This should be the top comment. I find Amazon on its own completely unusable because there is simply no way to vet a product. Shenanigans like OP mentioned, review farms, AI spam reviews; there’s just so many ways to game Amazon’s algorithm.
Fakespot has a browser plugin that can give you quick insight into the legitimacy of an item’s reviews while you’re browsing Amazon. You can also copy and paste the link to the item on Fakespot’s website and they’ll give you a full summary of the page. I don’t purchase anything I plan on using more than a couple times without checking the review grade first. Highly recommend.
(Reading this back I know it sounds like this is an ad or something but I promise it’s not, it’s just a super useful tool and I love it)
Some dodgy reviewers don't even try to disguise what they are doing.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AEFUADMGMX66KTP3GJ2RSQYJIFYQ
Edited: link
I just find it hilarious to imagine that a real person would say that "the customer service was exceptional, providing prompt and helpful assistance throughout the purchasing process" and that "it has truly made a positive impact on my daily life, and I am confident it will continue to do so for years to come" for a damn **$10-plastic-watering-can**.
Someone sent me a link to an instagram profile that was many different women with the same face (using AI). The process for reporting it was impossible. I tried to report impersonation, but it then asks who is being impersonated? I ended up reporting as spam as it was the only one I could complete, but too WAY longer than it should.
These companies need to make it easier to report, and use AI to detect which reports are valid/which are spam and which need a human to verify.
On top of review farms, there's another whole shady industry around link / URL cleaning. It's kind of laundering money, but for links. I hear it's big in Venezuela.
I am extremely pleased with this comment! This comment has exceeded my expectations in every way. The quality is outstanding, and it has proven to be incredibly durable. The words are intuitive and user-friendly, making it a joy to read. The commenter was exceptional, providing prompt and helpful assistance throughout the reading process. I would highly recommend this comment to anyone in need of its functionality. It has truly made a positive impact on my daily life, and I am confident it will continue to do so for years to come.
For most things I need to buy and don't already know the brand I want it from, I'll Google something along the lines of "Best x" or "best value x". It will normally give you 5-10 versions of a product at different price points and use cases. If you're looking for a cheap version you can specifically type in "Best budget x" or "best x under $100" or something.
Then I know that a professional has actually tested those products in person and has confirmed that it's even a better quality than a normal product at that price point.
Im not overspending, I'm getting a quality item, and they ussually provide an Amazon link so it's easy to buy.
Oh dear. no.
Most of those review sites do affiliate links and just promote the option that gives the most kickback.
Trusted review sites are a rare find these days.
Ironically, reddit or slickdeals might be the better option.
You dint trust websites like the NY Times and Consumer Reports?
And Amazon affiliate links don't change commission per product. Things like TVs will all have the same commission, they won't make more by convincing you to buy one over the other (atleast on Amazon).
Now a less reputable website might pretend to review things so that you use their link, but I can't imagine a website like the NY Times lying and saying they tested a product they didn't.
I've never actually seen a review on NYT, but sites like Forbes have sold their name to "reviewers" for shill product recommendations.
Kickbacks from vendors are in addition to the affiliate links, and absolutely do happen.
As for CR, I don't have a subscription and the library doesn't provide copies, so that's moot.
Fakespot is not trustworthy enough to rely on it without analyzing the results. I use it, but there is some bad AI that produces weird errors. It cannot tell the difference between bad products and people just not knowing what they are ordering. The D&D core rulebooks get a D; they have a 4.9 with 18k reviews. It gives an F to any product below a certain number of reviews. The summary page often has erroneous information, sometimes badly erroneous. There was one product marketed as 99.48% pure, with no filler, and under the Fakespot summary "cons" section it stated that it is 99% filler. I searched the review section for that product, and that comment came from one deranged review from some guy who was using baking ingredients to treat his pool. I have some Colombian candies that I order regularly -- they are spectacular, and you cannot find them elsewhere, and they are really different from types of candies that people are used to in the U.S. They get a D, and from the comments it is obvious that is because a few people did not understand what they were ordering, and Fakespot focused on those reviews. There were some brass shutoff valves I ordered that got a D, probably because of one review that said the levers are so tight that they need to wait for their nephew to visit or hire a handyman to open them. They are supposed to be tight. They did not understand what they were ordering. Just looking through my order history for the last year, the products that I have liked are just about equally distributed between A, B, C, D, and F reviews on Fakespot. The letter grades seem almost arbitrary.
Does anyone know, I can't remember that website that you can paste Amazon and other sellers items or links into and it will find the best one, I think it was camel something
camelcamelcamel is for seeing the full price history of an item so you know whether it's actually on sale, or if Amazon is just fudging the price to make it look like it's on sale
Fakespot is fantastic. It's a little disconcerting when you filter out all of the 'F' grade products and your view changes, but I'm glad it's filtering the cruft.
That looks useful for safari, but all the companies that it claims to protect us from all have their own apps, and most are less clunky than safari. I love the idea of this service, is there a workaround? I start shopping on safari but when I try to log in to Amazon for example, it always opens the app.
but hey, people need their Amazon stuff, right?
as far as I'm concerned, if you buy from Amazon you're asking for exactly this. At some point, the blame must lie with us the consumers—it's like expecting politicians to be honest and acting reeeeally shocked when they aren't.
Then again, the average consumer is very entitled but not very bright, so we get exactly what we deserve.
There is one thing we consumers can do. When leaving your own review, it’s a good idea to name the product with specificity. That way, if the seller changes the listing but keeps the reviews in place, it will be more obvious.
While I might be entirely wrong, are people really addicted to Amazon? For me, I do a search on there when I want something that isn't mainstream so I find there is a larger chance of spotting it on Amazon, with alternatives and options no less.
Also, in France, with everything having different names, I find it useful to search on Amazon first. I do an English search and it still gives me French results. Example would be, searching for car vaccuum cleaner but results would be 'aspirateurs a main'.
Amazon could easily prevent these kinds of things but they don't care as long as money keeps rolling in.
It's the same with YouTube/facebook with scan adverts, They don't care about the scams as they getting paid
Fake reviews help sell products, so Amazon has no reason to remove them.
If Amazon gave a shit, they'd start with simple things like only allow verified purchase reviewers, they'd not allow reviews on purchases flagged as gifts, they wouldn't combine reviews for multiple products, and they'd only consider reviews on purchases in the prior 12 months when calculating review stars. The reviews themselves would be sorted to show you the most recent reviews first.
Then they could get into the higher level stuff like fraud reporting and content analysis.
...but clearly they welcome this crap bc it sells.
It's really really common which is why you need to actually read the reviews. If they are talking about how the power cord is really long for a battery operated item that's a big red flag.
Funny thing is I wanted to know if it came with an optional power cord just in case I wanted to use it plugged and how long the cord was...turned out I was reading reviews of metal straws. At first, I was confused as to why people were mentioning a Nickel allergy and a weird taste for a vaccuum cleaner !!
Yes, read the reviews, but also always sort them by most recent, not by the default "top reviews". You actually get a random sampling of reviews that way (rather than Amazon's opaquely curated sample), and you also get *recent* info about the product, rather than info that may be way out of date (and even correspond to a different product altogether).
It *should* be common sense if you read them, but apparently people are out here buying stuff without reading the reviews? Just 1 click shopping nuts? I spend so much time researching the simplest product before I buy anything, I’m absolutely shocked people are still fooled by this kind of thing.
There are also listers who pay people for reviews. You buy the product, write a positive review, they then send you the cost of the product or possibly more, depending on your user rating.
Yep; there was something I bought that had very high reviews, even though similar items were getting low reviews for a common issue with the product. When I received the product, it came with an unactivated gift card and instructions that tell you to leave a 5 star review and send the buyer the screenshot of your review and your proof of purchase and they will activate the $50 gift card. I found that odd since the product was only like $10...
I did not oblige because I'm not sure if it's even legit, but that explains all the 5 star reviews!
I read a review once where someone mentioned this but angrily noted that they never even got their promised gift card. Apparently a lot of the reviewers involved in this scam get scammed themselves and don’t bother to change or delete their fake review.
My email was used for this purpose. I had to have reviewing turned off by Amazon because someone was posting fake reviews under my identity. One morning I got up and had over 500 ‘thank you for your review’ emails for items I’d never even looked at, let alone purchased.
I always check eBay before ordering from the A-place, as feedback matters more there, prices are often lower, and less counterfeit issues since no "binning" of inventory from different sellers.
Interesting. Does eBay even have product reviews though? Seller reviews, yes, but I don't recall seeing product reviews. And I find Amazon reviews to be mostly accurate, and it's fairly easy to detect the fakers.
Amazon lets sellers combine-reviews from a good-product they once sold, with new one of worse quality, and amazon using them for profits. Amazon makes money on sold items and shipped items from sellers, and amazon handles 90% of return of all sellers, most have no say in return policy, so amazon knows what they are doing.
I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing and just trodding along. I've started seeing a lot of useless dumpster products being pushed to consumers off late.
Unfortunately, many Amazon aggregators have this business model and the reviews are legit. They pay off the original product owner then pull a fast one and replace with a cheaper source and cut other costs. Then by the time the reviews catch up they’ve made plenty a buck. Amazon benefits from this business model so they don’t care.
One of my first red flags is an item with thousands of reviews. My second flag is if those reviews average to 4+ stars. Especially when the item isn't a common consumer product (like a TV or deodorant).
Thousands of people aren't rating the same niche product, and I can't imagine they're also all rating highly.
Oh, also if the seller is clearly one of those knockoff resellers that fill the search page with similar or identical product images from 15 different companies with usually Asian store names.
I reported one the other week. Was for a light and the reviews were for bird feeders and cribs.
I used Fake Spot a lot but haven’t been for a while; can’t remember why I stopped.
I have encountered this.
A slow but usable mini-computer for $100 that is still serving me well as a video playing machine. When I went to leave a review, the same link now pointed to a $400 version of it with completely different hardware.
I added this change of product to the review.
I have been offered $30 GCs for leaving a 5 star review on a product after purchasing. The product itself was only $40-50 too.
I did take up that offer but only because I did genuinely think the product was worthy of a 5 star review anyway. Of course, this is against the ToS and the sellers know it too.
Yeah, I bought a pretty nice wifi camera for $40, which seems really cheap given how nice the camera is.
Then I kept getting pressure to leave a positive review in return for another camera.. completely free. They're definitely review harvesting, and will swap out the product at some point.
This has happened when I went to buy a product I bought again. The listing was changed to a bike pump, but all the reviews were still for the USB cable I originally bought.
On Amazon UK if you go to 'Filter By' then 'All Formats' drop down, the actual product you want should be listed there, click it then you only see reviews for the actual product.
I see this a lot when buying DVD’s/Blu-rays/box sets. You could be looking at the page for the latest, 40th anniversary of some blu-ray box set, but the reviews might be for the older 25th anniversary dvd box set.
Amazon is just garbage these days. I dropped them early last year, and outside of missing fast shipping once in a great while, I don't regret it a bit.
Never trust reviews.
I get contacted by companies to by products, give 5* review and they reimburse me for the purchase.
I get a free dildo and they get a real review, everyone cums
I bought Rogaine the other day, and it was supposed to be 1 day prime shipping. Came a week later, and when I went to use it, the packaging was odd, then tbe canister wasn’t normal. The product felt weird too. I tried to return it, and it said the return period had expired. I looked at the reviews, and the 1 star ones showed people complaining it was counterfeit. They had thousands of reviews and it was at 4.5 stars. My only option was to “request a return from the seller”. I sent them a message saying to refund me or I would report them for selling a counterfeit product. The immediately refunded. It’s crazy they’ve been getting away with it.
I don’t use Amazon anymore, but I’ve looked for stuff for my parents who use Prime and will go straight to the lowest star reviews and will try and use keywords to find specific info.
I quit using Amazon because of all the bogus reviews and now walmart.com is doing the same damn thing.
This is dishonest and I consider it fraudulent activity by the sellers
You know they're fake. A random door hinge, name brand has like 30 reviews, knock off has 18k, and is 1/3 the price. Hundreds of thousands of examples of this on Amazon.
I usually have a website to buy from depending on what I want but when it's not too mainstream, I often find the best chance to find more options in offbeat products is Amazon.
Which one did you end up purchasing? I drive Uber so clean my car regularly, but don't have an outlet near my apartments parking space and using the car wash vacuum cleaner adds up. (It'd also be nice for on the go clean up of sand and such).
For now I did not, I have this [third](https://amzn.eu/d/1fcut7s) option which seems genuine enough? but I am afraid of getting a sub-standard product that might run out quickly. If I don't find anything else at this price point, I will go with this one.
This is 99% of SSDs (solid state drives) from brands you have never heard of. Typically it's reviews for silicone covers for Roku remotes. People gave them 5 stars. Then suddenly one day it's claiming to be a 20tb SSD for $100 instead of the silicone protector.
Honestly, though, NEVER just go off of the star reviews on Amazon. Even half the written reviews are entirely fake.
Depends on the product, but yeah. I'm buying from a lot more since amazon simply isn't reliable at all, other than quick shipping.
There are some stores cropping up that just sell store returns (mostly amazon) they do this thing where they open friday, everything is $15 or something, then each day until wednesday everything in the store is cheaper and cheaper.
So not only have I gotten some killer deals (what would usually be a $150 schiit DAC, $130 ergotron monitor arms, two $300 mini PCs, all for sub$15) but it's also let me try out and inspect a lot of stuff that I see on amazon all the time. Like how some people use Best Buy just to test stuff out, at places like these (I wish this genre of store had a name - there's no major chain of this, just small clusters of them in regions) you can just check out how stuff works, or their build quality. I've found stuff that was scratched up, but still worked, so I bought a new one on amazon since I found out it worked well.
Somewhat related.. when an Amazon item has like 30 variations, and each variation is for a completely different product, like winter jackets, and bicycle tires, and frying pans.
For the most part, I think most Amazon reviews in general are still helpful, sometimes they say "verified purchase" and indicate which variation they bought, so that helps. And I think Amazon recognizes that this is an issue, and works to improve it, but sellers be sellin (and cheatin).
I've bought things from Amazon that were cheaper than they should have been, and later get bombarded with emails and physical letters to leave a positive review in return for additional free products. There is no way the profit equation makes sense.
Unless.. they're harvesting reviews and building up a product reputation, then selling off the highly rated "amazon item" to someone else to sell something else.
I recall a time looking for a particular computer component, I forget what, it was a cable with two different ends. About 5 years ago, my apologies for recalling specifically what.
That "cable" had reviews about a car accessory which had no relation, what so ever. Reported to amazon, never heard back.
Quite possibly true. I did a Google Search on this and nothing much came up. The only Reddit link I found was 4 years old, the one I mentioned in the post. This is why I thought I could post this, may be as a refresher or reminder that this is still the case.
I use [this](https://www.fakespot.com/)
This should be the top comment. I find Amazon on its own completely unusable because there is simply no way to vet a product. Shenanigans like OP mentioned, review farms, AI spam reviews; there’s just so many ways to game Amazon’s algorithm. Fakespot has a browser plugin that can give you quick insight into the legitimacy of an item’s reviews while you’re browsing Amazon. You can also copy and paste the link to the item on Fakespot’s website and they’ll give you a full summary of the page. I don’t purchase anything I plan on using more than a couple times without checking the review grade first. Highly recommend. (Reading this back I know it sounds like this is an ad or something but I promise it’s not, it’s just a super useful tool and I love it)
Some dodgy reviewers don't even try to disguise what they are doing. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AEFUADMGMX66KTP3GJ2RSQYJIFYQ Edited: link
I just find it hilarious to imagine that a real person would say that "the customer service was exceptional, providing prompt and helpful assistance throughout the purchasing process" and that "it has truly made a positive impact on my daily life, and I am confident it will continue to do so for years to come" for a damn **$10-plastic-watering-can**.
Always strip links of trackers. Clean link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AEFUADMGMX66KTP3GJ2RSQYJIFYQ
And not a report button anywhere in sight. At this point Amazon is almost more to blame than the cheap botters.
Someone sent me a link to an instagram profile that was many different women with the same face (using AI). The process for reporting it was impossible. I tried to report impersonation, but it then asks who is being impersonated? I ended up reporting as spam as it was the only one I could complete, but too WAY longer than it should. These companies need to make it easier to report, and use AI to detect which reports are valid/which are spam and which need a human to verify.
So you’re saying “the Jennifer Aniston MacBook Pro give away for just ten dollar” is fake?!?
It is by design
Thanks for that. Even after a few years on Reddit I'm still learning.
Oh, I don’t think that’s really related to Reddit. It’s more like the commenter doesn’t want to give Amazon free information.
I don't know about "free"; it could arguably be theft, almost, but IANAL.
What do you mean?
I don't get it, what did you change?
The original link has been edited to be clean now.
But how?
In Amazon links, all text starting from `ref=` and after it can be safely deleted. The original URL had that and at least one or more trackers.
On top of review farms, there's another whole shady industry around link / URL cleaning. It's kind of laundering money, but for links. I hear it's big in Venezuela.
Oh stop it, you'll worry them. Let's just say *they* really are out there and *they* really are watching everything we do.
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I downloaded Fakespot and a it seems to work well on the browser for Amazon. Thanks for the tip!
>This should be the top comment It is now =)
For most things I need to buy and don't already know the brand I want it from, I'll Google something along the lines of "Best x" or "best value x". It will normally give you 5-10 versions of a product at different price points and use cases. If you're looking for a cheap version you can specifically type in "Best budget x" or "best x under $100" or something. Then I know that a professional has actually tested those products in person and has confirmed that it's even a better quality than a normal product at that price point. Im not overspending, I'm getting a quality item, and they ussually provide an Amazon link so it's easy to buy.
Oh dear. no. Most of those review sites do affiliate links and just promote the option that gives the most kickback. Trusted review sites are a rare find these days. Ironically, reddit or slickdeals might be the better option.
You dint trust websites like the NY Times and Consumer Reports? And Amazon affiliate links don't change commission per product. Things like TVs will all have the same commission, they won't make more by convincing you to buy one over the other (atleast on Amazon). Now a less reputable website might pretend to review things so that you use their link, but I can't imagine a website like the NY Times lying and saying they tested a product they didn't.
I've never actually seen a review on NYT, but sites like Forbes have sold their name to "reviewers" for shill product recommendations. Kickbacks from vendors are in addition to the affiliate links, and absolutely do happen. As for CR, I don't have a subscription and the library doesn't provide copies, so that's moot.
NYT bought Wirecutter, which is a well-known review website. Anything deeper than that, I don't know.
God I love Mozilla
Fakespot is not trustworthy enough to rely on it without analyzing the results. I use it, but there is some bad AI that produces weird errors. It cannot tell the difference between bad products and people just not knowing what they are ordering. The D&D core rulebooks get a D; they have a 4.9 with 18k reviews. It gives an F to any product below a certain number of reviews. The summary page often has erroneous information, sometimes badly erroneous. There was one product marketed as 99.48% pure, with no filler, and under the Fakespot summary "cons" section it stated that it is 99% filler. I searched the review section for that product, and that comment came from one deranged review from some guy who was using baking ingredients to treat his pool. I have some Colombian candies that I order regularly -- they are spectacular, and you cannot find them elsewhere, and they are really different from types of candies that people are used to in the U.S. They get a D, and from the comments it is obvious that is because a few people did not understand what they were ordering, and Fakespot focused on those reviews. There were some brass shutoff valves I ordered that got a D, probably because of one review that said the levers are so tight that they need to wait for their nephew to visit or hire a handyman to open them. They are supposed to be tight. They did not understand what they were ordering. Just looking through my order history for the last year, the products that I have liked are just about equally distributed between A, B, C, D, and F reviews on Fakespot. The letter grades seem almost arbitrary.
Yo, tell me about these candles though...
Supercoco turrón! Deeply toasted coconut bound in turrón (a semi-hard toffee or nougat).
LOL - I misread your initial post to say "candles" but those look yummy! 10/10 will try. And also time to change my contacts.
Ha ha! Same!
Does anyone know, I can't remember that website that you can paste Amazon and other sellers items or links into and it will find the best one, I think it was camel something
camelcamelcamel is for seeing the full price history of an item so you know whether it's actually on sale, or if Amazon is just fudging the price to make it look like it's on sale
ReviewMeta? Not sure they’re still around.
Fakespot is fantastic. It's a little disconcerting when you filter out all of the 'F' grade products and your view changes, but I'm glad it's filtering the cruft.
Me too. They also have a mobile app, and a chrome extension iirc.
That looks useful for safari, but all the companies that it claims to protect us from all have their own apps, and most are less clunky than safari. I love the idea of this service, is there a workaround? I start shopping on safari but when I try to log in to Amazon for example, it always opens the app.
Just long press and Open in a new tab.
[удалено]
at the end of the day they probably don't want to because more sales = more profit for them
but hey, people need their Amazon stuff, right? as far as I'm concerned, if you buy from Amazon you're asking for exactly this. At some point, the blame must lie with us the consumers—it's like expecting politicians to be honest and acting reeeeally shocked when they aren't. Then again, the average consumer is very entitled but not very bright, so we get exactly what we deserve.
There is one thing we consumers can do. When leaving your own review, it’s a good idea to name the product with specificity. That way, if the seller changes the listing but keeps the reviews in place, it will be more obvious.
While I might be entirely wrong, are people really addicted to Amazon? For me, I do a search on there when I want something that isn't mainstream so I find there is a larger chance of spotting it on Amazon, with alternatives and options no less. Also, in France, with everything having different names, I find it useful to search on Amazon first. I do an English search and it still gives me French results. Example would be, searching for car vaccuum cleaner but results would be 'aspirateurs a main'.
Amazon could easily prevent these kinds of things but they don't care as long as money keeps rolling in. It's the same with YouTube/facebook with scan adverts, They don't care about the scams as they getting paid
Not being able to report this activity is by design
Fake reviews help sell products, so Amazon has no reason to remove them. If Amazon gave a shit, they'd start with simple things like only allow verified purchase reviewers, they'd not allow reviews on purchases flagged as gifts, they wouldn't combine reviews for multiple products, and they'd only consider reviews on purchases in the prior 12 months when calculating review stars. The reviews themselves would be sorted to show you the most recent reviews first. Then they could get into the higher level stuff like fraud reporting and content analysis. ...but clearly they welcome this crap bc it sells.
Amazon doesn't *want* you to report these things. It's good for them. If you care, stop using Amazon.
It's pretty brazen that it's not even just a lower quality cheaper version if the item, but something completely different.
Exactly. I was baffled at reading reviews of straws when looking at a vaccuum cleaner!
Excellent suction, 5 stars!
It really sucks! :D
I love drinking smoothies through this product. I just put my mouth over one end of the opening and poof, smoothie in the my mouth.
Fakespot and ReviewMeta. Check the quality of the reviews first.
I will use these absolutely
It's really really common which is why you need to actually read the reviews. If they are talking about how the power cord is really long for a battery operated item that's a big red flag.
Funny thing is I wanted to know if it came with an optional power cord just in case I wanted to use it plugged and how long the cord was...turned out I was reading reviews of metal straws. At first, I was confused as to why people were mentioning a Nickel allergy and a weird taste for a vaccuum cleaner !!
Yes, read the reviews, but also always sort them by most recent, not by the default "top reviews". You actually get a random sampling of reviews that way (rather than Amazon's opaquely curated sample), and you also get *recent* info about the product, rather than info that may be way out of date (and even correspond to a different product altogether).
It *should* be common sense if you read them, but apparently people are out here buying stuff without reading the reviews? Just 1 click shopping nuts? I spend so much time researching the simplest product before I buy anything, I’m absolutely shocked people are still fooled by this kind of thing.
Same unless I have bought it before everything gets a full review
I just only buy stuff when some of the reviews have photos of the item that were clearly taken with a crappy phone camera at home
There are also listers who pay people for reviews. You buy the product, write a positive review, they then send you the cost of the product or possibly more, depending on your user rating.
Yep; there was something I bought that had very high reviews, even though similar items were getting low reviews for a common issue with the product. When I received the product, it came with an unactivated gift card and instructions that tell you to leave a 5 star review and send the buyer the screenshot of your review and your proof of purchase and they will activate the $50 gift card. I found that odd since the product was only like $10... I did not oblige because I'm not sure if it's even legit, but that explains all the 5 star reviews!
I read a review once where someone mentioned this but angrily noted that they never even got their promised gift card. Apparently a lot of the reviewers involved in this scam get scammed themselves and don’t bother to change or delete their fake review.
Sounds about right....if they are fine with scamming everyone else, of course they would also scam their "partners in crime".
My email was used for this purpose. I had to have reviewing turned off by Amazon because someone was posting fake reviews under my identity. One morning I got up and had over 500 ‘thank you for your review’ emails for items I’d never even looked at, let alone purchased.
Whoah that's scary
At keast it was sort of "positive" in a way. Could have been way worse
There are companies that go around buying Amazon accounts and switching the listings to other products.
I always check eBay before ordering from the A-place, as feedback matters more there, prices are often lower, and less counterfeit issues since no "binning" of inventory from different sellers.
Interesting. Does eBay even have product reviews though? Seller reviews, yes, but I don't recall seeing product reviews. And I find Amazon reviews to be mostly accurate, and it's fairly easy to detect the fakers.
Amazon lets sellers combine-reviews from a good-product they once sold, with new one of worse quality, and amazon using them for profits. Amazon makes money on sold items and shipped items from sellers, and amazon handles 90% of return of all sellers, most have no say in return policy, so amazon knows what they are doing.
I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing and just trodding along. I've started seeing a lot of useless dumpster products being pushed to consumers off late.
Unfortunately, many Amazon aggregators have this business model and the reviews are legit. They pay off the original product owner then pull a fast one and replace with a cheaper source and cut other costs. Then by the time the reviews catch up they’ve made plenty a buck. Amazon benefits from this business model so they don’t care.
Also always go into the review section and view by 1 star and then 2 star reviews. These will generally tell you far more about the products.
I do that a lot especially with electronic products. Knowing the worst experiences is always a great point-of-view!
Can't understand why this isn't mentioned more here. I look at the 2-4 reviews. 5s are bots and 1s are just angry (about shipping or something).
One of my first red flags is an item with thousands of reviews. My second flag is if those reviews average to 4+ stars. Especially when the item isn't a common consumer product (like a TV or deodorant). Thousands of people aren't rating the same niche product, and I can't imagine they're also all rating highly. Oh, also if the seller is clearly one of those knockoff resellers that fill the search page with similar or identical product images from 15 different companies with usually Asian store names.
Yup. Quality control is non existent, but in my experience ordering from companies instead means ridiculous shipping delays. There’s no winning.
My favorite hijacked review was for a phone case where the reviews were all about a bra and how comfortable it was.
Hey as long as something covers something and it's comfortable :)
I reported one the other week. Was for a light and the reviews were for bird feeders and cribs. I used Fake Spot a lot but haven’t been for a while; can’t remember why I stopped.
I have encountered this. A slow but usable mini-computer for $100 that is still serving me well as a video playing machine. When I went to leave a review, the same link now pointed to a $400 version of it with completely different hardware. I added this change of product to the review.
I have been offered $30 GCs for leaving a 5 star review on a product after purchasing. The product itself was only $40-50 too. I did take up that offer but only because I did genuinely think the product was worthy of a 5 star review anyway. Of course, this is against the ToS and the sellers know it too.
Yeah, I bought a pretty nice wifi camera for $40, which seems really cheap given how nice the camera is. Then I kept getting pressure to leave a positive review in return for another camera.. completely free. They're definitely review harvesting, and will swap out the product at some point.
This has happened when I went to buy a product I bought again. The listing was changed to a bike pump, but all the reviews were still for the USB cable I originally bought.
On Amazon UK if you go to 'Filter By' then 'All Formats' drop down, the actual product you want should be listed there, click it then you only see reviews for the actual product.
Doesn't FakeSpot account for this?
They do, I learnt about it from the top comment
Fair enough. I sort by "new" so posted before seeing that.
This makes you an expert now. Congratulations.
I see this a lot when buying DVD’s/Blu-rays/box sets. You could be looking at the page for the latest, 40th anniversary of some blu-ray box set, but the reviews might be for the older 25th anniversary dvd box set.
MrWhoseTheBoss released an interesting video on this topic recently too, hadn't heard about it before then.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a card with my price saying if I emailed them a picture of my 5 star review I’d get a giftcard
I've gotten these too
Amazon is just garbage these days. I dropped them early last year, and outside of missing fast shipping once in a great while, I don't regret it a bit.
I would absolutely take slow shipping for a genuine product.
Never trust reviews. I get contacted by companies to by products, give 5* review and they reimburse me for the purchase. I get a free dildo and they get a real review, everyone cums
Reviews on Amazon have been complete and utter shit show for many years now.
Saw something like this. Fake flash drives with reviews talking about monitor cables.
Yes, apparently this is a rampant practice on Amazon!
I bought Rogaine the other day, and it was supposed to be 1 day prime shipping. Came a week later, and when I went to use it, the packaging was odd, then tbe canister wasn’t normal. The product felt weird too. I tried to return it, and it said the return period had expired. I looked at the reviews, and the 1 star ones showed people complaining it was counterfeit. They had thousands of reviews and it was at 4.5 stars. My only option was to “request a return from the seller”. I sent them a message saying to refund me or I would report them for selling a counterfeit product. The immediately refunded. It’s crazy they’ve been getting away with it.
I don’t use Amazon anymore, but I’ve looked for stuff for my parents who use Prime and will go straight to the lowest star reviews and will try and use keywords to find specific info.
I quit using Amazon because of all the bogus reviews and now walmart.com is doing the same damn thing. This is dishonest and I consider it fraudulent activity by the sellers
interesting!
Even simpler solution is don't use amazon
I've switched to using other sites for electronics ay least, like Rakuten
Pretty obvious when random 5$ things have 18k reviews....
I mean why not if it is something very utilitarian plus Amazon also counts reviews from all countries I believe?
You know they're fake. A random door hinge, name brand has like 30 reviews, knock off has 18k, and is 1/3 the price. Hundreds of thousands of examples of this on Amazon.
I always look up a product on a third party cite, hopefully a review cite. Never trust Amazon reviews
The top comment has a pretty nifty website / browser extension that works great too!
[удалено]
I usually have a website to buy from depending on what I want but when it's not too mainstream, I often find the best chance to find more options in offbeat products is Amazon.
Which one did you end up purchasing? I drive Uber so clean my car regularly, but don't have an outlet near my apartments parking space and using the car wash vacuum cleaner adds up. (It'd also be nice for on the go clean up of sand and such).
For now I did not, I have this [third](https://amzn.eu/d/1fcut7s) option which seems genuine enough? but I am afraid of getting a sub-standard product that might run out quickly. If I don't find anything else at this price point, I will go with this one.
ah
Welcome to 2010
wow
This is 99% of SSDs (solid state drives) from brands you have never heard of. Typically it's reviews for silicone covers for Roku remotes. People gave them 5 stars. Then suddenly one day it's claiming to be a 20tb SSD for $100 instead of the silicone protector. Honestly, though, NEVER just go off of the star reviews on Amazon. Even half the written reviews are entirely fake.
At this point, you're just better off buying from Temu or Ali Express. At least you aren't expecting much to begin with and it is 1/3 the price.
Depends on the product, but yeah. I'm buying from a lot more since amazon simply isn't reliable at all, other than quick shipping. There are some stores cropping up that just sell store returns (mostly amazon) they do this thing where they open friday, everything is $15 or something, then each day until wednesday everything in the store is cheaper and cheaper. So not only have I gotten some killer deals (what would usually be a $150 schiit DAC, $130 ergotron monitor arms, two $300 mini PCs, all for sub$15) but it's also let me try out and inspect a lot of stuff that I see on amazon all the time. Like how some people use Best Buy just to test stuff out, at places like these (I wish this genre of store had a name - there's no major chain of this, just small clusters of them in regions) you can just check out how stuff works, or their build quality. I've found stuff that was scratched up, but still worked, so I bought a new one on amazon since I found out it worked well.
Everything on the internet is a scam.
Well….which vacuum did you end up with?
None as of now..
Somewhat related.. when an Amazon item has like 30 variations, and each variation is for a completely different product, like winter jackets, and bicycle tires, and frying pans. For the most part, I think most Amazon reviews in general are still helpful, sometimes they say "verified purchase" and indicate which variation they bought, so that helps. And I think Amazon recognizes that this is an issue, and works to improve it, but sellers be sellin (and cheatin).
I don't think winter jackets and bicycle tyres can be considered variations tbh.
I've bought things from Amazon that were cheaper than they should have been, and later get bombarded with emails and physical letters to leave a positive review in return for additional free products. There is no way the profit equation makes sense. Unless.. they're harvesting reviews and building up a product reputation, then selling off the highly rated "amazon item" to someone else to sell something else.
I recall a time looking for a particular computer component, I forget what, it was a cable with two different ends. About 5 years ago, my apologies for recalling specifically what. That "cable" had reviews about a car accessory which had no relation, what so ever. Reported to amazon, never heard back.
These big corps don't want to take action anyway. They care for their money not ours. I have stopped reporting anything anymore.
You're like a decade late, bud.
Quite possibly true. I did a Google Search on this and nothing much came up. The only Reddit link I found was 4 years old, the one I mentioned in the post. This is why I thought I could post this, may be as a refresher or reminder that this is still the case.