Amazon Makes Good On Its Promise To Delete 'Incentivized' Reviews (techcrunch.com) 106
Amazon is making good on its promise to ban "incentivized" reviews from its website, according to a new analysis of over 32,000 products and around 65 million reviews. From a TechCrunch article: The ban was meant to address the growing problem of less trustworthy reviews that had been plaguing the retailer's site, leading to products with higher ratings than they would otherwise deserve. Incentivized reviews are those where the vendor offers free or discounted products to reviewers, in exchange for recipients writing their "honest opinion" of the item in an Amazon review. However, data has shown that these reviewers tend to write more positive reviews overall, with products earning an average of 4.74 stars out of five, compared with an average rating of 4.36 for non-incentivized reviews. Over time, these reviews proliferated on Amazon, and damaged consumers' trust in the review system as a whole. And that can impact consumers' purchase decisions.
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Re:Incentivized vs fake? (Score:5, Informative)
They're easily spotted.
The easily spotted ones are easily spotted. Many others are not. My daughter makes money on Fiverr writing fake reviews. She is an A-student, and writes impeccable English. Many of her reviews are flagged as "most useful" by Amazon customers, and she uses that fact to promote her services. There is no indication that her reviews are fake or incentivized, so I don't see how Amazon is going to remove them.
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They ought to provide a way to filter reviews so that one can choose to see only reviews/ratings from verified purchasers.
They do - if you click See All Reviews, you can choose to filter by Verified Purchase Only.
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Lately, all I see are reviews with verified purchases. However, the system may still be a work in process, as a couple of times, I've seen 100% duplicate reviews, although I'm uncertain if they were the exact same review posted twice by the user, or just displayed twice by the system.
Re: Incentivized vs fake? (Score:1)
See a spammy review? Click the reviewer. Then take a few minutes to flag as unhelpful ALL the spammy reviews.
I do that when I'm waiting for steam games to update, or when UPS should be here "soon" if I'm waiting on a package.
Nuke them. It's the only way to be sure.
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They know when they've actually processed a sale of the item to the person writing the review, i.e. a "verified purchaser", and what that person paid. They ought to provide a way to filter reviews so that one can choose to see only reviews/ratings from verified purchasers.
From what I've heard, fake reviewers often ARE verified purchasers. They work out deals to buy the products, then return them to the seller for a refund.
Re:Incentivized vs fake? (Score:5, Informative)
From what I've heard, fake reviewers often ARE verified purchasers.
Correct.
They work out deals to buy the products, then return them to the seller for a refund.
It is even easier than that. When my daughter writes fake reviews, she pre-sells the product on eBay or Craigslist, then buys it from Amazon and has Amazon drop ship it directly to the secondary customer. Then the seller reimburses her for the price difference. So the review is from a "verified" customer, when if fact she has never actually seen the product. Since she is a Prime member, the shipping is free, and that cost advantage means she sometimes directly makes money on the eBay transaction.
Re:Incentivized vs fake? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anything about her doing this bother you, from a moral or ethical standpoint?
On one hand it seems harmless, but if you, yes you were to spend your hard-earned money on a crappy product and then found that you'd based your buying decision on secretly-incentivized reviews, would you not feel that you'd been mislead, lied to, or deceived?
If my son were to do this, I couldn't help but feel that he wasn't the person I'd hoped he be.
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Obviously "ShanghaiBill" doesn't care that his children are money grubbing whores.
When you criticize someone for behavior that has nothing to do with their gender, you should avoid loaded terms like "whore" and "bitch". How would you describe her behavior if she was male?
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I'd still say "whore" - anyone, male or female, who sells out is a whore in my book. Some of the biggest whores I've had the displeasure of knowing are men.
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I'd describe his or her behavior as "unethical", as s/he's defrauding people for money, and directly helping equally unethical businesses sell their wares on false pretenses. On the other hand, it could be worse. She could be a lawyer, I suppose.
In all candor, I hope she quits before she's caught and sued by Amazon. I don't wish that on anyone, but as a heavy user of Amazon that relies on product reviews to help me make good purchases, I wouldn't shed tears were that to happen. After all, as you said els
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When you criticize someone for behavior that has nothing to do with their gender, you should avoid loaded terms like "whore" and "bitch". How would you describe her behavior if she was male?
I asked you the original question, and I didn't call your daughter any names. So if you're willing to respond, I'd appreciate an answer to the question, which was:
Does anything about her doing this bother you, from a moral or ethical standpoint?
On one hand it seems harmless, but if you, yes you were to spend your hard-earned money on a crappy product and then found that you'd based your buying decision on secretly-incentivized reviews, would you not feel that you'd been mislead, lied to, or deceived?
If my s
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The term "karma-whore" has oft been used on slashdot, regardless of gender. The basic premise being that somebody is willing to commit an immoral* act for personal profit
*Morality, of course, being in the eyes of the beholder. I'd have more respect for somebody who sells "physical services" to a willing customer than somebody who engages in deceptive services to boost faulty products.
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I'd still say "whore" - anyone, male or female, who sells out is a whore in my book.
Why not just say "sell-out"? Even if you want to be sexist and offensive, wouldn't "prostitute" be a better word choice? After all, "whore" just implies promiscuity, and not necessarily payment.
Also, can you explain how you equate being a "whore" with being a "sell-out"? Do you believe a woman's vagina is public property, and she is betraying society's trust by using it for unapproved purposes?
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No, "whore" implies receiving payment, while "slut" (or "manslut" if you want to make it explicit you're talking about a dude) doesn't. Calling someone a "whore" means you think they're compromising their morals in exchange for payment while calling them a "slut" just means you believe they're being immoral/promiscuous without necessarily receiving payment for it. "Prostitute" is a bit different, it isn't really as much of an insult, and it's rarely used when the services in question aren't sexual.
Re:Incentivized vs fake? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anything about her doing this bother you, from a moral or ethical standpoint?
Yes, but she is a 19 year old adult, so she makes her own decisions. I can think of about a zillion other things she could be doing that would bother me more.
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I didn't see this reply before I asked you the question again. You didn't, however, answer the other question. But let me address the answer you did give.
Okay, so there a zillion other things she could be doing that would bother you more. Does this mean you have a sliding scale for ethical behavior? Sure, she's and adult and makes her own decisions, but that's not really the point is it? She's engaging in what seems like calculated unethical behavior for money, and if it were my child I'd have a pretty hard
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Does anything about her doing this bother you, from a moral or ethical standpoint?
Yes, but she is a 19 year old adult, so she makes her own decisions. I can think of about a zillion other things she could be doing that would bother me more.
That is a pretty weak defence. First, you are entitled to have views about the ethics of other people and second, yes, what she's doing is not as bad as murdering babies, but it is still fraud.
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> Does anything about her doing this bother you, from a moral or ethical standpoint?
Probably not. See what he feels is an appropriate use of Amazon product reviews: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
From his posts in that thread, it would appear that ShanghaiBill has a pretty fucked-up sense of right and wrong, as well as who should be the proper target for his anger. It also appears that he's a complete hypocrite with an infinitely-flexible set of "ethics".
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Amazon knows about all the cash-for-review services, and they monitor those sites. It wouldn't take long to show a trend that one reviewer is predominantly buying and reviewing products that are being promoted by one of those services.
In addition, failing to mention you were paid for your review, violates not just Amazon's terms, but FTC rules as well. Such bad-behaving reviewers could face
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Amazon knows about all the cash-for-review services, and they monitor those sites. It wouldn't take long to show a trend that one reviewer is predominantly buying and reviewing products that are being promoted by one of those services.
It works the other way around. The reviewer advertises their service on Fiverr, and the vendor contacts them for a review.
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No, it works both ways. Sellers openly advertising for reviews generate a much higher volume of results, than does seeking out individual reviewers.
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My daughter makes money on Fiverr writing fake reviews
...and what have you done to correct this? Your daughter is learning fraud.
Of course, at this point it's likely already too late. She'll always use her intelligence to swindle people.
Congrats on making the world that much shittier.
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...and what have you done to correct this? Your daughter is learning fraud.
Of course, at this point it's likely already too late. She'll always use her intelligence to swindle people.
Congrats on making the world that much shittier.
Well said, and I agree completely.
(I rate your post a 5 out of 5! ) ;)
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My daughter makes money on Fiverr writing fake reviews. She is an A-student, and writes impeccable English. Many of her reviews are flagged as "most useful" by Amazon customers, and she uses that fact to promote her services.
Well, aren't you the proud father. That's like saying "my daughter is a prostitute", except that it's a less honest profession.
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I was surprised; I expected to be fooled a few times. But that's not the point.
Even though I am apparently skilled at it, it was not easy; I can see how most people would have trouble spotting many of the examples I was asked to determine.
Fake or insincere reviews, blog posts, and forum posts are everywhe
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Re:Incentivized vs fake? (Score:5, Insightful)
They should also do something about "angry reviews" from people that have requested to be removed from marketing email, but are receiving it anyway through "marketplace.amazon.com", mostly badgering for reviews. Amazon refuses to stop those emails, so every time I receive one, I leave a one-star review for the product. I used to say that it was because they spammed me, and it didn't really reflect on the quality of the review, but then Amazon started deleting any review that mentioned spamming, so now I make up something about the quality of the product instead. This pollutes the review process and diminishes its usefulness, but at least I get my revenge. The obvious way for Amazon to fix this problem would be to stop spamming people that have requested to be removed from their marketing email list.
Amazon is a badly managed company, IMO. (Score:3, Informative)
There are many other areas in which Amazon needs improvement:
When visiting an Amazon web page to try to understand a product better, Amazon tries to distract readers by displaying other products. To me, that is amazingly abusive and socially ignorant.
There are other scams besides some of the reviews. Some used books say the price is $0.01, one cent, but
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-instead- choose to do undeserved damage to the reputation of a product with inaccurate reviews.
It is not "undeserved", it is just inaccurate. These people are spammers, and I have specifically and repeatedly said I want off the marketing list. They deserve to lose sales. Amazon refuses to allow me to say the real reason, so I say something else instead. If the manufacturer contacts me about the bad review (they often do), I tell them the real reason. Either way, they are disincentivized from spamming people.
Save yourself a lot of time and energy by learning how to use the filtering features of your email software.
That does nothing to solve the root problem. If you see your neighbor's house being robb
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These people are spammers, and I have specifically and repeatedly said I want off the marketing list.
Did you Google "stop amazon marketing email"? Did you find this page [amazon.com], which tells you how to unsubscribe from Amazon marketing e-mails? To save you a click:
1. Go to E-mail Preferences & Notifications [amazon.com]
2. Select Do not send me marketing e-mail.
3 Click Save.
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Did you Google "stop amazon marketing email"? Did you find this page [amazon.com], which tells you how to unsubscribe from Amazon marketing e-mails?
Do you know how to read? Did your read my post? I specifically said that I REPEATEDLY asked to be taken off their spam list, and they DID NOT HONOR the request. Furthermore, they have specifically told me that there is NO WAY to be removed from "marketplace" spam. There is NO opt-out.
Follow your own directions, then order a few products. You WILL be spammed.
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You're not hurting Amazon by leaving fraudulent reviews, you're hurting the manufacturer of that product.
I am hurting both, and both deserve to be hurt. The manufacturers are the ones sending the email, and they know, or they should know, that many of the customers do NOT want to receive their marketing garbage. And I am helping them learn that lesson better.
SWITCH TO ANOTHER RESELLER.
That is not easy, or convenient. I would rather fix Amazon. Since my original post is modded +5, I am clearly not the only one upset at Amazon's no-opt-out spamming policy. If we work together, they will eventually get the message.
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Target calls you up to ask you to review the box of Cheerios that you recently purchased and were entirely satisfied with.
No. That is not at all what it is. It is more like this:
I buy a box of Cheerios at Target, and Target then gives my phone number to General Mills, and then General Mills calls me. I tell them I DO NOT want their phone calls. They keep calling. So I go down to Target and warn people not to buy from General Mills because they will continue to call after you tell them not to. Then Target bans me from their property because I am NOT ALLOWED to complain about unsolicited phone calls, because that isn't abo
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" so every time I receive one, I leave a one-star review for the product."
You place a rating on the product, when your actual complaint is with the merchant. Amazon has correctly removed a misfiled rating.
Attaching your rating to the product damages any merchant who is trying to sell the same product with a decent customer experience. Congratulations, you're making everything worse including your own chances of encountering a merchant that does as you would like.
"The obvious way for Amazon to fix this probl
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The reviews to pay attention to are the 1 and 2 star reviews and look for patterns of complaints. If out of 50 1 star reviews only a few
Re: Incentivized vs fake? (Score:2)
Here's something "editors" could "edit"... (Score:2)
Why does Slashdot allow "special" characters in submitted stories when they don't display correctly in the summaries?
Re:Here's something "editors" could "edit"... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, presumably, they expect everyone to preview their submission before hitting submit, and verify that what they are writing doesnâ(TM)t contain any such characters.
There are only a few grievances I have with this site, and its lack of friendliness to utf8 is one of them.
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There are only a few grievances I have with this site, and its lack of friendliness to utf8 is one of them.
If I just slap together a webpage, UTF-8 will "just work" by default. So Slashdot must be going through some extra effort to make sure it does NOT work. Is there a reason for this? Maybe the backend database is MySQL 1.0 from 1995.
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It's because there's a UTF-8 whitelist. Unicode support was added when the Japanese site was launched, but what happened is commenters rapidly posted garbage that abused all the Unicode control codes and character decorations that seriously screwed up the page. If you want to see
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So they left off the ones that donâ(TM)t come up so often? They didnâ(TM)t do a particularly good job, did they?
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Or you could type in normal fucking english and not have a problem.
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I imagine the root cause is due to so much of the backend running through deprecated Perl code that is barely \\A\\N\\S\\I aware.
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It's kind of funny how it comes out as out as a-hat. Because that's exactly what manishs is.
Alleluia! (Score:1)
In the mean time I will continue to thumbs down any incentivized review I see - they are such trash.
Incentives aren't the problem. Shills are. (Score:5, Interesting)
IMO, this is a bad policy, plain and simple.
The reality of the matter is that incentivized reviews aren't really a problem, and actually prevent much worse problems. Incentivized reviews (where people get, for example, a free product in exchange for a review) serve a crucial purpose in the industry—allowing products from new publishers, new manufacturers, etc. to get reviewed by someone competent early on so that people will actually consider that product. (Most people won't seriously look at a product that has no reviews.) By banning them, Amazon is basically saying that new publishers, new authors, new manufacturers, etc. need not bother to sell there.
Worse, a ban on incentivized reviews significantly increases the pressure on small businesses to use truly unethical means of getting reviews, such as hiring companies that pay people to buy the product and write fake reviews. Lots of seriously bad products invariably have dozens of obviously fake five-star reviews, and that abuse of the system makes it even harder for legitimate businesses to get their foot in the door.
The only way this decision doesn't represent an absolute abandonment of Amazon's duty to protect consumers from outright fraud is if they also make participation in the Vine program free and available to anyone who asks, whether they are Amazon vendors or not. Otherwise, this ban just encourages outright fraud by eliminating the one legitimate means that most small businesses have for getting reviews.
And the policy isn't just anti-small-business. It's also anti-consumer. The notion that the difference between 4.74 stars and 4.36 is meaningful is laughable. Star ratings are completely meaningless in aggregate (at least without a standard deviation), because a product could have three five-star ratings that says "This product is great" and a one-star rating that says "This product burned down my house", and in aggregate, that product would have a 4.5-star rating. Everybody who actually buys products understands the fallacy of comparing star ratings, and instead reads the highest-rated high, low, and average reviews to see what they actually say about the product.
Moreover, anybody serious about buying the right product also does keyword searches looking for aspects of the product that interest or concern them. For this reason, consumers are served best by having as many reviews as possible, paid or otherwise, because (with the exception of very bad products) each review is likely to provide information about some aspect of the product that no other review provides. So deleting incentivized reviews is not just anti-small-business. It's also anti-consumer, because it reduces the amount of information available to consumers about products that they are considering buying.
I'm absolutely blown away at the absolute cluelessness of this decision. It is as though their management never actually bought a product on their own website, never sold any product anywhere, and couldn't be bothered to ask consumers or sellers what they thought. The resulting decision is utterly naïve.
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You give away copies of your books in exchange for reviews, don't you? Either that or you write incentivised reviews yourself, because I can tell this is personal for you.
Just like many areas of online life, for me this issue is about signal-to-noise ratio. In a fantasy world, just one honest and thorough review would be all you'd need to make a decision, that would be a perfect SNR. In reality, you have to deal with fake reviews, incentivised or otherwise biased reviews, reviews from clueless reviewers, an
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Actually, I haven't gotten around to it yet. :-) I'd like to be able to do so, as giving away books is pretty much the only way for new authors to get reviews, period. And literally every non-bestselling author eventually resorts to it; whether in the form of Goodreads giveaways, making the Kindle edition free for a day/week/month, or whatever, the net effect is the same—you're giving away copies of your book in the hopes that som
Re: Incentives aren't the problem. Shills are. (Score:2)
The problem with these reviews is that they get elevated to the to-, presumable because sellers then have everybody click to find it useful. If amazon would mark these reviews, the relegate them to a lower position, they would serve a purpose without being overwhelming.
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I know this is off-topic, but the solution for lobbying is not to ban lobbying, but rather to ban our congresspeople from Washington D.C. I've said it before, and it is no less true now than when I first said it.
If all of our congresspeople were required to spend at least 330 days per year in their districts, participate in floor debates via videoconferencing, and vote remotely from their office in whatever district they serve, it would effectively be equivalent to a successful ban on lobbying. Big compa
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As someone who absolutely refuses to trust any "I received this product at a discount" reviews, my wish would be this: leave the incentivized reviews alone, but provide me with a filter that I can clic
Ignore the ratings (Score:1)
Read the reviews, and look for those who had a need/background/set of tastes similar to yours.
Only allow reviews from people who purchased. (Score:3)
Amazon could solve this issue by only allowing reviews from people who have actually purchased the product on Amazon.
Sure, this would remove the ability to review products that you bought elsewhere, but I'm sure that's not a large percentage of reviews. If you bought the product from Amazon there's a good chance you're not a shill for the company. This also limits the reviews to one per customer per purchased product.
The only downside to this is we'll lose the hilarious "reviews" that some products get.. but that's a small price to pay for more legitimate reviews from real customers.
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Amazon could solve this issue by only allowing reviews from people who have actually purchased the product on Amazon.
Sure, this would remove the ability to review products that you bought elsewhere, but I'm sure that's not a large percentage of reviews.
They could easily have it both ways - provide a checkbox to show only show reviews (and calculate the average score) for verified purchases.
Though this wouldn't get rid of the problem entirely -- companies that are willing to give away product in exchange reviews will just reimburse reviewers for the purchase price of the product, so they'll come up in the "Verified purchase" section.
Re:Only allow reviews from people who purchased. (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon could solve this issue by only allowing reviews from people who have actually purchased the product on Amazon.
Nope. My daughter writes fake reviews, and she typically charges $20+"price of product" if they want a "verified" review. For more expensive items, she will sometimes charge the difference between what the product costs on Amazon, and what she can resell the NIB product for on eBay or Craigslist, and then she has Amazon drop-ship directly to the secondary customer.
Requiring all reviewers to be verified buyers may help somewhat, but it would be only a partial fix by raising the cost of the fake reviews.
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Amazon could solve this issue by only allowing reviews from people who have actually purchased the product on Amazon.
Nope. My daughter writes fake reviews, and she typically charges $20+"price of product" if they want a "verified" review. For more expensive items, she will sometimes charge the difference between what the product costs on Amazon, and what she can resell the NIB product for on eBay or Craigslist, and then she has Amazon drop-ship directly to the secondary customer.
Requiring all reviewers to be verified buyers may help somewhat, but it would be only a partial fix by raising the cost of the fake reviews.
You are correct that Amazon can never fix fake reviews; he best they can do is attempt to minimize their impact. For example, they could only attach verified purchaser status if the review was written at some point in time after recipes, and not do that for any not shipped to the purchasers billing address or one used frequently. They could also look at purchase patterns to see if they are unusual for a particular demographic, but that is less likely to indicate fake reviews. Still, there are ways around an
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Amazon does now limit reviews of non-verified purchases to 5/week. (Books, videos, CDs and Vine excepted.)
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I'd have thought so too. But apparently, some fake reviewers buy the products, then return them to the sellers for a refund, plus the fee for the glowing review. It certainly adds a significant shipping cost to the price of each fake review, which is a good thing I guess, but it doesn't completely stop them.
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Also, how long they had them too.
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No, this won't work. Sellers have groups (on FB or dedicated sites) where they organize people to buy their product for free or almost free (they provide a discount code) in exchange for a review. They don't usually tell you directly to give them a 4/5 star review (although I've seen that too), but tell you to contact them first if you are not happy and if you leave a 3 star or less review they simply don't give you any more free stuff... or worse!
When I say worse, this is an example recent experience of mi
The truth is in the negative reviews (Score:1)
You have to read reviews with a lot of perception in mind. I find the bulk of honest (believable) reviews are negative reviews and I usually look through the negative ones to get a sense of whether there truly are deal-breaking issues. It's easy to tell the difference between bullshit negative reviews and real legit negative reviews, but not so easy to tell them apart with the positive ones.
Sort with negative reviews first. That will tell you the real story.
Ebay is better (Score:3)
I know people personally who have engaged in industrial scale review Shenanigans on Amazon for profit and can only imagine the cesspool of asshats involved. Screwing with Amazon has become an industry on to itself.
No point in using Amazon IMO. They spend too much time making excuses for their sellers. Seller reviews and good/bad ratio's are NOT front and center like they are on eBay. You have to go digging.
From my experience many sellers on Amazon have ratio's that would get them laughed at by any eBay buyer. (Low 90's or even 80's)
Then we have issues of Amazon actively leveraging their market position. Refusing to sell certain goods unless you join their little "Prime" club. Refusing to sell low cost items without buying something else. Playing games with intentional shipping delays while not offering much of anything in the way of savings.
Amazon refuses to keep their marketing goons on a leash and their community governance is teetering on the brink of Twitter level fail.
Some ground truth.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's your bottom line up front: Amazon doesn't care about the quality of reviews. Period. Amazon cares about control of the process.
Here's how I know this:
I have been an amazon Vine member since 2009. At the time I was invited to start receiving "free" (no longer are they free: for the last two years, every item is assigned a "fair market value" (FMV) for tax purposes that results in an an annual 1099 for the IRS; generally the FMV is about 1/3 of the sticker price) items, I had written less than 20 reviews of things bought from amazon since 1997.
From 2012 until early last month, I also accepted and reviewed items provided directly to me through amazon vendors. Some where shipped directly to me, and some where provided through amazon via a vendor-supplied claim code that would result in an "amazon verified purchase badge. At the "high water mark" of my reviewing activity, I was ranked in the low two digits of amazon's "Top Reviewer Ranking" list.
The above represents three categories of reviews:
(1) Amazon supplied through Vine (which carries a giant green "Vine Customer Review of Free Product" banner)
(2) Vendor-supplied direct (and therefore, no "verified purchase" label)
(3) Vendor-supplied via claim code (and therefore labeled as "verified purchase"
(4) Things I bought from amazon with my own money (the "true" amazon verified purchases)
(5) Things I bought someplace else and reviewed on amazon.
For (1): Amazon generates the disclaimer. .I simply stated that fact of receiving the item for reviewing, in order to comply with both Amazon and an FTC requirement.
For (2) and (3): I provided the disclaimer at the end of the review. I didn't make a rhetorical attempt to convince you that I had provided an "honest evaluation...blah blah blah.."
I had no incentive to inflate the ratings on any of these products categories.
The stream of Vine items was not dependent on me offering a high rating, and I have 1-starred many big ticket items. Since 2009, the Vine program has sent me over 300 items..from Post-It notes and advance reviewer copies of books to high-end A/V equipment carrying 4-figure price tags; overall average value is about $65 for ALL products...but there is nearly a $1600 range between the most and least expensive items). I'll tell you more about why the scoring or strength of content was irrelevant to amazon in a second.
For vendor-provided items, the majority of these were Chinese-manufactured smalls (Bluetooth speakers, LED flashlights, Lightning cables, USB cables, kitchen items, RC vehicles, dashcams, GoPro knockoffs... although a few others popped into the "shiny" zone, and came from brand names you would recognize immediately), but I also had no incentive to inflate the scoring of these products either. Typically, the vendors had not read any of my reviews, they simply had my email address (and there is clearly an active network of vendors exchanging big lists of such email addresses). Before accepting an item I told each vendor that I would be disclosing the receipt of the item, and that the rating and review would be based directly on my user experience. The email associated with my amazon account received an average of about 35 such offers every day. Since amazon ended "incentived" reviews. I still get 15-20 offers daily, even though they are deleted without reading.
And for stuff I bought myself (on Amazon or elsewhere: just as with Vine and vendor-provided products: I reported my user experience. My overall average product rating was slightly above 4 for over 1600 reviews written since 2009..
In order, here's what amazon has done since October:
-Told ALL reviewers that they could no longer review items received for free from vendors.
-Deleted the entire contents of reviewers that amazon's magical systems decided were engaging in manipulative behavior. Sometimes this removed the reviews of obvious shill or dishonest reviewers...and sometimes this threw out the baby with the bathwater as honest