3 ms·

And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!

joenot443 3y ago
But you forgot the best part, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it! What a world! :)
kylebenzle 3y ago
Amazon does seem to be going through a rapid Alibabaificaiton. For random big purchases I check Alibaba prices, most recently a solar powered water pump, and they'd have it cheaper and more variety, but someone has got their pipeline of: Alibaba scraping --> Amazon product hacking --> Drop shipping, figured out.
crazygringo 3y ago
I know it's funny and a whole trope to say that, but in my experience they're not. On the whole, they do their job just as well as anything else. After all, most of your name-brand stuff is coming from the same types of factories in China anyways. And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. Just like you should with any product you're considering purchasing. Now granted I'm not buying hoverboards or anything that actually has serious potential for injury/fire. But for everyday things, it generally seems quite fine. And it's certainly not like name-brand stuff is magically free of defects or quality issues.
- yunwal 3y ago
  > And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. This has to be a joke, right? It’s nearly impossible to filter by legitimate unpaid-human reviews on Amazon.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Of course it's not a joke. It's easy to filter for only negative reviews, and obviously none of the negative reviews are paid. If it's a popular product and all the negative reviews are dumb complaints about shipping speed, the product is probably fine. If all the negative reviews are about how the handle snaps off by the third time you use it, then don't buy it. It doesn't matter how many paid 5-star reviews there are.
    - BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
      > If it's a popular product and I find it quite weird to acknowledge in one breath that positive reviews have been paid for while also assuming in the next that a product with many reviews is popular and hasn't just acquired the mass of its reviews fraudulently. What steps are involved in determining legitimate popularity?
      - crazygringo 3y ago
        I don't get your point. Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month". On top of category rankings like "#3 in iPad stands". It's easy to tell if it's popular or not, if it's something people are actively buying. If a product is bad, some of those people will be leaving negative reviews, regardless of the number of paid reviews. Does that make sense? Zero weird about it.
        BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
        > Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month" Yeah, about that. People buy fake purchases for verified reviews too. The scam is a lot bigger than just spinning up dummy accounts. They make fake purchases, sometimes even ship empty boxes, and then switch the listing after a month when purchases are accumulated. You have no way to know that those "400 people" were actually 400 real human customers and not 400 fraudulent sales or how many months a particular listing has been consistent for without being switched. There are tons of websites, forums, and facebook groups all for doing this. I originally had linked some, but I don't actually want to drive traffic to them, so you can google or dig on facebook for "verified amazon reviews". And then when a person does leave a negative review, the seller contacts them and says "We'll refund you your money and send you a new one free if you take the review down." And they almost always either take their negative review down in exchange for the refund and free shitty item, because free is free, or update their review to complain about getting the offer, in which case Amazon itself takes the review down for being off topic.
- marklubi 3y ago
  Personally, I like to look at the 2-star reviews to see if something is junk or not. 1-star is usually a reactionary rating with little/no thought. I don't trust most 1-star reviews, they're effectively saying "it couldn't possibly be worse" even though that's probably not the case. It's just an emotional review.

joenot443 3y ago

But you forgot the best part, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it! What a world! :)

kylebenzle 3y ago

Amazon does seem to be going through a rapid Alibabaificaiton. For random big purchases I check Alibaba prices, most recently a solar powered water pump, and they'd have it cheaper and more variety, but someone has got their pipeline of: Alibaba scraping --> Amazon product hacking --> Drop shipping, figured out.

crazygringo 3y ago

I know it's funny and a whole trope to say that, but in my experience they're not. On the whole, they do their job just as well as anything else. After all, most of your name-brand stuff is coming from the same types of factories in China anyways. And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. Just like you should with any product you're considering purchasing. Now granted I'm not buying hoverboards or anything that actually has serious potential for injury/fire. But for everyday things, it generally seems quite fine. And it's certainly not like name-brand stuff is magically free of defects or quality issues.

yunwal 3y ago
> And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. This has to be a joke, right? It’s nearly impossible to filter by legitimate unpaid-human reviews on Amazon.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Of course it's not a joke. It's easy to filter for only negative reviews, and obviously none of the negative reviews are paid. If it's a popular product and all the negative reviews are dumb complaints about shipping speed, the product is probably fine. If all the negative reviews are about how the handle snaps off by the third time you use it, then don't buy it. It doesn't matter how many paid 5-star reviews there are.
  - BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
    > If it's a popular product and I find it quite weird to acknowledge in one breath that positive reviews have been paid for while also assuming in the next that a product with many reviews is popular and hasn't just acquired the mass of its reviews fraudulently. What steps are involved in determining legitimate popularity?
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      I don't get your point. Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month". On top of category rankings like "#3 in iPad stands". It's easy to tell if it's popular or not, if it's something people are actively buying. If a product is bad, some of those people will be leaving negative reviews, regardless of the number of paid reviews. Does that make sense? Zero weird about it.
      - BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
        > Amazon literally tells you things like "400+ people bought this in the past month" Yeah, about that. People buy fake purchases for verified reviews too. The scam is a lot bigger than just spinning up dummy accounts. They make fake purchases, sometimes even ship empty boxes, and then switch the listing after a month when purchases are accumulated. You have no way to know that those "400 people" were actually 400 real human customers and not 400 fraudulent sales or how many months a particular listing has been consistent for without being switched. There are tons of websites, forums, and facebook groups all for doing this. I originally had linked some, but I don't actually want to drive traffic to them, so you can google or dig on facebook for "verified amazon reviews". And then when a person does leave a negative review, the seller contacts them and says "We'll refund you your money and send you a new one free if you take the review down." And they almost always either take their negative review down in exchange for the refund and free shitty item, because free is free, or update their review to complain about getting the offer, in which case Amazon itself takes the review down for being off topic.
marklubi 3y ago
Personally, I like to look at the 2-star reviews to see if something is junk or not. 1-star is usually a reactionary rating with little/no thought. I don't trust most 1-star reviews, they're effectively saying "it couldn't possibly be worse" even though that's probably not the case. It's just an emotional review.