you, but also doesn’t make your advice givers wrong. Have you ever tried $200 headphones to compare? Also you go back and forth on they are quality and they are only 15 dollars so what should I expect.
irjustin 5y ago
The fast test is to see how many 2-5 stars vs 1 star reviews exist. If the 1 stars has a bump vs the rest, you better know it's got a ton of fake reviews. Legit products have a relatively smooth curve "long tailing" into 1 star. Soon though, the scam reviewers will start smoothing the curve out and then I don't know what to do anymore.
Arch-TK 5y ago
I've also seen cases where items have been poorly reviewed but only because according to reviews section the people who bought the item were all incapable of using it correctly. I saw an amazon review of someone complaining that a drill bit they bought got bent drilling through a brick. The picture they provided showed quite clearly that they had severely damaged and bent a brad-point drill bit (which is meant to be used for wood). The bending can also be explained by the fact that these drill bits are usually nowhere near as hard or brittle, presumably because if you ever try to use a drill bit intended for drilling through metal to drill wood you will quickly find how easy it is to snap it when it's in a thick bit of wood, and people don't usually drill deep holes in metal without a drill press to keep the drill going straight. Oh, and the worst part of the amazon experience has to be the number of "Answers" to "Questions" where the answer is just: "Sorry, I don't know the answer."
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
Don’t forget the one-star reviews for shipping problems. “Arrived broken because the box was smashed in half” is still marginally more useful than “arrived three days late”. They’re both irreverent when comparing the products themselves. For that matter, buying USB charging hubs is a nightmare. The reviews are identical on every single one: there’s always at least one who overloaded theirs and complained that their house burnt down.
dawnerd 5y ago
Don’t forget the super obvious: “Update: support contacted me…” They just straight up PayPal you money to change your negative review. Trick is once they pay change your review back and say they paid you but Amazon will likely remove the review at that point. One way to fix is to only allow verified purchases. Amazon also needs to remove the ability for sellers to request reviews be removed. Amazon also needs to be less strict on negative reviews. Right now it doesn’t seem there’s any moderation on five star but if you put 1 star they really don’t approve them much. Most of mine have been declined. They need to stop sellers from taking over older product pages or switching what product a page is sold on. There’s this common scam where they will sell a legit gizmo and get high reviews them swap it for the junk scam item. No idea why they let this happen as it seems so obvious but who knows. Also need to really ramp up moderation of third party sellers. Start being picky about what they allow to be sold. Anything sold in the sad card category needs to be manually verified.
austinshea 5y ago
It’s weird to see you gloss over the only interesting detail in this story, the hard evidence, and then deep dive into conjecture, and your feelings.
spenczar5 5y ago
> This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious. I used to work at Amazon, and can say that this came up on internal mailing lists all. the. time. It really bothers people, particularly engineers who see that it is eroding customers' trust in Amazon. It's really bad, and people know it. There were significant teams trying to work on it when I left. I think it really is that it's a very difficult problem of cat-and-mouse, without any clear path to victory for Amazon, and the sellers have a huge monetary incentive to evade detection. It's very adversarial, and Amazon has the tough position of _also_ not wanting to discourage legitimate reviews and sellers. And there are so many sellers that solutions need to scale well. So: I think they're trying, but it's a bona fide hard problem.
- the-pigeon 5y ago
  > I think it really is that it's a very difficult problem of cat-and-mouse, without any clear path to victory for Amazon, and the sellers have a huge monetary incentive to evade detection. Honestly it's really hard to believe you. That may have been what you were told but there's hundreds of well documented cases of sellers manipulating reviews where Amazon does not penalize the seller. The logical explanation is Amazon has decided not to punish sellers who manipulate reviews if Amazon thinks it's a net gain for Amazon.
  - spenczar5 5y ago
    > Honestly it's really hard to believe you. Yeah, I get it. For what it's worth - I didn't just get told they care, I saw some of the systems that were built to work on detection. Amazon is not a very short-term oriented company. They're usually pretty good at caring about long-term dominance to get dollars in ten years rather than pennies today. It's clear as day to anyone that fake reviews are hurting their image to customers, eroding trust. That's leading people to buy stuff elsewhere. At the same time, Amazon Marketplace is one of the underappreciated masterstrokes from Amazon over the last 15 years and has driven a huge increase in their retail revenue, which you can see in annual reports. So, certainly they're unwilling to take really dramatic action like dropping 3rd-party sellers entirely. But I still think they realize fixing this is pretty crucial for the long-term health of the retail business. It's hard for me to explain the cases where people find obvious fraud and the seller doesn't get penalized. These would get flagged internally in mailing lists too, and most of the time it was a process error somewhere - a ticket that got dropped when shuffled between the zillion different departments; Amazon's internal bureaucracy is truly insane and huge. I think it's usually incompetence rather than devious cleverness, honestly. There are probably some other cases that are more complicated (sellers reopening new accounts, and then doing social engineering on unwitting poorly-paid support people to regain listings). I think those are kind of rare. --- Anyway, all this to say: I get it, it's hard to believe because it's easy to think of Amazon as all-powerful. But... they're really not. It's a huge, slow, bureaucratic, sludgy company. They have some money (okay, a lot of money) and technical talent but it isn't super clear how you'd apply those to this problem. It's hard.
sdgasg 5y ago
> These are then immediately followed by a 1 star review along the lines of "This is the biggest piece of junk I've ever bought online. Will be returning to Amazon. DO NOT BUY!" I really wish Amazon expose return rate for each product. That would be better indication of customer satisfaction. Also I wish there was not such a stigma against returning products. That would be a good way to drive bad players out of business. A few times when I returned something I apologized too much but store employees said that I am doing them a favor by returning it because this is how they determine what to stop selling in their store and prevent shier people from buying junk products.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  I've spoken to Amazon sellers. They are forced to accept even the most ridiculous refund claims, because at the slightest smell of trouble, Amazon will ban their accounts. It's scary how their algorithms can literally ruin a persons livelihood. I don't see why sellers should be worse off then buyers on Amazon, seeing as they're both customers.
  - sdgasg 5y ago
    There always will be certain percentage of people who will take advantage of return policies. I am sure at Amazon's scale, they can detect abusers easily. Most people hate to return stuff, and I think retailers take advantage of that, in general. That's why you see obvious lies in advertisements. Tesla's Autopilot mode? If society accepted returning defective or subpar products, then I doubt retailers will over-promise or sell subpar products. Another option might be no returns at all. This way buyers will need to do their due diligence before buying and less likely to impulse purchase crap. Probably better for the society as a whole. Also things will be cheaper as retailers will not need to account for any returns.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ww520 5y ago
I brought a product from Amazon and returned it since it’s defective. Posted a 3 star review, which I thought it’s fair. For the next two months someone from the seller company constantly sent me emails offering a $30 gift card to me to change the rating to a 5 star. So those “it’s trash...5 star” are probably people being paid to change their initial review. I’ve thought about taking their money but added in a statement in the review that the 5 star was a paid request from the seller, just to screw their practice a bit. But stopped fearing that Amazon might ban my account.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
> This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious. It's probably one of those situations where it's obvious, but not provably so. It's like when you pass a huge pile of random bike parts in a pile next to a homeless encampment: it's 100% a bike chop shop, duh, anyone can see that...but you can't prove that it's a chop shop just based off of what you saw, so police can't take action without substantial further investigation. It's easy enough for us as to consumers to spot fake reviews, but can you prove that they're fake just because they're repetitive or awkwardly written or whatnot?
markwkw 5y ago
I’m not sure any of this is obvious. I have observed my relatives leave reviews just like the one you described as fraudulent. They are older folks who don’t get what the point of reviews is. Sometimes they will leave reviews like: „cheap and arrived in 1 day” which completely misses the point of what product reviews should be. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be so sure that „this is complete junk” review is genuine or perhaps comes from the competitor who wants to hurt the rating of the product. Just like sarcasm is really hard to detect in an online forum, even with human intelligence, and having some conversational context, I think determining reviewers true intent is really really hard.
neop1x 5y ago
Looking at 1* or 2* reviews often says much more than total * count. But of course, sorting is often possible by total * only. Maybe sorting items by least amount of 1* and 2* would help.
bruhhh 5y ago
This is a silly take. A lot of fake reviews actually have good levels of details, except the details are fabricated and/or exaggerated.

mschuster91 5y ago

In the pre-Internet world there would be someone at the store who would a) do a checkout of the product prior to listing and b) evaluate customer returns and act upon them, in order to protect the integrity of the store. Delivering crap would lead to consequences (in the worst case de-listing) for the vendor. Amazon doesn't do either - sellers are allowed to put up basically everything that's legal to sell somewhere on the world (including propaganda materials for all kinds of questionable groups including right-wing terrorism), and they don't care at all about complaints from customers about fake products or shoddy quality. They only seem to care when big media representatives short-circuit the system and raise a stink at the PR team.

shagie 5y ago

> These aren't to be confused with the indiscriminate idiots who can't be bothered to use their brains, who leave mindless reviews such as "This is junk but it was cheap and kinda works... 5 stars!" Right. I wouldn't say that they were indiscriminate nor not bothered to use their brains. One of the all too often seen things is a card for "leave a 5 star review and get a $10 amazon gift card" in the package. Yes, its part of an effort to get 5 star reviews since the sorting of the product on amazon is more important than the text in the reviews below the fold. Yes, that's unscrupulous on both the buyer's and the seller's part. But it is not indiscriminate or brainless on the part of the reviewer. It's selfish.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
And yet! And yet, like Google, Amazon now prefixes my search results with "Amazon's Choice" or some other marketing crap. Man, I remember when you could trust reviews, search for an item, filter anything below 4 stars and get a decent, reliable list of products to choose from. You felt like you had some of the best damn kitchen knives your budget could afford.
geocrasher 5y ago
True, but "Selfish indiscriminate idiots" just doesn't have the same ring to it ;-)

dazc 5y ago

'This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious.' Cynically, turn a blind-eye to misdemeanours of third-party sellers so long as there is data to be mined. Gradually replicate best-selling merchandise through your own-brand labels and then slowly dispose of the third-party sellers whilst retaining evidence of how they were systematically breaching the program terms in order to mitigate any chance of a class-action law suit.

unloco 5y ago
I wish I didnt read this. Now I feel dirty because it's exactly what's happening.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  I also think there’s an element of balancing investments and returns. If Amazon is missing out (or “losing”) $50 million per year from eroded trust, then they should invest $49.9 million in fighting the fraud regaining that trust. But they need not invest more.

thereddaikon 5y ago

Companies are amoral, they will usually only do something if there is profit. Amazon has no reason to crack down on fake reviews because they don't effect their bottom line either way. They want people to buy stuff using their site, they don't really care what it is they buy as long as they keep buying. There isn't a viable alternative so competition isn't the issue. So they can get away with a lot before people choose to leave.

tsm 5y ago
> Amazon has no reason to crack down on fake reviews because they don't effect their bottom line either way. For various things (certain electronics/peripherals, certain tools) I deliberately avoid Amazon because I want something I can trust and don't have energy to decide which of the fifteen similar-looking things on Amazon is well-made and which is a fake or just crap.
- beardbound 5y ago
  I don't buy very much on Amazon anymore. Mostly name brand stuff that isn't often counterfeited. Guitar strings, books, moisturizer and such. It is still very good for grabbing random widgets (I just bought a knob puller for my guitars). Other than that I mostly order from places that I know stock quality product. Sur La Table for cooking stuff comes to mind.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The problem comes when you don't know. I needed a new battery for my Dyson vacuum - out of stock at Dyson, but online has a lot of third parties for half the price (and often more capacity) - but what do I trust as real? I ended up at Amazon because they will probably ship me something and if it doesn't work I have a chance to return it. I was tempted to try that Vietnamese company directly, but how do I know?
    - coldpie 5y ago
      I've mostly switched back from shopping online to shopping in local retail. If you're actually stocking shelves, instead of just running a digital flea market, you have to be choosy about what you stock. There's a ton of value in having someone filter out the trash and buy from reliable sources. I'm happy to pay more for that service, and usually I can get the item same-day since I'm already there in the store. For example you may have a local vacuum/appliance shop who has a direct relationship with Dyson and so can buy genuine parts on your behalf, or even have them in stock wholesale.

ziml77 5y ago

> I usually search for reviews written by people who have had the product for a week or two and give the pros/cons along with a less than 5 star rating. That helps me avoid the fakes and the idiots. Might only help somewhat with the fake reviews. From the "Avoiding Detection" section: "Fraudulent businesses give reviewers specific criteria to follow to avoid detection on Amazon. These criteria are designed to present the reviews as legitimate. In this ElasticSearch server, vendors asked reviewers to wait a few days before publishing a review. They also request substantial reviews that are longer than just a few words, and may even outline certain details that should be included in the review."

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> For example, a product gets a lot of 5 star reviews stating that the buyer bought it for their child/relative/friend and they are just sure that they will love it... 5 stars! Or "I just got this delivered yesterday and I haven't used it yet but it looks really great!"... 5 stars. Exclamation points are the giveaway in most fake reviews. The same goes for Glassdoor. The more exclamation points in a 5-star review of a company, the more likely it was written by an HR person or the CEO.

Fnoord 5y ago
Another suspicious element is the extremes of 1 and 5. At best its a 'you either love it or hate it', at the very least it is controversial. Amazon could flag it as such.

slantyyz 5y ago

The PayPal reimbursement thing has been going on since Amazon changed their review rules a couple of years ago. If you ask me, the new Verified Purchase shill reviews since the rules changes are worse for shoppers than the shill reviews with disclaimers (which were always easy to spot and ignore). It's a good example of "be careful what you wish for".

emodendroket 5y ago

If you were going to write a fake review wouldn’t you praise the item instead of just writing one that makes you sound like an idiot who doesn’t get the purpose of a review?

delecti 5y ago
A review that makes the author sound like an idiot still contributes to an item's star rating, and that's all a lot of people look at.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Perhaps but if you’re paying you probably want it to be credible (the article describes vendors coaching people on what kind of reviews to write). I find it pretty plausible that people writing “bought it as a gift, haven’t gotten it yet!” kind of reviews are probably genuine.

pessimizer 5y ago

> This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious. Because there are absolutely no consequences, and general boosterism increases sales. If you go to site X and there are a mix of good and bad reviews for a product, but then go to Amazon and see all good reviews a similar product, you buy at Amazon. Especially if you have Prime, which you might just have because you like a tv show. If a systematic fraud is exposed, accounts are banned, Amazon press-releases a "crackdown", new accounts are quietly created by new business entities owned by the same people, process continues. What's the cost?

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Disagree. Amazon's reviews were the reason I would buy online, wait several days, vs. driving home from Best Buy with a new TV. I remember even walking into a brick and mortar store, confused because I had no way to judge, for example, one rice cooker against another. As the reliability of Amazon's reviews has waned, so has my loyalty. If I'm just rolling the dice now, I might as well roll the dice on eBay or aliexpress.....
- ct0 5y ago
  I have to agree with this sentiment. In general, I look for long term use reviews, any sign that a product will fail both beyond the return period and warranty period. If my trust in long term reviews erode, I'm inclined to buy less. Word of mount is a powerful tool that amazon has harnessed with reviews, and has seemingly replaced the need to see a product in person before a purchase.
- baccheion 5y ago
  They do have some basic algorithm that weighs each review/reviewer. The average shown isn't a raw one. Some reviews count more than others. Then add in fakespot.com..
- gccs 5y ago
  When you roll the dice on amazon, you can return it if you don't like it. Its harder to do that on ebay, and impossible to do on aliexpress.

moksly 5y ago

Maybe the reason they aren’t cracking down on it is exactly because of their analytical genius? I’m not sure how Amazon operates in the US, but in Northern Europe it’s main target very clearly isn’t the informed customer, but the people who’s next step is going on one or the Chinese sites like wish. Maybe having a lot of fake reviews is simply better than having few reviews for their target audience? Hell, half the stuff on Amazon.de is resales of things that are clearly imported from China, so maybe Amazon’s role is simply to broker these wares in a manner that’s not as prone to getting the buyer scammed? Or maybe shit reviews is just better for sales than no reviews?

anovikov 5y ago
What's the problem with the Chinese sites? Whole large businesses are based on simply buying on them and reselling offline... Yes they sell crap, but these days, everyone sells crap. It's just a difference between poorly advertised cheap crap and well-advertised expensive crap.
- shawnz 5y ago
  I think that's exactly their point: Amazon uses fake reviews to make the poorly advertised cheap crap look like well advertised expensive crap. Therefore, you're more likely to trust Amazon instead of buying the exact same product from Aliexpress.

GordonS 5y ago

> These are then immediately followed by a 1 star review along the lines of "This is the biggest piece of junk I've ever bought online. Will be returning to Amazon. DO NOT BUY!" Sometimes I wonder about even these ones though - they could have been written by those with a competing product being sold on Amazon.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Yeah, exactly. And now suddenly the whole review feature of Amazon is dead.

jader201 5y ago

> For example, a product gets a lot of 5 star reviews stating that the buyer bought it for their child/relative/friend and they are just sure that they will love it... 5 stars! Or "I just got this delivered yesterday and I haven't used it yet but it looks really great!"... 5 stars. That doesn’t sound necessarily fake, that just sounds like humans being humans. You see this in many reviews on other sites, as well. Not saying they’re not fake, but my understanding was that the fake reviews usually go through a little more effort than that.

moftz 5y ago

I always like seeing the most recent reviews since it can sometimes show that people have started receiving knockoffs or that there's been a rapid change in quality of a product. The most helpful review is like months to a year old so it sometimes doesn't accurately reflect the product anymore. Some people really are just idiots and either purchased something very cheap expecting high quality or they give high ratings for a product when they outline serious flaws in the review. I usually don't buy random junk off of amazon all the time like some do so when I make a purchase, I already know exactly what I want and it's something totally necessary.

Sebb767 5y ago

> These aren't to be confused with the indiscriminate idiots who can't be bothered to use their brains, who leave mindless reviews such as "This is junk but it was cheap and kinda works... 5 stars!" Right. What's wrong with that? If you buy a pair of headphones for 2$, you simply can not expect good sound. But if it works well enough to hear what you need to hear, this sounds pretty fair.

sodality2 5y ago
I got $15 bluetooth headphones from a r/buildapcsales post, everyone in the comments said it would sound like shit, but I've been using them for over a year and I couldn't be happier. it's got noise cancellation, battery lasts for close to a week with my heavy usage, and it's got really good quality. Maybe just to me, but I'm young, so my ears shouldn't be that degraded yet. But I have gotten pairs for my friends and family and they are all happy. Sure, they aren't XM4's, but they are literally $15, and I have gotten way more than that in value.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  What's the model?
  - sodality2 5y ago
    Hetyre HT9's, they are now listed for $40 but were at one point $30 with a half-off coupon.
- deleted 5y ago
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- Xeronate 5y ago
  Objectively, I’m sure they aren’t great quality. You just don’t seem to care, which is great for you, but also doesn’t make your advice givers wrong. Have you ever tried $200 headphones to compare? Also you go back and forth on they are quality and they are only 15 dollars so what should I expect.

irjustin 5y ago

The fast test is to see how many 2-5 stars vs 1 star reviews exist. If the 1 stars has a bump vs the rest, you better know it's got a ton of fake reviews. Legit products have a relatively smooth curve "long tailing" into 1 star. Soon though, the scam reviewers will start smoothing the curve out and then I don't know what to do anymore.

Arch-TK 5y ago

I've also seen cases where items have been poorly reviewed but only because according to reviews section the people who bought the item were all incapable of using it correctly. I saw an amazon review of someone complaining that a drill bit they bought got bent drilling through a brick. The picture they provided showed quite clearly that they had severely damaged and bent a brad-point drill bit (which is meant to be used for wood). The bending can also be explained by the fact that these drill bits are usually nowhere near as hard or brittle, presumably because if you ever try to use a drill bit intended for drilling through metal to drill wood you will quickly find how easy it is to snap it when it's in a thick bit of wood, and people don't usually drill deep holes in metal without a drill press to keep the drill going straight. Oh, and the worst part of the amazon experience has to be the number of "Answers" to "Questions" where the answer is just: "Sorry, I don't know the answer."

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

Don’t forget the one-star reviews for shipping problems. “Arrived broken because the box was smashed in half” is still marginally more useful than “arrived three days late”. They’re both irreverent when comparing the products themselves. For that matter, buying USB charging hubs is a nightmare. The reviews are identical on every single one: there’s always at least one who overloaded theirs and complained that their house burnt down.

dawnerd 5y ago

Don’t forget the super obvious: “Update: support contacted me…” They just straight up PayPal you money to change your negative review. Trick is once they pay change your review back and say they paid you but Amazon will likely remove the review at that point. One way to fix is to only allow verified purchases. Amazon also needs to remove the ability for sellers to request reviews be removed. Amazon also needs to be less strict on negative reviews. Right now it doesn’t seem there’s any moderation on five star but if you put 1 star they really don’t approve them much. Most of mine have been declined. They need to stop sellers from taking over older product pages or switching what product a page is sold on. There’s this common scam where they will sell a legit gizmo and get high reviews them swap it for the junk scam item. No idea why they let this happen as it seems so obvious but who knows. Also need to really ramp up moderation of third party sellers. Start being picky about what they allow to be sold. Anything sold in the sad card category needs to be manually verified.

austinshea 5y ago

It’s weird to see you gloss over the only interesting detail in this story, the hard evidence, and then deep dive into conjecture, and your feelings.

spenczar5 5y ago

> This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious. I used to work at Amazon, and can say that this came up on internal mailing lists all. the. time. It really bothers people, particularly engineers who see that it is eroding customers' trust in Amazon. It's really bad, and people know it. There were significant teams trying to work on it when I left. I think it really is that it's a very difficult problem of cat-and-mouse, without any clear path to victory for Amazon, and the sellers have a huge monetary incentive to evade detection. It's very adversarial, and Amazon has the tough position of _also_ not wanting to discourage legitimate reviews and sellers. And there are so many sellers that solutions need to scale well. So: I think they're trying, but it's a bona fide hard problem.

the-pigeon 5y ago
> I think it really is that it's a very difficult problem of cat-and-mouse, without any clear path to victory for Amazon, and the sellers have a huge monetary incentive to evade detection. Honestly it's really hard to believe you. That may have been what you were told but there's hundreds of well documented cases of sellers manipulating reviews where Amazon does not penalize the seller. The logical explanation is Amazon has decided not to punish sellers who manipulate reviews if Amazon thinks it's a net gain for Amazon.
- spenczar5 5y ago
  > Honestly it's really hard to believe you. Yeah, I get it. For what it's worth - I didn't just get told they care, I saw some of the systems that were built to work on detection. Amazon is not a very short-term oriented company. They're usually pretty good at caring about long-term dominance to get dollars in ten years rather than pennies today. It's clear as day to anyone that fake reviews are hurting their image to customers, eroding trust. That's leading people to buy stuff elsewhere. At the same time, Amazon Marketplace is one of the underappreciated masterstrokes from Amazon over the last 15 years and has driven a huge increase in their retail revenue, which you can see in annual reports. So, certainly they're unwilling to take really dramatic action like dropping 3rd-party sellers entirely. But I still think they realize fixing this is pretty crucial for the long-term health of the retail business. It's hard for me to explain the cases where people find obvious fraud and the seller doesn't get penalized. These would get flagged internally in mailing lists too, and most of the time it was a process error somewhere - a ticket that got dropped when shuffled between the zillion different departments; Amazon's internal bureaucracy is truly insane and huge. I think it's usually incompetence rather than devious cleverness, honestly. There are probably some other cases that are more complicated (sellers reopening new accounts, and then doing social engineering on unwitting poorly-paid support people to regain listings). I think those are kind of rare. --- Anyway, all this to say: I get it, it's hard to believe because it's easy to think of Amazon as all-powerful. But... they're really not. It's a huge, slow, bureaucratic, sludgy company. They have some money (okay, a lot of money) and technical talent but it isn't super clear how you'd apply those to this problem. It's hard.

sdgasg 5y ago

> These are then immediately followed by a 1 star review along the lines of "This is the biggest piece of junk I've ever bought online. Will be returning to Amazon. DO NOT BUY!" I really wish Amazon expose return rate for each product. That would be better indication of customer satisfaction. Also I wish there was not such a stigma against returning products. That would be a good way to drive bad players out of business. A few times when I returned something I apologized too much but store employees said that I am doing them a favor by returning it because this is how they determine what to stop selling in their store and prevent shier people from buying junk products.

FridayoLeary 5y ago
I've spoken to Amazon sellers. They are forced to accept even the most ridiculous refund claims, because at the slightest smell of trouble, Amazon will ban their accounts. It's scary how their algorithms can literally ruin a persons livelihood. I don't see why sellers should be worse off then buyers on Amazon, seeing as they're both customers.
- sdgasg 5y ago
  There always will be certain percentage of people who will take advantage of return policies. I am sure at Amazon's scale, they can detect abusers easily. Most people hate to return stuff, and I think retailers take advantage of that, in general. That's why you see obvious lies in advertisements. Tesla's Autopilot mode? If society accepted returning defective or subpar products, then I doubt retailers will over-promise or sell subpar products. Another option might be no returns at all. This way buyers will need to do their due diligence before buying and less likely to impulse purchase crap. Probably better for the society as a whole. Also things will be cheaper as retailers will not need to account for any returns.
- deleted 5y ago
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ww520 5y ago

I brought a product from Amazon and returned it since it’s defective. Posted a 3 star review, which I thought it’s fair. For the next two months someone from the seller company constantly sent me emails offering a $30 gift card to me to change the rating to a 5 star. So those “it’s trash...5 star” are probably people being paid to change their initial review. I’ve thought about taking their money but added in a statement in the review that the 5 star was a paid request from the seller, just to screw their practice a bit. But stopped fearing that Amazon might ban my account.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

> This makes me wonder why Amazon, in all their analytical genius, isn't cracking down on this when it's so blatantly obvious. It's probably one of those situations where it's obvious, but not provably so. It's like when you pass a huge pile of random bike parts in a pile next to a homeless encampment: it's 100% a bike chop shop, duh, anyone can see that...but you can't prove that it's a chop shop just based off of what you saw, so police can't take action without substantial further investigation. It's easy enough for us as to consumers to spot fake reviews, but can you prove that they're fake just because they're repetitive or awkwardly written or whatnot?

markwkw 5y ago

I’m not sure any of this is obvious. I have observed my relatives leave reviews just like the one you described as fraudulent. They are older folks who don’t get what the point of reviews is. Sometimes they will leave reviews like: „cheap and arrived in 1 day” which completely misses the point of what product reviews should be. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be so sure that „this is complete junk” review is genuine or perhaps comes from the competitor who wants to hurt the rating of the product. Just like sarcasm is really hard to detect in an online forum, even with human intelligence, and having some conversational context, I think determining reviewers true intent is really really hard.

neop1x 5y ago

Looking at 1* or 2* reviews often says much more than total * count. But of course, sorting is often possible by total * only. Maybe sorting items by least amount of 1* and 2* would help.

bruhhh 5y ago

This is a silly take. A lot of fake reviews actually have good levels of details, except the details are fabricated and/or exaggerated.