5 ms·

A seller offered me a gift certificate if I left a 5 star review. Basically a little note in the box saying if I left a 5 star review, took a screenshot & sent

by wdr1 4y ago

A seller offered me a gift certificate if I left a 5 star review. Basically a little note in the box saying if I left a 5 star review, took a screenshot & sent it to their email address, they'd send me the gift certificate. It was not a 5 star product. It was a 2 star product, at best. I tried to mention the fact they were paying for reviews in my review (to explain the other 5 stars). Amazon rejected my review. It's against Amazon policy to let others know that sellers are buying reviews.

taurath 4y ago
This has happened to me as well. Amazon's "customer focus" is a misnomer, because the resellers are more important customers than the buyers are.
- wmeredith 4y ago
  I feel like I stopped being the customer and started being the product (at least partially) once Amazon started advertising shit to me when I searched for products. No, I’m not interested in $10 Ali Baba bullshit when I search for a $300 Casio G-Shock. I used to spend about 60% of my disposable income at Amazon. That’s dwindled to maybe 1-2% over the last 5 years. I do most of my shopping at Costco or Target now. Amazon is a last resort only. Their customer experience sucks. It reminds me of what happened to eBay and Etsy. I’ll be cancelling my 10-year Prime membership at the end of this year, because I don’t use it anymore.
j1elo 4y ago
I've seen the same, but not with a gift certificate. They would just send me another unit of the same product, for free. So basically get two for the price of one plus a good review. The stuff was actually good, at least. So now I have two of them.
guitarbill 4y ago
I bought some replacement Macbook keycaps. In the pictures, they are shown in a tray. They come tossed in a plastic bag, and so have almost no chance of surviving shipping. So naturally: "After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. It appears you reviewed shipping or packaging experience." I finally got a review through by pointing out the misrepresentation that they did not come in a tray, and not mentioning breakage. So you have to read between the lines of that review. I bought the next set of Aliexpress, and those were fine. What a garbage rule. On the one hand, I understand people are quick to complain... but there's no nuance, and it's definitely become stacked in sellers favour - at least the unscrupulous ones.
- cgriswald 4y ago
  I wonder if you could have done more damage by leaving your review vague and just saying what you received was "not as pictured."
lr1970 4y ago
> Amazon rejected my review. It's against Amazon policy to let others know that sellers are buying reviews. In a zero-trust marketplace it is impossible to ascertain the truthfulness of such statements. Let say, you a seller on Amazon and your competitor posts a review for your product accusing you of soliciting 5-star reviews from your customers. Now you have an egg on your face. How will you prove that this accusation is false? There were actual cases when sellers were buying blatantly fake 5-star reviews for their competitors to trigger Amazon ban of those competitors. This is a war zone out there.
- johnfn 4y ago
  Huh? I could equally as well falsely accuse your product of being low quality, and Amazon would be totally fine with that. I’m not seeing a difference.
  - BHSPitMonkey 4y ago
    The real reason (or the least cynical one) is that product reviews should not be used to review the seller/fulfiller/courier/etc. (because a single product may be offered through many combinations of those, and you're supposed to be reviewing the product itself). There's a separate place in Amazon's UI for rating/reviewing sellers, though it's not as easy or obvious to find (at least on mobile).
- Teever 4y ago
  Amazon can't read the messages that sellers send to buyers?
  - cgriswald 4y ago
    The message is printed on the receipt or is a separate 'coupon' included in the box.
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      Reviewers can upload pictures.
roflyear 4y ago
Happens often. If you leave a 1 star review often sellers will offer to give you your money back to remove it.
OneLeggedCat 4y ago
This has happened to me MULTIPLE times. Amazon simply will not allow any review that might, in some tangential way, make Amazon itself look bad. Even though you were only complaining about a dishonest seller.
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
These are only the most obvious ones. There are entire networks of Mainland Chinese living abroad that are sent junk products to review them as verified reviewers. Often they use overseas students. How it works is they legitimately order the the product, give it 5 stars and then get reimbursed through Wechat Pay or Zhifubao. Sometimes they get paid on top of it too. The entire system is designed so that those spending considerable amounts of time and money on cheating come out on top. Because few customers are going to scroll till page 15 and spent hours doing detective work to filter out the products with fake reviews (and even if they do it's become almost impossible). The most aggressive manipulators win and get all the business. Amazon must be aware of that but they don't do anything, in fact it's gotten worse in recent years.

by wdr1 4y ago

taurath 4y ago

This has happened to me as well. Amazon's "customer focus" is a misnomer, because the resellers are more important customers than the buyers are.

wmeredith 4y ago
I feel like I stopped being the customer and started being the product (at least partially) once Amazon started advertising shit to me when I searched for products. No, I’m not interested in $10 Ali Baba bullshit when I search for a $300 Casio G-Shock. I used to spend about 60% of my disposable income at Amazon. That’s dwindled to maybe 1-2% over the last 5 years. I do most of my shopping at Costco or Target now. Amazon is a last resort only. Their customer experience sucks. It reminds me of what happened to eBay and Etsy. I’ll be cancelling my 10-year Prime membership at the end of this year, because I don’t use it anymore.

j1elo 4y ago

I've seen the same, but not with a gift certificate. They would just send me another unit of the same product, for free. So basically get two for the price of one plus a good review. The stuff was actually good, at least. So now I have two of them.

guitarbill 4y ago

I bought some replacement Macbook keycaps. In the pictures, they are shown in a tray. They come tossed in a plastic bag, and so have almost no chance of surviving shipping. So naturally: "After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. It appears you reviewed shipping or packaging experience." I finally got a review through by pointing out the misrepresentation that they did not come in a tray, and not mentioning breakage. So you have to read between the lines of that review. I bought the next set of Aliexpress, and those were fine. What a garbage rule. On the one hand, I understand people are quick to complain... but there's no nuance, and it's definitely become stacked in sellers favour - at least the unscrupulous ones.

cgriswald 4y ago
I wonder if you could have done more damage by leaving your review vague and just saying what you received was "not as pictured."

lr1970 4y ago

> Amazon rejected my review. It's against Amazon policy to let others know that sellers are buying reviews. In a zero-trust marketplace it is impossible to ascertain the truthfulness of such statements. Let say, you a seller on Amazon and your competitor posts a review for your product accusing you of soliciting 5-star reviews from your customers. Now you have an egg on your face. How will you prove that this accusation is false? There were actual cases when sellers were buying blatantly fake 5-star reviews for their competitors to trigger Amazon ban of those competitors. This is a war zone out there.

johnfn 4y ago
Huh? I could equally as well falsely accuse your product of being low quality, and Amazon would be totally fine with that. I’m not seeing a difference.
- BHSPitMonkey 4y ago
  The real reason (or the least cynical one) is that product reviews should not be used to review the seller/fulfiller/courier/etc. (because a single product may be offered through many combinations of those, and you're supposed to be reviewing the product itself). There's a separate place in Amazon's UI for rating/reviewing sellers, though it's not as easy or obvious to find (at least on mobile).
Teever 4y ago
Amazon can't read the messages that sellers send to buyers?
- cgriswald 4y ago
  The message is printed on the receipt or is a separate 'coupon' included in the box.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Reviewers can upload pictures.

roflyear 4y ago

Happens often. If you leave a 1 star review often sellers will offer to give you your money back to remove it.

OneLeggedCat 4y ago

This has happened to me MULTIPLE times. Amazon simply will not allow any review that might, in some tangential way, make Amazon itself look bad. Even though you were only complaining about a dishonest seller.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

These are only the most obvious ones. There are entire networks of Mainland Chinese living abroad that are sent junk products to review them as verified reviewers. Often they use overseas students. How it works is they legitimately order the the product, give it 5 stars and then get reimbursed through Wechat Pay or Zhifubao. Sometimes they get paid on top of it too. The entire system is designed so that those spending considerable amounts of time and money on cheating come out on top. Because few customers are going to scroll till page 15 and spent hours doing detective work to filter out the products with fake reviews (and even if they do it's become almost impossible). The most aggressive manipulators win and get all the business. Amazon must be aware of that but they don't do anything, in fact it's gotten worse in recent years.