11 ms·

This is among greatest abuse Amazon allows in its product listings. Any change to a page should reset the reviews unless otherwise vetted by an Amazon employee.

This is among greatest abuse Amazon allows in its product listings. Any change to a page should reset the reviews unless otherwise vetted by an Amazon employee. Changes shouldn't be material in nature, only corrections. A new revision/version of a product IS NOT THE SAME PRODUCT. Different product == different listing.

duskwuff 4y ago
That might be going a little far. Adding an extra-large size to a listing for a T-shirt (for example) shouldn't invalidate all of the existing reviews. A more targeted approach might be to disallow sellers from adding variants to products which are not currently for sale. I suspect that would cut down on most of the abuse.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  fair point, that said it would take amazon a blip of resources to have some NLP diff to delay validation of title changes that are too strange
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Adding an extra-large size to a listing for a T-shirt (for example) shouldn’t invalidate all of the existing reviews. If you want to deal with this problem rather than channel more of it into a place some of it already goes, it should, because completely different products are added as “sizes” or “colors” of existing products already. If you add a review fraud control and leave this an escape hatch, well, the results are predictable.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Adding something should trigger a manual review by an amazon employee.
- Oxidation 4y ago
  An instant ban for vendors detected and confirmed to be doing this. Amazon has plenty of ability to deal with this, from a ML detection system to human validation. They just don't want to.
  - bragr 4y ago
    They do, but they just pop up as a different seller under a different name with a different business address and the cycle goes on. That's why all the sellers have weird names and make no effort to drive any sort of brand awareness or loyalty.
    - Oxidation 4y ago
      All that tech, platforms, manpower and literally all the backend data about it (access patterns, descriptions, sales, back accounts, user agents, IPs, everything) and they can't detect something that's blindingly obvious to anyone paying attention?
      - bragr 4y ago
        Even more than that, they require government IDs and other documentation to set up seller accounts, but at the end of the day it's easy to come up with new straw front people for your scam, with clean papers, addresses, and bank accounts.
        winkeltripel 4y ago
        Noone at Amazon is looking at the id. If they did it would add 'friction'
    - adra 4y ago
      So mark a vendor as "new vendor", add mandatory ghost shopping to all product skews (postage returns paid by vendor), funds only clear after product arrives + n days for new accouts, etc to build in security that products sold are legitimate. All you need to do is make cost of standing up a scam more expensive than the real thing.
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      The weird brand names are primarily to make obtaining trademarks easier (though I'm sure easily changing business names after getting busted for fraud is a nice bonus): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...
nickthegreek 4y ago
That would be an easy way to get rid of negative reviews.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  There already is an easy way to get rid of negative reviews. Just create a new product. That’s what they do.

duskwuff 4y ago

That might be going a little far. Adding an extra-large size to a listing for a T-shirt (for example) shouldn't invalidate all of the existing reviews. A more targeted approach might be to disallow sellers from adding variants to products which are not currently for sale. I suspect that would cut down on most of the abuse.

agumonkey 4y ago
fair point, that said it would take amazon a blip of resources to have some NLP diff to delay validation of title changes that are too strange
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Adding an extra-large size to a listing for a T-shirt (for example) shouldn’t invalidate all of the existing reviews. If you want to deal with this problem rather than channel more of it into a place some of it already goes, it should, because completely different products are added as “sizes” or “colors” of existing products already. If you add a review fraud control and leave this an escape hatch, well, the results are predictable.
Gigachad 4y ago
Adding something should trigger a manual review by an amazon employee.
Oxidation 4y ago
An instant ban for vendors detected and confirmed to be doing this. Amazon has plenty of ability to deal with this, from a ML detection system to human validation. They just don't want to.
- bragr 4y ago
  They do, but they just pop up as a different seller under a different name with a different business address and the cycle goes on. That's why all the sellers have weird names and make no effort to drive any sort of brand awareness or loyalty.
  - Oxidation 4y ago
    All that tech, platforms, manpower and literally all the backend data about it (access patterns, descriptions, sales, back accounts, user agents, IPs, everything) and they can't detect something that's blindingly obvious to anyone paying attention?
    - bragr 4y ago
      Even more than that, they require government IDs and other documentation to set up seller accounts, but at the end of the day it's easy to come up with new straw front people for your scam, with clean papers, addresses, and bank accounts.
      - winkeltripel 4y ago
        Noone at Amazon is looking at the id. If they did it would add 'friction'
  - adra 4y ago
    So mark a vendor as "new vendor", add mandatory ghost shopping to all product skews (postage returns paid by vendor), funds only clear after product arrives + n days for new accouts, etc to build in security that products sold are legitimate. All you need to do is make cost of standing up a scam more expensive than the real thing.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    The weird brand names are primarily to make obtaining trademarks easier (though I'm sure easily changing business names after getting busted for fraud is a nice bonus): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/style/amazon-trademark-co...

nickthegreek 4y ago

That would be an easy way to get rid of negative reviews.

actionfromafar 4y ago
There already is an easy way to get rid of negative reviews. Just create a new product. That’s what they do.