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It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up. You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/g
by dankwizard 1y ago
It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up.
You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review.
You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE.
Then an expensive option I was suprised happened - I bought a Dyson clone vacuum cleaner off of Amazon. A few weeks later, the company emailed me and said 'We have a new model. Buy that one, leave a review, we'll refund the purchase'. So I did it. This happened about 10 more times in 2024. My outdoor shed is entirely stick vacuums.
Feel a bit dirty doing it but that's ok I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience.
I think Fakespot would have difficulty with all 3 of these scenarios.
- dawnerd 1y agoSome company paid be 100 bucks to change my review to be positive so they sent the money via PayPal no problem then I changed the review to say they paid me to write a glowing review and of course Amazon ended up removing the review for being harmful to their customers
- rsync 1y agoThank you for sharing that anecdote… just terrible behavior on Amazons part.
- hydrogen7800 1y agoSo they _can_ do something about fake reviews.
- brookst 1y agoSure, just like the highway patrol can do something about speeding. Note that “do something” does not convey “completely eliminate with perfect fairness and accuracy”.
- jonhohle 1y agoNope, only real reviews.
- dawnerd 1y agoThey can but they won’t. My original review was still there (as in was included in my updated review) saying how it was fundamentally flawed and will break. Was some video tripod with this dumb mechanism that would work itself loose by just panning. Never seen anything like it. Plus side looks like the product doesn’t exist on Amazon so guess there’s a victory there somewhere.
- colonial 1y agoAmazon is awful when it comes to striking down accusatory customer reviews. Last year I (like a fool) purchased some chunky thru-hole MOSFETs on Amazon. Lo and behold, despite the datasheets promising a few amps with 3.3V at the gate, I only got a few milliamps. Obviously counterfeit - but no matter how hard I tried or how much indirection I employed, Amazon always took down my review warning others of this verifiable fact.
- throaway920181 1y agoAmazon is not the place I'd go to for electronics parts. Mouser and Digikey are my go-tos.
- aussieguy1234 1y agoAmazon are becoming like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but the quality is touch and go. Now with fake reviews it alot harder to tell what's good quality and what's not.
- nothercastle 1y agoI prefer eBay at least it’s cheaper and the sellers care about reputation
- consp 1y agoWith ebay the delivery time for small items is measured in months or >= 200% of the product cost, and you either have to deal with gsp and the shit delivery they use or with DHL's insanely costly customs clearance. Probably only worth it if you live in the US.
- 4b11b4 1y agowow, full circle.. and just.. what to even do with that
- ManlyBread 1y agoJust buy from anywhere else? It's not like there aren't plenty of other stores on the internet selling whatever garbage you need.
- pergadad 1y agoMuch more, Amazon also loves to remove all reviews that mention that the product is counterfeit. Several times I did receive clear counterfeit goods via Amazon, but there is no way to warn others as these reviews are blocked.
- gblargg 1y agoI do Amazon Vine reviews and we learn quickly all the things we can't say. For health products you can hardly say anything due to the legalities of appearing to make health claims. People also get their reviews removed regularly for claiming something is inauthentic. I kind of get why, because a person probably doesn't have the equipment to really determine that, and Amazon has separate channels for reporting such things. Basically reviews are just for relating your experience of a product. There are ways of communicating lack of authenticity by being more humble, as in noting that it doesn't seem like leather, or when burned it melts like plastic. I've reviewed many e.g. fake memory cards, and had no problem noting that it has less capacity than claimed, and showing some test programs' results that confirm.
- pseudo0 1y agoPart of the issue is that they commingle inventory their warehouses receive from third-party sellers based on ISBN. So if you receive a counterfeit, it might be the fault of the seller you bought it from, or it might be Amazon's fault for mixing in counterfeit goods from some other third-party seller without doing proper quality control. Unsurprisingly they don't want reviews that draw attention to this longstanding problem.
- ImHereToVote 1y agoThis is the real issue.
- calibas 1y agoIf Amazon put out the effort to actually combat all the shady things their marketplace helps facilitate, they wouldn't make nearly as much money. Much cheaper to just buy out the governments (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/summary?id=D000023883 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/summary?id=D0000...) that could make legal trouble for you.
- whoopdedo 1y agoThe obvious implication being who Amazon considers to be their "customer". Hint, it's not you.
- hopelite 1y agoThat must explain why I’ve seen bad reviews that have 5 stars. I guess the review itself really does not matter as much as long as the stupid starts are there. It also reminds me of one of the biggest apartment complex management companies, Graystar using a similar method by bribing applicants with $500 off the security deposit for a 5 star review on Google maps.
- varispeed 1y agoSome company said they know where I live and they will pay me a visit if I don't remove the bad review (product was dangerous). That was on Amazon.
- cyberlurker 1y agoI bought a light fixture that had a design flaw that turned it into a fire hazard. I contacted Amazon and provided proof, hoping they’d take the product down and prevent harm to others. They did initially but within a few days the same exact item with matching SKU and photos was listed. I have an entire category of items I will never buy from Amazon. They don’t look out for customers ahead of time, only on the backend when you complain.
- jermaustin1 1y agoMy wife has bought a handful of flat-pack cabinets and shelves over the last year, and it has been an experience in frustration, and furniture half assembled for weeks while we wait on a weirdly sized bolt to arrive from china because it was missing, or in one case, an entire door, or in another case a handle had been tapped to the wrong size (too big) for the bolts. The crazy thing is these $100-250 products ship with instructions on getting 100% of your purchase back if you leave a 5-star review and email them proof you did.
- fencepost 1y agoAt least IKEA has a specific way to handle that, including IIRC a dedicated area at their stores. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/spare-parts/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/spare-parts/
- neilv 1y agoI had one do something that presented a different angle for a complaint... Some Amazon seller included some US postage stamps as a gift, along with a glossy full-color printed offer to pay me cash or more stamps for a positive review. So I took the stamps to a post office, some kind of manager looked at them, said they'd almost guarantee that the stamps were counterfeit. So I left the stamps and the glossy offer (with the sellers's contact info) with them, to refer higher up to some kind of investigation. I'd guess probably it will only lead back to some overseas seller who is untraceable, and who just pops back up under 10 new different names. But maybe someday Amazon will be under some kind of KYC-like obligation, to only permit sellers and other supply chain that can be held accountable for illegal/counterfeit/dangerous/stolen/etc. products.
- dfxm12 1y agoCan I have a vacuum?
- Retr0id 1y agoI can understand going for the "free upgrade" the first time around, but why continue racking up more vacuum cleaners after that? Do you plan to sell them later?
- michaelbuckbee 1y agoStocking up to give them out at Christmas?
- Mtinie 1y agoIt’s the rational option if someone is giving you something for less than it costs you and the moral implications of the action is minimal (at best).
- shawnz 1y agoSure, but consider the costs of consuming your space with junk. Now you have less room for things you care about, there's a maintenance burden, and there's a mental burden as well
- ozgrakkurt 1y agoNot having things and regretting passing up on something is much more real for people that had problem with money before. Having too many things is just abstract unless you had that problem maybe
- shawnz 1y agoIs 12 vacuums abstract?
- ozgrakkurt 1y agoIt is abstract in the sense that you might not see why that would be a problem
- olyjohn 1y ago
- chrischen 1y agoWhen you have extremely generous return policies then reviews matter less. They are still relevant if your'e trying to optimize for buy once for life, but in that case you should just be going for established brands instead, where their reputation is their review.
- solardev 1y agoBrands don't mean much when they're constantly bought up by other companies and then used to whitewash poorer quality products.
- account42 1y agoYes, trademarks don't make sense when the entity behind them can change completely. The whole point was to protect consumers.
- dns_snek 1y agoThey don't build them like they used to, in my experience most consumer electronics/appliance brands that are still considered high quality are just coasting on the reputation they built up in the 70s, 80s and 90s. In many categories it's getting almost impossible to find products that aren't just generic whitelabeled junk resold by "established brands".
- AlexandrB 1y agoVery true. Two other things are happening. 1. The whitelabeled junk is getting very good. In some categories, the brand name stuff has degraded to the point that the aliexpress version is better and cheaper. 2. The IoTification of everything means that a lot of traditionally long lasting items are as durable as their WiFi board - i.e. not very. This also plays into number (1) - where cheap, Chinese, items either lack IoT features or provide them only locally instead of requiring an online account.
- 4b11b4 1y agoWait what. You have 12 vacs? anyway, I can imagine some small territory in time where fakespot can accurately deal with the flood. But then..
- dankwizard 1y agoYes. I had to leave a video review component (No face). I wonder if any shoppers ever wondered why the same monotone man was constantly buying and reviewing vaccuum cleaners if he's always leaving positive reviews?!
- stronglikedan 1y agoLeave honest reviews (not saying you're not) and don't feel dirty. You'd actually be helping.
- dankwizard 1y agoThey were mostly honest - I just always included something like 'an upgrade from my last one' but these clones are all so similar and all effective. Can do the whole house on a single charge, strong enough, has the low projecting light to highlight dust, high number of attachments. Does the job. I'm no vacuum connoisseur (Which you think I'd be after all of these) but none were scammy products.
- fransje26 1y agoAh, I was looking at a Dyson a while back, and wondering if they were worth buying. Went for something else in the end, as I thought they were a bit pricey for what they offered, and didn't dare go for a clone. Would you happen to have a link to the model you got (or one of the similar models), to get an idea of which clone could be worth considering next time?
- p3rls 1y agoOooh, I had the same deal but with cameras... Maybe they should pivot into a site showing deals w/ scammers.
- throwaway843 1y agoDyson always struck me as scammy. All the way back to the 19990s. More proof.
- defrost 1y agoBecause fake Dyson clones exist?
- veunes 1y agoIt's one thing to detect fake language patterns; it's another when the review is technically real but incentivized into dishonesty
- theshackleford 1y ago> You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. It doesnt even need to be that complicated. I worked reputation management for an ecommerce place for a while a few years back. I literally asked very politely against a random sampling of all orders if they would consider leaving us a review, and significantly more actually did than I would ever have expected, with no reward or value in it for them doing so. I got 100s of reviews this way in the span of a month or two. Enough on a geographically important centralised reviews location to raise the average rating signficantly.
- gwd 1y ago> I literally asked very politely against a random sampling of all orders if they would consider leaving us a review Uh, this is how it's supposed to work? Make a good product, get good reviews for free. "Make a crappy / mediocre product and pay people to write good reviews" is completely different.
- theshackleford 1y agoGood product? Oh lord no. I just got to people before they could figure out it was bad. Note: I did not last long in this business before hitting the eject button.
- gwd 1y agoI mean, that's a different issue. When you asked them, they were happy, they gave good feedback. I wonder if reviews should have a field for "how long have I owned it" (or even "about when did I buy it", to track changes in manufacturing quality). Places like TrustPilot would probably benefit from coming back to people and saying, "Here's a review you wrote a year ago; anything you want to add?" Manufacturers could even submit an "expected lifespan", and reviews could be marked where they were made within that lifespan. A bad review after 7 years of owning a 5-year product shouldn't count as much as a bad review 7 years after owning a 10-year product.
- sokoloff 1y agoI always wondered why Amazon would show me ads for vacuums after I just bought a vacuum from them. This sheds (no pun intended) some light on why they think there are avid vacuum collectors.
- bsdz 1y agoI'm struggling to believe you have a dozen new vacuum cleaners in your shed. It's quite an extraordinary claim. Are you willing to share some evidence?
- dankwizard 1y agoSure. It's cold, rainy, and midnight but here's what came up in my email when searching "vacuum". It's not all, and you can see some I didn't reply to but - https://imgur.com/a/F0u9xVM https://imgur.com/a/F0u9xVM
- dankwizard 1y agoExample of the contents of an offer: https://imgur.com/a/q634ty4 https://imgur.com/a/q634ty4
- bsdz 1y agoI was looking forward to seeing 12 neatly stacked & boxed vacuum cleaners in a dimly lit corner of your shed ;-) That said, thanks for sharing the emails/headers. It's curious that Amazon hasn't flagged you for purchasing & reviewing multiple similar items in such a short span of time. I would imagine it would be quite easy to spot someone who's bought and reviewed 12 vacuum cleaners in a 2 or 3 year window.
- rightbyte 1y agoWhy did they choose you for vacuum pimp? You got high "consumer rating" or something?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- latexr 1y ago> Feel a bit dirty doing it but that's ok I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience. Thank you for the laugh. But why keep them all? Why not give some away to friends or neighbours, or even sell them?
- timcobb 1y ago> I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience. Why would you want 12 vacuums? What are you going to do with them? Isn't that a senseless amount of redundant objects to horde? Don't you want room for other things in your shed?
- Drunkfoowl 1y ago[dead]
- AlienRobot 1y ago>Don't you want room for other things in your shed? To be fair, it's vacuum so it doesn't occupy space.
- immibis 1y agoBut space is entirely occupied by vacuum.
- alpineman 1y agoHorrible for the environment
- thoroughburro 1y ago> Feel a bit dirty doing it but that's ok I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience. All it takes to lose civilisation is for everyone to think as selfishly as this.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- spicyusername 1y agoNah, civilizations been running on this attitude since it's inception, and here we are. There's never been a magical golden age where people were any different than they are.
- yifanl 1y agoThe difference is mostly that people with this mindset were less empowered to enact upon it. But we've democratized fraud now.
- bluedino 1y ago> You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. I had a tool manufacturer read a bad review on one of the big box home improvement stores in the US, they contacted me within a day (the store must have gave them my email address?) and offered to send me my choice of replacement tool, for free, in exchange for taking my review down. Helps me learn which companies not to trust.
- kouru225 1y ago… Wanna send me a vacuum?
- Fatmaah 1y ago[flagged]