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Name an online marketplace that had good quality honest factual reviews before or after Amazon. At their scale it is absolutely impossible to moderate and keep

Name an online marketplace that had good quality honest factual reviews before or after Amazon. At their scale it is absolutely impossible to moderate and keep the problems away. The stacks are against them. Each seller has the incentive to try to game their own product reviews, while AMazon has to attempt to stay on top of the whole marketplace.

smachiz 5y ago
Costco reviews generally seem more legit. Anything I can buy at Costco instead of Amazon, I do.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Costco has a minuscule inventory smaller than most corner stores. If Costco is selling a blender, it's probably only selling a single one. The fact that it's in Costco's inventory in the first place is the review.
  - smachiz 5y ago
    Costco.com’s inventory is larger than what is in store. But yes, agree. Now we call it “curated”, but with Costco’s return policy, there’s an actual risk to them for stocking outright garbage, which is a huge value, even if I never return things.
libertine 5y ago
Then maybe regulators should put a stop to it, since we're figuring out that after a certain scale customer support, fraud, counterfeiting, abuse, etc just goes to shit. No matter how much they paddle that AI will take over that part of the business, well it won't for a long, long time and we're not the ones that should be training them. Maybe the concept "too big" should be brought to the table, to at least make them pay for the bad service.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  OK, I generally agree with you about subjects like this. But let's take this one step further. What will the actual outcome of this be if we have deemed that Amazon is too big to be consumer-friendly. 1) Amazon drastically ramps up the burden of proof of real actual reviews, and rather than erring on the side of posting it ends up false-positively identifying customer reviews. HackerNews headline next week: "Amazon is censoring real customer reviews for products! Company no longer customer obsessed!" 2) Amazon dramatically cracks down on sellers, reducing overall inventory, and sucking up some real genuine sellers in the process. CNN headline: "Amazon destroying small family business sellers - hundreds reporting going out of business as they're being driven out of the market". Hackernews headline: "Amazon inventory down x%. I no longer go to Amazon anymore to find what I need because it's not available any more". I could keep going. My point is I don't think it's in any consumer's interest for Amazon to decrease their inventory, or crack down on reviews. And any increase in quality or human review of the products or reviews will only raise prices, which again, people don't want. Remember - Amazon's stock price isn't based on their profits. Their profit margins are razor thin because they actually generally do pass on most cost savings down to customers. It's incredible how people take completely for granted that there is a website with 1) Infinite selection, 2) Low prices (yes yes no longer the lowest but still fairly low), 3) Free shipping, in many cases same day or next day or 2-day. And on top of that there is a completely hassle-free non-questions-asked return policy. The cost of all this is this marketplace is incredibly attractive to unscrupulous sellers who will abuse it to list counterfit goods and spam fake reviews. And no matter how hard Amazon works on these the sellers can be just one step ahead. Government regulation can't help here, it can only kill Amazon and make it ultimately less beneficial for consumers.

smachiz 5y ago

Costco reviews generally seem more legit. Anything I can buy at Costco instead of Amazon, I do.

deanCommie 5y ago
Costco has a minuscule inventory smaller than most corner stores. If Costco is selling a blender, it's probably only selling a single one. The fact that it's in Costco's inventory in the first place is the review.
- smachiz 5y ago
  Costco.com’s inventory is larger than what is in store. But yes, agree. Now we call it “curated”, but with Costco’s return policy, there’s an actual risk to them for stocking outright garbage, which is a huge value, even if I never return things.

libertine 5y ago

Then maybe regulators should put a stop to it, since we're figuring out that after a certain scale customer support, fraud, counterfeiting, abuse, etc just goes to shit. No matter how much they paddle that AI will take over that part of the business, well it won't for a long, long time and we're not the ones that should be training them. Maybe the concept "too big" should be brought to the table, to at least make them pay for the bad service.

deanCommie 5y ago
OK, I generally agree with you about subjects like this. But let's take this one step further. What will the actual outcome of this be if we have deemed that Amazon is too big to be consumer-friendly. 1) Amazon drastically ramps up the burden of proof of real actual reviews, and rather than erring on the side of posting it ends up false-positively identifying customer reviews. HackerNews headline next week: "Amazon is censoring real customer reviews for products! Company no longer customer obsessed!" 2) Amazon dramatically cracks down on sellers, reducing overall inventory, and sucking up some real genuine sellers in the process. CNN headline: "Amazon destroying small family business sellers - hundreds reporting going out of business as they're being driven out of the market". Hackernews headline: "Amazon inventory down x%. I no longer go to Amazon anymore to find what I need because it's not available any more". I could keep going. My point is I don't think it's in any consumer's interest for Amazon to decrease their inventory, or crack down on reviews. And any increase in quality or human review of the products or reviews will only raise prices, which again, people don't want. Remember - Amazon's stock price isn't based on their profits. Their profit margins are razor thin because they actually generally do pass on most cost savings down to customers. It's incredible how people take completely for granted that there is a website with 1) Infinite selection, 2) Low prices (yes yes no longer the lowest but still fairly low), 3) Free shipping, in many cases same day or next day or 2-day. And on top of that there is a completely hassle-free non-questions-asked return policy. The cost of all this is this marketplace is incredibly attractive to unscrupulous sellers who will abuse it to list counterfit goods and spam fake reviews. And no matter how hard Amazon works on these the sellers can be just one step ahead. Government regulation can't help here, it can only kill Amazon and make it ultimately less beneficial for consumers.