I'm seeing similar things everywhere. I stood in line for a food truck a couple years ago that offered a promotion "$2 off your order if you show us your 5-star review of our truck on [site]." Obviously, you have to do this before you even order your food so I was intensely put-off by this. I gave them a 5-star review with no comment, received my discount, then after I tried the food I edited the review to 1-star with an explanation that it probably would've been a 4-star review had they legitimately just prepared good food but gaming the reviews was a sleazeball move. The review was removed.<p>Every single game on the Google Play store does this now, too. Instead of just letting people review honestly, they show a pop-up saying "Are you enjoying this game?" if so, they ask you to review it on the store. If not, they ask you to review it via their own private feedback system. Not quite as bad as requiring a 5-star review, but obviously this alters the score the app would otherwise receive.
I purchased the same webcam for my high school sophomore in September 2020, as school restarted (all online for him). The box contained a $20 "gift card" if I emailed proof of my 5-star review. It looks identical to the one I received (including the email address). Only the reward is different.<p>I didn't try to write a review, I notified customer service in an attempt to report the seller.<p>I documented everything including photos, my exchange with Amazon customer service, and the confirmation from the seller that they would pay me $20 for a 5-star review. I did not take the money offered ... I was appalled at the situation and more than a little angry that I had been tricked by bogus reviews.<p>Here's what happened when I reported the seller:<p><i>Me: Hi. The box for this product contained a card that says “Amazon $20 gift card” and looks like a gift card, but the back says I have to give a 5 star review and send my order information to an outlook email address. Is this legitimate? Is it really a $20 Amazon gift card?<p>Amazon: Thank you so much for your information on this, I will certainly pass it along here so that we can check this promotion or offer directly with the seller. Because I am not seeing that advertised on the item at all And would not be capable of confirming if that is a legit Amazon gift card because, I do not see that offer on the item<p>Me: So what should I do?<p>Amazon: My best suggestion would be to contact the seller directly for this through this link [redacted] So that you can confirm directly with them if this is legit or not Certainly giving away gift cards for good reviews is not professional And I have to report the seller for that<p>Me: I thought this type of offer was forbidden by Amazon’s own policies for sellers. But I will contact them using the link you sent to ask them if that’s what you recommend.</i><p>Even though the CSR reported the seller, and I confirmed with the seller through Amazon's own communication system that they were paying $20 per 5 star review, nothing happened to the seller. The item (a webcam) is still for sale on Amazon, with thousands of additional 5-star reviews - more than 12,000 now, compared to 3,266 when I let Amazon know how they were gaming the reviews in September.<p>Once again, the good guys (in the case, customers and honest sellers) lose out while the bad guys win, with no repercussions.
I had a very similar experience last month. I ordered this toaster[1]. When I received it I noticed that in their user manual they were offering a "gift" in return for an Amazon review. Although to be fair they didn't explicitly demand that the review had to be positive. I submitted this 4-star review [2] to Amazon:<p><i>I received the toaster not too long ago. It looks just like in the advertised pictures and works fine. But the language on the last page of the user manual (see picture) makes it clear that LOFTER is offering customers a "gift" in return for leaving a review. Perhaps they're within their right to do that but it makes me not trust the rest of the reviews on this product.</i><p>A few days later I got an email from Amazon identical to the one in the submitted blog post[3]. I've stopped trusting positive reviews on Amazon. These days I only look at the negative reviews to see if there's a consistent complaint about the product.<p>[1] www.amazon.com/dp/B07S3TXD9H/
[2] <a href="https://cutt.ly/lhLZQ5o" rel="nofollow">https://cutt.ly/lhLZQ5o</a>
[3] <a href="https://cutt.ly/JhLZTjZ" rel="nofollow">https://cutt.ly/JhLZTjZ</a>
Now I remember ...<p>The previous review practice that outraged me was when someone here at HN was producing <i>very detailed</i> analysis of LED bulbs (spectral analysis, etc.) and proving that lots of bulbs on Amazon had CRI and color temperature ratings that were <i>way off</i>.<p>He then described how he posted that in some reviews and they were all taken down. Which is to say, crummy LED bulb on Amazon with an inflated CRI cannot have a review describing the inflated CRI.
> I've chatted with an Amazon rep on the issue, and to their credit they seemed to take it seriously and "noted the report violation against the seller"<p>I was deliberately scammed by a seller, and the wave of bad reviews they received after I purchased made me think I was not the only one with whom they dealt dishonestly. I contacted Amazon and received a similar reaction the author of the article received, except they were even more explicit in telling me they were going to shut the seller down over it. They seemed to take it very seriously, but I was still skeptical anything would come of it.<p>That was months ago, the seller is still around, and is still getting terrible reviews.<p>Amazon has come a long way on a lot of fronts, but in terms of being customer-focused they are so much worse than they used to be.<p>Edit: I also ordered something that died during the warranty period. Manufacturer/seller (one in the same) was utterly worthless. Wouldn't respond to a single inquiry. They released a revised version, emailed their customer list, and I responded saying I'd buy it if they hadn't already demonstrated that they were so dishonest.<p>They asked me to place a paid order on the new model, email them the receipt and the link to my 5-star review, and insisted they would directly PayPal me my purchase price afterwards. (Of the new, less expensive version. Not the original I paid ~2x for.) They also refused to honor their warranty and send me another one, or even just mail me the cheaper replacement model as a compromise. They just had to get a 5-star review out of the whole deal.<p>I put all this into a review and it was promptly deleted by Amazon.<p>At this point, I consider 4-star reviews the new 1-star.<p>I have a few more stories like this from the last year or so. I used to be a very vocal supporter of them, but I'm increasingly developing a visceral hatred for them.
There is a basic problem that if you see an obvious problem with a product listing on AMZN but you didn't buy the product they could care less.<p>Sometimes the listing is obviously a scam, sometimes it is is just something that could be better: somebody is selling a box of assorted TTL ICs for $30 which were ill chosen for any use than testing your logic tester. (e.g. with $30 of quad-NANDs you can build a lot)<p>In the early 2000's I would avoid Staples to avoid crap brands like VTech and go online to seek out Plantronics instead. AMZN got a reputation as a fair dealer for things like HDMI cables compared to a place like Best Buy which might only stock a $99 monster cable.<p>Slowly AMZN got worse and I have less trust in the marketplace products than I did before,
Amazon is sealing its own fate here. I don't want the AliExpress experience, which is what Amazon offers now. I know where to find cheap products and bad information and I don't need Amazon for that.<p>I find it odd that Amazon clings to bad vendors over long standing customers. They are no longer the most customer focused company, if they ever were. What does it say about your company when your company abandons its goals?
It is likely the seller flagged your review as off topic as it doesn't actually cover the product. Any minor reference to the delivery (package arrived damaged) is reason for rejection. I had to rewrite a few negative reviews as they got initially rejected based on such technicalities. For one of the negative reviews I rewrote, the vendor contacted me and offered a refund for removing the negative review. Another vendor, who never delivered the package to my parents, tried to emotionally blackmail me suggesting their business would go bust and they would lose their house if I didn't remove my negative review. I forwarded this to Amazon, but apparently this was all within the guidelines as no action was taken.
If you want to read more about how shady sellers abuse the system, and why it's so hard to deal with it, I recommend this well written medium article:<p><a href="https://medium.com/swlh/unaccountable-chinese-retailers-threaten-american-consumer-safety-and-business-outdated-laws-are-c75ee4e7d90b" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/swlh/unaccountable-chinese-retailers-thre...</a>
There's a second chapter to this story that the OP didn't get to see! If you leave a bad review on a genuinely-bad experience (for example the 3rd-party Apple stylus that I tried) - you'll find that after a few days you get a drip-drab of offers of giftcards to take the review down, promising that the item's been fixed.<p>The offers escalated each time, and went up to US$50.00. I still occasionally get an email about it. Each time it's from a different email address, and each time it's a different sad story.<p>I told Amazon, a helpful CSR offered me an email, I fwd'd it, and they took the item down. Of course it was re-posted a bit later from a "different seller."
This is an entirely reasonable stance. A given product could have n(bignum) sellers. A review telling me that a seller is doing shady things tells me nothing about the product. Amazon told him to go review the seller in the appropriate section. What's the problem?
Seems similar to how hackernews doesn't allow calling people "paid shills". The review doesn't have any evidence or proof attached. Perhaps reporting the seller to Amazon is a better approach.
A home appliance was getting 1 star reviews in Amazon because they didn’t include customary “starter” kit of baking dishes. Nothing against the product . The reviews are also worthless. Think from the perspective of sellers. If a number generated by an algorithm that is influenced by bitter people who were pissed off by someone that day is deciding your product placement and fate. You will do whatever is required to make it right.
Just last night, I was looking to buy some kind of less-expensive version of Apple AirPods, but for each item I checked on reviewmeta.com, they were filtering out 70%+ of the reviews as suspicious. I decided I'd had enough of the appearance of sketchiness for now, and instead bought the cheap (supposedly genuine) Apple wired earbuds as an interim measure.
Product reviews are only for reviewing the product, not the shipping, or the seller's practices. There are other ways to report this to Amazon, and you can report it to the FTC
Paid reviews have been a weapon on Amazon for a long time. False accusations of paying for reviews would also be weaponized.<p>What would stop a dishonest seller from smearing a competitor, by paying people to write reviews on the competitor's product page which falsely accuse the competitor of paying for reviews?
Wasn't all this supposed to be solved in the 90s with "web of trust"? Rather than trusting every review, you only trust those from your personal circle of friends, and then from their friends but with less weight, etc.
Amazon exists to increase shareholder profits. The reviews are not exempt from that. They exist to encourage customers to buy things and to increase sales volume. When Amazon was up and coming against a lot of other competitors it was relatively more important that reviews provide a good signal for customers. Now that they are more hegemonic, that is less important relative to facilitating increased sale volume, and there is also more incentive for sellers to fake them.<p>Everyone's incentives are cleanly aligned for the short-medium term, except for those of consumers and workers.
Rule number one of reviews: never trust them if they are on the site selling you something.<p>It's pretty simple. If you want a toaster, then google "Toaster X review". If all you can find is reviews on sales sites, ignore them. If you can find an in-depth review on toaster-aficionado.com with full disclosure of sponsorships etc - great.<p>People are just lazy to expect to see a set of stars on a product page informing them on whether a product has good quality or not. Just give up that expectation.
> For example I feel quite helped when a review for chocolate mentions that the chocolate arrived melted -- this is not a review about the product intrinsically, but is still very helpful for deciding whether or not to buy the item<p>So this could go either way. First there are often multiple sellers for one item on Amazon, to have reviews reflect the shipment or seller experience would kind of invalidate the feedback about the item. To ask Amazon to revamp their entire feedback system is quite an ask and clearly not what first comes to mind from reading the title of this post.<p>Secondly if some users are being encouraged to leave a positive review for money that's a morally offensive act by them as well, which no one here seems to be pointing out so far. It's not too dissimilar to lying about something and then asserting that someone pays others when they lie and it's really their fault. Lying is bad in itself.
Amazon sellers keep complaining, that more and more users only bother to write reviews when something is wrong with the product, but not when everything is OK.<p>Well, I wrote three 5 star reviews during the last year, and I put a real effort into them, giving others tips how to avoid common mistakes when using the product, and correcting common misconceptions. I could do this, because I know this class of devices well.<p>The outcome was in every case, that I got a message back, that Amazon has to check and approve the reviews, which never happened.
It's obvious, that they either don't want thorough reviews, even if they are 5 star, or are just not able to understand them.<p>After that, I understandably stopped to write reviews.
In fact, I deleted my Amazon account, because I had some cases of defective products and dubious dealers, in which Amazon wasn't helpful at all, and that seems to become more and more common recently.
I wonder if anyone has done any analysis on marketplace diversity for a given product. One of the absolute sore points of buying anything on Amazon is when you run into the issue where the product clearly looks the exact same yet there are seemingly dozens and dozens of brands all with hundreds of 4-5 star reviews.
Amazon appears to be determined to make itself an untrustworthy place to buy stuff. It's like it's actively trying to get itself lumped in with eBay as a "tat-bazaa" as The Register likes to call it.<p>I've become increasingly wary of buying things on Amazon for this very reason. I recently bought several pieces of electrical/elecronic gear, and didn't buy either from Amazon. I don't trust that the named brand stuff will be genuine, and I don't trust that the unknown-brand stuff will be any good, irrespective of the reviews. I've had too many cards with my orders promising freebies for positive reviews to trust anything I read there now.<p>I now pretty much only buy low-risk stuff on amazon.
Yeah, this is a problem for a long time on Amazon, especially with a lot of the cheap Chinese stuff posted on there. When some cheap looking product has a dozen reviews all like "very good super high quality!!!!!" you know it's just astroturfing.
Under some legislations this could be considered a form of hidden advertising, that is not allowed. E.g. youtubers are getting in trouble in the Netherlands for not properly disclosing their sponsorships. You could argue this is the same in principle.<p>The practice of buying positive reviews is misleading. Stuff like this would be a lot less attractive if it would have to come with a disclaimer from the seller. Better still, since AWS makes money from the transaction, they could be liable here as well. Right now AWS just looks the other way because it's not their problem and their revenue depends on people getting tricked into spending their cash so they won't go out of their way trying to stop that.
Amazon should pay you if you report offers of false reviews (at least 2x what you were being offered). This money should come out the seller's pocket.<p>After a certain thresh-hold the seller should lose increasing amounts of money until it's no longer profitable.
I've been trying my best to avoid having reviews on sites like amazon decide what I buy.<p>For bigger ticket items like power tools, I'll use videos from youtubers like project farm [1] who actually try to test the products. Youtubers can be bought and/or influenced [2] but it is still better than just looking at the number of stars or picking the "amazon choice" product.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GyaSfOi6fs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GyaSfOi6fs</a>
There is a general principle, that a metric which is used to determine [important decisions, e.g. pay, promotion, sales, etc.] will soon cease to be a reliable metric. If your neighbor tells you that a product is good, they probably really think that, because not enough people go to your neighbor to ask their opinion, to be worth spending $$ to change your neighbor's opinion.<p>Amazon ratings, quite a long time ago, became way to influential to be a reliable metric, because the incentives to game it or outright pay for a better rating are too high. Oddly, by aggregating many opinions just like your neighbor, it becomes LESS reliable than if it were just a single data point.
I've made it a principle to leave accurate, detailed, and positive reviews on Amazon for products I really like. I think I've mostly given up, I don't think they can move the smallest needle if the environ is so deeply poisoned. The only honest and constructive feedback commerce site I still use and participate in is King Arthur Flour, probably because the stake is so small. I mean, how many reviews for a $18 bread pan can one flog? It reminds me of Goodreads, before Amazon. The larger question though, is whether or not high-trust systems can ever scale, or even be extended to cover an adjacent domain.
"Amazon does not accept product reviews based on anything except the product" would be a more accurate title. There is another way to review sellers - perhaps this would be a better place for reviewing a seller.
It's possible they rejected it simply because it didn't review the product.<p>A review that expresses an opinion about the product and also mentions that other reviewers are being paid <i>might</i> be accepted.
They also disallow pointing out fraudulent products. I got something that was clearly fake, said so in the review and they rejected the review on the basis of being against their community standards.
For certain types of products Amazon is degenerating into a virtual big-box warehouse store, one of those places where you basically have this giant pile of crap to sift through.
I have pointed out both paid and bait and switch reviews (where the seller uses a cheap product to be able to use a farm for fake “verified purchase” reviews then changes the product). Never been rejected, but maybe that’s because I review product too. Amazon seems to bump up positive reviews though so I suspect not many people see mine unless you’re like me and explicitly focus on reading negative reviews first.
They also remove reviews if you point out fake SD cards. It might be up for a few days but the seller will have it removed under the reason “you didn’t purchase this item”.<p>I’m really close to buying, and leaving reviews all while doing a return.<p>Sad part is amazon knows about this. They just don’t care because they’re making money and most people won’t blame the card for being fake they’ll just assume their camera or whatever corrupted the clips.
Considering 90% ( thats what it feels like) of amazon shops are dropshippers who resell alibaba products but for 10x the cost, with no extra value, it is no wonder it starts to bug more and more people every day. US needs to figure it's sh*t out. How a teenager buy a publicly avaiable chinese toy for 69 cblents and sell it in US for an obscene amount (14$) is beyond me. The system is broken.
Reviews from randoms cannot be trusted. Word of mouth is king. Second is the word of professional reviewers too well-paid to be bought, like Siskel & Ebert. When a top-tier reviewer on YouTube endorses a product, it sells out instantly.<p>Amazon reviews are good for getting the actual details and pictures of a product that the seller couldn't be bothered to include in the description.
I do not agree with the article. Reviews are for the product, not the seller or the tactics.<p>I once bought some snow chains off Amazon, and the ones their system recommended didn't in fact fit my car. SImilar to the OP, I also did a low review and got it removed. But then yes, my review was not of the product, it was of the algorithm so I understood.
It seems many categories on Amazon are overwhelmed by low quality products and unreliable reviews. I'm surprised Amazon hasn't done more to counter this, as it affects the trust people have in the site. For example, Amazon could check some actual packages to make sure the products are not paying for reviews.
I got a similar paid review offer but I'm allowed to give any review rating I wish.
Given that Amazon hasn't forced me to give 5 start to a product, it is a step in the right direction: If a product has few reviews, you give an incentive for buyers to post a review about a product they actually bought.
Amazon removed my feedback on selling opened video card boxes and replacing the cards with a different models (sourced by Amazon, not a 3rd party). This prompted me to start providing feedback on sites that Amazon does not control. Not as many people will see it, but Amazon can't censor it.
Amazon lets sellers leave review for products that are not launched yet. For instance, every Garmin product is "coming soon" but still have at least 2 to 5 5-star reviews by default mostly saying "previous generation was good!".<p>Amazon is scummy and I am slowly moving to other marketplaces.
It doesn't really matter, you're still going to shop there anyway. They're making hand over fist in cash, the absolutely insignificant amount of people who even care don't really matter and are offset by new happy customers every single day, why change anything at all?
I think amazon does this because they want to commoditize sellers and make them barely noticeable on their page. A bunch of reviews about one bad seller that they remove will reduce sales for an otherwise ok product. Maybe make 'seller' reviews upfront? Hard to say.
I never understand why this is done. All it does is completely undermine the entire ecosystem that took years and billions to make. What a shortsighted move. Even more confusing, Amazon LPs say they want to be customer and user focused. Are the end users not the real users here?
This happens all the time with Amazon products from smaller brands/sellers. Amazon has also blocked reviews pointing out when a product is counterfeit, which I have experienced firsthand. I'm helping a friend try to return fake Bose headphones purchased on Amazon now.
If the only acceptable response is a 5 star review, or nothing, it's not a scale: its a binary measure.<p>If the review response is mandatory, its not a review.<p>Hoardes of people tell me to stick to 2 and 4 star reviews for honest assessment of the good and bad in things. I think they may be on to something.
I tend to ignore Amazon reviews and if the item is worth more than a few bucks I typically search for commentary on Reddit.<p>Alternatively if I’m after something from a specific category, I’ll check out Choice.com.au (to which I’m a subscriber), and let that be my guide for brand and model.
Eh, I got an insert in a product I purchased offering me a set of magnetized screwdrivers if I sent their social media a screenshot of my positive review. Not exactly paid but it incentivized me to take a picture of my already positive review and send it to the company.
It's entirely reasonable.<p>If Amazon allowed to submit reviews claiming that seller X is providing gifts for reviews, then inevitably sellers Y and Z would do fake reviews with bogus — yet convincing — evidence to ruin the reputation of seller X or a competing product.
I downloaded an iOS App from the Apple App Store. The modal "rate this App" screen would not go away unless I gave the App at least 3 stars. I have reported this to Apple - be interesting to see if they take any action.
I bought a lot of amazon basics AAA batteries, they all leaked in the package after just a year or two. I posted a review with pictures and amazon killed it saying it didnt meet their community guidelines.
I hate it when people give 1 star reviews for something other than the product quality. I'm glad the review was rejected.<p>It sounds like the review should have been 3 or 4 stars ("fine but not amazing").
This and the runaway counterfeiting problem is why I stopped buying anything electric from Amazon and order from reputable companies like B&H Photo, KC Tool Co etc.
I've repeatedly been offered a free product in exchange for removing a non perfect review.<p>Meanwhile the cards that offer rewards for a 5 star review remain pretty common....
The review system is basically broken on the internet. Paid reviews and fake reviews (positive and also negative) are everywhere.<p>A good solution could be if shops would simply allow only reviews, but without a grade. Just some text. This would reduce the incentive of trying to game the grading system of reviews, but still give consumers some information about the pros and cons of a product.
Amazon is right here. If such a review were allowed, the first people to exploit that would be the the scummy vendors themselves. They would post fake one-star reviews against competing products, claiming that all the good reviews of those products are from bribes.<p>Always consider the secondary effects, like back-scatter from replying to a spam e-mail to give them a piece of your mind!
A five star review on Amazon is also a review in part of purchasing on Amazon. Amazon have an incentive to bump those scores up. They'll agressively remove any bad reviews on little pretext and ignore utterly bogus 5 star reviews.<p>This way, potential customers of Amazon are decieived into believing many more people are having excellent purchasing experiences using Amazon than is really the case.<p>It's systemic. It's a deliberate false and misleading practise. I don't know what the law states or which ones might apply but on any ethical basis a pursued policy of deception like that to get sales is fraud. It's one of the many ugly things Amazon do with their resources rather than paying tax and acting decently. But they do use computers so nobody involved in public policy, law and enforcement can think about it at all.<p>"I just mug them at the bus stop. It's legal because it's with a computer."<p>Then of course we get the overreaction the other way from policy makers, that also gets captured by the big players like amazon, so it makes it even harder for smaller businesses, who pay workers and pay tax to compete.<p>Libertarains and socialists have a lot in common to explore.
Why doesn't Amazon hire an independent third-party company to review and compare products and then highlight those in the review section? At least it would make it seem like they care about increasing the trustworthiness of reviews and restore some confidence in the system.
Not seeing anyone here complain about censorship; is this any different than YouTube taking down conspiracy theories about US presidential election?<p>Nope! Yet this thread is silent on the matter.
I'm frustrated that most of the really well-paying positions in my area of specialization are with companies like this.<p>TL;DR<p>Sometimes Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft posts a job opening with very special skill requirements, which I probably satisfy. And sometimes I'm actually tempted to apply. But (fortunately) I always get a reality check regarding what kinds of business practices I'd be working to facilitate. Suddenly the grass on my side of the fence looks a lot greener.
Amazon is out for the sale. SELL SELL SELL.<p>I went on there a week ago and front page they were advertising me $18 face masks...<p>TL;DR stick to Costco
When purchasing anything on AMZN, never trust the reviews.<p>Buy only name brand but shop around, they have become expensive. Try to give others your business at the same time. I intentionally buy from companies like NEWEGG or RockAuto even if AMZN has the same price and 1-2 day shipping. I also try to buy directly from companies (ex: thorne) if possible even if I have to wait, why give your all your business to AMZN and make these companies pay them a fee.<p>AMZN has enough business, we need to support everyone else.
I wonder if the review would have been allowed if it was focused on the actual product and then mentioned that the company pays for reviews. What if the product is great and people are giving it 5 star reviews because it's great, and not just the $10?
The product review is for the product, not the seller. Seller reviews are for the seller, not the product. Not rocket science.<p>The post title seems needlessly inflammatory and definitive. The content of the blog really is a whinge about an isolated incident, not any real assertions convincing me that Amazon is silencing anything on purpose in the reviews section.<p>No doubt Amazon has much to answer for, but not this. When half the reviews are something like "I don't know what this is" because of Amazon's confusing email language, it seems to me that properly enforcing the use of a review section would be ideal, no?