Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows this.
Unless you know the category or have a trusted brand, Amazon has become absolutely junk. Search for something where you likely won't know any trusted brands (such as car covers) and you'll get 200 results with exactly the same picture but random brand names.
All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and Amazon sellers won't even bother customizing the images.
> Search for something where you likely won't know any trusted brands (such as car covers) and you'll get 200 results with exactly the same picture but random brand names.
> All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and Amazon sellers won't even bother customizing the images.
Which, by the way, is also the literal user experience of AliExpress or Taobao. You forgot to mention widely varying prices.
Whenever I see that (or any Chinese on the packaging), it's a clue to me to go look for the literal same item on AliExpress, usually for a significantly cheaper price (like $1.50 + $3 shipping vs $17, to give a recent example).
The trademarks are required for Chinese businesses to house products in the USA for Amazon FBA (freigh by Amazon). They make non-sensical trademarks so there's no conflict with the trademark office. Techquickie (Linus Tech Tips) has an episode on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UrqlMfwUC4
Amazon 3P (third party) has essentially become what eBay was in the 90s except the crap is sometimes housed in the USA for faster delivery. Amazon doesn't care. It pretty much all fell apart after he separated from McKenzie and lost the way.
This is what saddens me. These dropship sellers don’t even buy one item that they are selling to test, try out, take pictures, etc. they just use the alibaba pics and let it rip. It’s all so tiresome at this point
Amazon reviews and ratings are still useful signal if you know how to interpret:
1. Anything less than 4.6 is probably junk.
2. Ignore the 4-5 star reviews, only read the 1-3 star reviews
3. Really read them.
4. A good product will still generally have 2-3% of reviews at 1 star. Less than 2% is a red flag, more than 4% is also a red flag.
There's still "free" delivery, but honestly I've tried to move away from it entirely. I don't succeed entirely, but I always try to find another seller I'd rather support
The irony is you can now read the reviews on Amazon and make up your mind if you want to but it, and then go buy it from somewhere else even, quelle horreur, a local bricks and mortar bookshop.
I have been semi-reliant on FakeSpot to deal with fake reviews, but I just ran one of the Tom Lesley books through, and FakeSpot gave it a solid A. Looks like I’ll have to find a better way going forward. Sigh…
Anything coming directly from a customer is probably refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are on these little cards they include with the product encouraging reviews in exchange for a gift card or something similar. What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it using a fake incentive card they created?
Amazon could take your report then actually open the product and see if the incentive card is actually stored with every product. But that's a bigger task than just trusting the proof you sent in.
> Anything coming directly from a customer is probably refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are on these little cards they include with the product encouraging reviews in exchange for a gift card or something similar. What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it using a fake incentive card they created?
Maybe the two of you have different definitions of "irrefutable." If I say, "They ship packages with cards in them that offer a gift card in exchange for a five-start reviews," I would personally call the presence of such a gift card offer, irrefutable proof.
True, my testimony alone is not irrefutable proof, but let's compare to a science paper. It says they have proved that light's path can be bent by gravity. Well, science papers have included outright frauds before, so the paper in and of itself is not "irrefutable proof," but the claims within it can be refuted by attempting to replicate the experiment.
And so it is with the gift-card-offers. A single report or tens of thousands of reports are not irrefutable proof, but they explain how to replicate the result, and if Amazon choose to ignore these reports rather than attempt to replicate what they describe, that is on Amazon.
Ultimately, everything a customer reports can be faked. Businesses that ignore customer complaints because they might be faked, and do so when it "happens to" make them money to ignore customer reports... Are not suffering from being unable to prove that the reports are correct.
They are suffering from making too much money to want to know whether they are complicit in fraudulent behavious on the part of their partners.
Yes it is work to find out if the customer is describing an irrefutable way of discovering whether the customer is telling the truth. It is not the Universe's responsibility to make cracking down on fraud easy: It is Amazon's responsibility to organize their business around not making easy money at the expense of their customers, and if cracking down on fraud is too expensive, it is on Amazon to change their business model.
"It's too much work to crack down on fraud" ought to be rejected as an unacceptable thing to say about any business.
This suggests they wanted amazon to accept their "irrefutable proof".
I hate fake reviews. I'm not defending them. But the fact that literally every site of significant size that offers reviews struggles to control fake ones should be a clue that it isn't so easy to manage.
Just google/bing "{big site name} fake reviews" and you'll find this issue plagues everyone, not just amazon.
I am not saying it's easy to manage, I am saying something far more critical of Amazon and others that hide behind this "it's too hard to do, wah, wah" excuse:
If it is too difficult to prevent your customers from being defrauded when they do business with you, find another business model.
No business has an inalienable right to exist, much less an inalienable right to choose whatever business model they like and then shrug their shoulders at whether they are complicit in crimes against their own customers.
Nobody ordered Amazon to allow other merchants on their platform. Nobody told Amazon that comingling goods with third parties was an acceptable way to cut their costs and become more "efficient" at a business.
They chose to do these things, and it is on them to find a way to stop stealing from their customers, or face criticism from people like me.
I do not accept "It is too hard to police fraud" as an excuse for making money from fraud. I also do not accept "everybody's doing it" as an excuse.
You have a valid point but then for a company of the size of Amazon so deeply in tech, wouldn’t take much to find out that I have a decade old account with several thousand $ of purchase, abiding by the rules all along. The probability of such an account being a competitor would be extremely less.
> Amazon could take your report then actually open the product and see if the incentive card is actually stored with every product. But that's a bigger task than just trusting the proof you sent in.
I find reviewmeta.com helps a lot. Having said that, it doesn't work on these "Tom Lesley" books because they only have fake ratings, no reviews (fake or otherwise).
