The fake review problem on Amazon is much bigger than people think. Here are my two anecdotes:
1. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review. Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That manipulation technique wasn't enough for them though. They might have merged the listing with some other item. Even though the item was released this year, it has reviews from 2014.
2. When I need a cable or something similar, I go to a page like vipon.com . They offer huge discounts on some items on amazon (sometimes even -80%). They of course "suggest" leaving a review.
The more I look at reviews, the less I trust them. I see similar patterns for most products on amazon.
Almost all of their products have 500-600 reviews and all are 5 star, not even a single one is less than 5 stars. Moreover, most of reviews are created in November 2017 and each reviewer has left couple of 5-star reviews only for same seller's product within a week.
These fake reviews could have been detected by even a basic detection system. Not sure why Amazon has not already detected and removed them.
Amazon is starting to feel more and more like eBay. The same product sold by multiple vendors under different names, questionable reviews, clearly fraudulent sellers and so on.
I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.
EBay started at the opposite end of the spectrum, but they converged to the same problem.
Amazon
"I'm buying from a reputable company, so I can trust that the seller is accurately representing the item."
turned to
"I thought I was buying from an established company, but instead I'm buying from a questionable person that is using Amazon as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."
EBay
"I'm buying from a random person that I don't trust and may be misrepresenting the item, but it looks like they've described all the problems and got the same use from the item as I would like to get, so I'm comfortable with taking a chance."
turned to
"I thought I was buying from a random person, but instead I'm buying from a questionable company that is using Ebay as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."
I wish that Amazon could split the market place off. I disliked it from the first day they introduced it. I want to buy from Amazon not some company I've never heard of.
It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.
Same here. I used to buy everything off of Amazon, but now I have to scrape the Internet for reviews to make sure that I can trust the thing I'm buying is actually going to be of good quality.
I was buying something that's currently out of stock most places.
I looked on Amazon, saw some "3rd party" sellers that said they would have it on stock various dates about 1 week in the future, and I didn't believe them.
Some sellers had hundreds of positive reviews, others had only a few, most were an "appropriate" price (not to high or low), and all of them had the prime designation, but I still didn't believe them.
Amazon has lost my trust here, completely. And I don't know if they will be able to get it back. I just can't trust that they will get me what I bought in a reasonable time frame.
I got it from a previous years unheard of (by me) retailer online. Reviews of the company elsewhere on the internet seemed trustworthy, and I took a leap on them, and it paid off.
I trusted an unknown website more than I trusted Amazon.
Last year I bought an SD Card that turned out to be fake. There wasn't a straightforward return option for this item so I sent them an e-mail with a title "I this eBay? Because you go to eBay to buy fake SD Cards". Got a refund but I'm not going to buy anything from Amazon that is known to have this problem.
I just checked the item, still sold with solid 4.5 stars and occasional 1star reviews with pictures documenting that they also got a fake one.
Well the situation does seem quite bad when you see people who leave fake reviews become brazen enough to actually advertise their services on Amazon itself [1]. I reported this review about 10 days ago and it's still up. The email address provided appears on hundreds of product listings [2]. When they can't even filter out nonsense like this I can only assume they put zero effort into tackling fake reviews.
...this is sad in the instance you describe because the actual seller did not request that 'advert for reviews' and it now marks their product as 'fake'. Yet the actual seller is legit and doing a great job according to 'fakespot'. Sample listing:
Here's my anecdote: my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. FakeSpot gave her most popular book an F grade because people were "suspiciously positive".
Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it being fake.
In her case, she knows these people personally and they're not fake scripts. Yet FakeSpot, who OP holds up as doing the great job that Amazon is not, is completely wrong.
tldr; spotting fake reviews is harder than it seems apparently.
EDIT: the other thing is that she has lost quite a bit of legitimate reviews from Amazon deleting them. Amazon is actually doing more than the end user sees about this problem.
EDIT 2: Another thing Amazon completely ignores are reviewers who get an early copy of the product in exchange for an honest review. This is how a lot of people kickstart reviews on their products and Amazon completely ignores that valid use case. In fact, they hurt it because they don't mark those reviews as "Verified Purchase" since the reviewer got the product outside of the Amazon channels. They need to come up with a system for this.
> my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books.
So your wife has people she knows leave positive reviews in order to bump her book's review score and you're upset that Fakespot gave it an F due to them being non-organic reviews?
As a consumer it sounds like Fakespot is doing a great job, and exactly what it states on the tin. What your wife is doing is at best dishonest and I'm glad they're exposed as sham reviews. Hopefully these people are putting a disclaimer in the reviews stating the conflict but I highly doubt it.
> Yet FakeSpot, who OP holds up as doing the great job that Amazon is not, is completely wrong.
Except according to your own anecdote they were completely right?
I totally understand where you're coming from on this, but, you're 100% wrong here. Fakespot is looking for unbiased reviews and friend-reviews are not unbiased, what do you think the odds are that one of your wife's friends was going to leave a negative review?
Replying to sibling comments: to be fair to miles_matthias, it's hard to NOT have your friends review on Amazon etc. They all want to do it. I just checked my wife's and I recognize several friends' names in the reviews on Amazon.
OTOH, she got hosed on Goodreads by someone who admitted to not reading the book, and several people came along and validated the hosing (like a voting circle or something). This is a pretty difficult problem.
I have been using Fakespot on Amazon and pay for the subscription features to simplify my online purchasing because it is needed. From what I have seen, Fakespot will detect ANY biased reviews. So if your wife had friends read and then leave a review with an affiliation as they mention in their FAQ/About.
I find that reviews on books and reviews on everything else amazon sells are two completely different ballgames. I don't trust product reviews on amazon at all anymore, but I still trust book reviews to be honest 99% of the time. Books don't seem to be plagued by the same review spam as everything else on amazon.
I don't care much about the reviews, but I care a lot about the fake / phony / not-as-described merchandise: http://seliger.com/2017/01/09/tools-continued-careful-buy-am... . I've actually changed behavior and tried harder to buy from the original maker, if possible.
I am much more wary about buying from Amazon than most of my peers, who easily click and buy on a whim or out of habit. I went to buy a toy at a brick and mortar, and compared the price to Amazon while there - $12.99 in the store and $27.xx at Amazon! I think they've marketed them to be the low price leaders but that's definitely not the case.
I'm also concerned about counterfeit products - I don't care as much about reviews because I'll usually have researched beforehand or already know what I want. However with brand name items, I always wonder if it's the real thing and as a result have stopped buying shoes, etc from Amazon. I also don't buy anything from Amazon that goes in my body or on my body (supplements, cosmetics/hygiene, etc). I stick with brick & mortar or the online storefront.
It's unfortunate, because Amazon is fantastic as a concept, unfortunately my trust in them does not extend to most items. I'd rather pay more and be confident in the product. I think whatever they are doing is working for them and they have no incentive to change because the vast majority of customers are not so discerning.
This is happening because people now assume Amazon's prices are the best - always. But, that is not the case. There are times where people are knowingly listing a product about market prices to catch people who are caught unaware.
Once upon a time, I bought two boxes of Ener-G. It was only later I found out I have paid 100% markup on those boxes. I felt stupid that I hadn't verified the prices on the manufacturer's site.
Was this from a 3rd party seller? I have seen a lot of 3rd party sellers have listings for pretty outrageous prices. I think they're either trying to catch people who don't shop around / don't know what the product is worth, or they are just not managing their pricing well. On a lot of popular products you can see an example of the latter where Amazon themselves will be selling a product for a given price, and then if you look at other offers you'll see the same thing being sold by other sellers for double or triple Amazon's price.
I don't think Amazon has marketed themselves to be low price leaders for a long time now. In fact, a lot of people around me know they pay a slight premium when shopping on Amazon, and do it nonetheless for the convenience it offers.
This has been true for years. For many categories, Amazon pricing is awful. My wife heavily comparison shops, and Target/Walmart almost always comes out on top.
During Christmas shopping, I’ve seen more than a few folks buying stuff at Toys R Us to sell on Amazon.
I've seen similarly high prices on office supplies of the sort that people would set up subscriptions for like toner. My expectation there is that someone hacked the price up in the hopes that those subscribers wouldn't notice.
The problem is massive. Most people haven't noticed yet but it's only a matter of time. Eventually everyone gets burned at least once and Amazon becomes the new ebay.
They need to get a handle on their supply chain and stop outsourcing so much of their product listings to shady third party sellers. Shady third party sellers go hand-in-hand with fake reviews. Most reputable brands don't want to get their hands dirty with that stuff. It's guys making margin on reselling that have all the skin in the game and most of the incentive to manipulate the system.
I've never gotten a fake from any brick and mortar or online merchant that sells direct. Only places I've gotten fakes and been duped by rampant fake reviews are eBay and Amazon. Once a competitor gets their shit together (I'm betting on Walmart) and has an equally convenient online store, Amazon will be the Myspace of online sales.
People have loyatly to brands but not the company that sells them. If something better comes along I'll switch immediately just like I did years ago with ebay
Social proof via reviews (of products, restaurants, anything) is a great idea if you can assume good intent. Back in the good ol' days of the Internet this seemed plausible for some reason, but now there's real money to be made and that's out the window.
Amazon and Yelp and the like may be better or worse at stemming the tide of fakery, but asking them to be better isn't going to fundamentally help. The whole idea is broken.
This is not just Amazon’s problem. App store ratings, Reddit comments, Twitter/FB feeds, and Net Neutrality comments are all gamed. We are living in the age of human controlled bots looking to manipulate other humans through what we read.
Generally I always go to review sites first like wire cutter to see what are the best stuff, then I would see the little details, mostly what bad reviews say about it to contradict. A lot good reviews I can sniff out as fluff with a 5 star label. The bad thing is that when I see an avg of 4.5 stars with 100+ reviews, there is a slight bias inside me for this product. Amazon could do a better job to weight the avg stars.
If Amazon starts penalizing products for fake reviews then it's probably just a matter of time until that's weaponized by competitors to tank competing products. Then I imagine Amazon will have to come out with a "disavow review" tool similar to Google's disavow backlinks (to counteract targeted negative SEO).
I tried to buy my son a remote control car on Amazon a few weeks ago. I gave up after wading through 2 pages of 5 star reviewed products where the reviews all looked the same, all had the same structure. Many referenced "my 11 year old son", or the name of the company. This seems like something that can be weeded out using ML sentiment analysis. If too many reviews have the same structure, your posting gets demoted. If I could have found one legit looking review I would have bought that car, instead I gave up and went to The hobby store.
Fake reviews? I received a firkin fake Bose QC-35 II Headphone! Check out the fake product and read the reviews, and this listing is still active even after Amazon verified and refunded me the cost of the product.
There are groups that do both: buying the first batches of products and writing nice reviews, then the seller will pay for what they have done, it's a mature business these days: you hire a team to market you at Amazon by faking reviews after "real" purchases(will be compensated or rewarded under the counter afterwards). This is very hard to detect indeed.
Maybe Amazon can have some AI algorithm, that is for any newly arrived products with non-sales yet, monitoring the activities on them closely,the fake purchase and review must have some common pattern(same address, same ID, same IP,etc).
But then, why does Amazon want to do that? it will decrease its own profit.
So yes, customers will be the one got screwed up no matter what.
Amazon has a habit of removing reviews if they contain words like counterfeit. This is likely due to the issue of counterfeit items on Amazon and intermingling of goods between vendors including Amazon itself.
I briefly considered offering a curated review service for Amazon many years back (I know it's unethical and it was just posturing) and was not surprised to find many services already offering that.
I thought Millennials had become desensitized to all 5 star over the top, big flashy sounding reviews so a service that carefully curates reviews for top items seemed like a decent idea. Sprinkle a few 1 star reviews for the wrong item sent or a fault of Amazon, a few 4 stars raving about the product but complaining about some minor aspect irrelevant to the average buyer to make it sound authentic. Many people compare a few products and when they make a purchase, they do so feeling really proud of themselves that they picked the perfect product for the best price. The "it's too good to be true" doesn't really seem to work anymore. This honestly seems to be the case for every Amazon product these days. We'll probabzky get desensitized to this soon too and something else will come up.
That said, fake products are ridiculous and there are a few sites I've bookmarked that do a pretty decent job of spotting a fake product and I do admit it's becoming harder to differentiate lately but the too good to be true adage still stands.
I got scammed on some hdmi cables and iPhone charging cables a few months back. They all broke within a month, which I thought was weird, definitely the worst purchases I’ve made on amazon but they were top reviewed products on the front page of a search.
I just checked them on fakespot and they were both rated at 98% fake reviews. This is pretty confidence shattering for me; how do I pay $80 a year for prime if amazon is in cahoots with such obvious scams...
[+] [-] jacek|8 years ago|reply
1. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review. Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That manipulation technique wasn't enough for them though. They might have merged the listing with some other item. Even though the item was released this year, it has reviews from 2014.
2. When I need a cable or something similar, I go to a page like vipon.com . They offer huge discounts on some items on amazon (sometimes even -80%). They of course "suggest" leaving a review.
The more I look at reviews, the less I trust them. I see similar patterns for most products on amazon.
[+] [-] bduerst|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lightwin|8 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
Almost all of their products have 500-600 reviews and all are 5 star, not even a single one is less than 5 stars. Moreover, most of reviews are created in November 2017 and each reviewer has left couple of 5-star reviews only for same seller's product within a week.
These fake reviews could have been detected by even a basic detection system. Not sure why Amazon has not already detected and removed them.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|8 years ago|reply
I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.
[+] [-] xbkingx|8 years ago|reply
Amazon "I'm buying from a reputable company, so I can trust that the seller is accurately representing the item." turned to "I thought I was buying from an established company, but instead I'm buying from a questionable person that is using Amazon as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."
EBay "I'm buying from a random person that I don't trust and may be misrepresenting the item, but it looks like they've described all the problems and got the same use from the item as I would like to get, so I'm comfortable with taking a chance." turned to "I thought I was buying from a random person, but instead I'm buying from a questionable company that is using Ebay as a level of obfuscation. They are probably hiding something, so I don't trust them."
[+] [-] ajmurmann|8 years ago|reply
It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.
[+] [-] BlackjackCF|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Klathmon|8 years ago|reply
I was buying something that's currently out of stock most places.
I looked on Amazon, saw some "3rd party" sellers that said they would have it on stock various dates about 1 week in the future, and I didn't believe them.
Some sellers had hundreds of positive reviews, others had only a few, most were an "appropriate" price (not to high or low), and all of them had the prime designation, but I still didn't believe them.
Amazon has lost my trust here, completely. And I don't know if they will be able to get it back. I just can't trust that they will get me what I bought in a reasonable time frame.
I got it from a previous years unheard of (by me) retailer online. Reviews of the company elsewhere on the internet seemed trustworthy, and I took a leap on them, and it paid off.
I trusted an unknown website more than I trusted Amazon.
[+] [-] mrtksn|8 years ago|reply
I just checked the item, still sold with solid 4.5 stars and occasional 1star reviews with pictures documenting that they also got a fake one.
[+] [-] pishpash|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ProAm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbower|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R7J38CTD1MNT0
[2] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:amazon.co.uk+sohant85...
[+] [-] Theodores|8 years ago|reply
https://www.fakespot.com/company/ketdirect
[+] [-] yborg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yesenadam|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhimes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miles_matthias|8 years ago|reply
Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it being fake.
In her case, she knows these people personally and they're not fake scripts. Yet FakeSpot, who OP holds up as doing the great job that Amazon is not, is completely wrong.
tldr; spotting fake reviews is harder than it seems apparently.
EDIT: the other thing is that she has lost quite a bit of legitimate reviews from Amazon deleting them. Amazon is actually doing more than the end user sees about this problem.
EDIT 2: Another thing Amazon completely ignores are reviewers who get an early copy of the product in exchange for an honest review. This is how a lot of people kickstart reviews on their products and Amazon completely ignores that valid use case. In fact, they hurt it because they don't mark those reviews as "Verified Purchase" since the reviewer got the product outside of the Amazon channels. They need to come up with a system for this.
[+] [-] Someone1234|8 years ago|reply
So your wife has people she knows leave positive reviews in order to bump her book's review score and you're upset that Fakespot gave it an F due to them being non-organic reviews?
As a consumer it sounds like Fakespot is doing a great job, and exactly what it states on the tin. What your wife is doing is at best dishonest and I'm glad they're exposed as sham reviews. Hopefully these people are putting a disclaimer in the reviews stating the conflict but I highly doubt it.
> Yet FakeSpot, who OP holds up as doing the great job that Amazon is not, is completely wrong.
Except according to your own anecdote they were completely right?
[+] [-] matsemann|8 years ago|reply
Still, their opinions aren't trustworthy to me, given they are written by people close to the author. So I could actually agree with FakeSpot on this.
[+] [-] AdamJacobMuller|8 years ago|reply
I totally understand where you're coming from on this, but, you're 100% wrong here. Fakespot is looking for unbiased reviews and friend-reviews are not unbiased, what do you think the odds are that one of your wife's friends was going to leave a negative review?
[+] [-] dhimes|8 years ago|reply
OTOH, she got hosed on Goodreads by someone who admitted to not reading the book, and several people came along and validated the hosing (like a voting circle or something). This is a pretty difficult problem.
[+] [-] aerion1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexbeloi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iClaudiusX|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krzyk|8 years ago|reply
Hmm, I think it is quite the opposite, I'm more inclined to leave a review (warn people) when I don't like something.
Or maybe it is a cultural thing (I'm from Europe).
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jseliger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corvallis|8 years ago|reply
I'm also concerned about counterfeit products - I don't care as much about reviews because I'll usually have researched beforehand or already know what I want. However with brand name items, I always wonder if it's the real thing and as a result have stopped buying shoes, etc from Amazon. I also don't buy anything from Amazon that goes in my body or on my body (supplements, cosmetics/hygiene, etc). I stick with brick & mortar or the online storefront.
It's unfortunate, because Amazon is fantastic as a concept, unfortunately my trust in them does not extend to most items. I'd rather pay more and be confident in the product. I think whatever they are doing is working for them and they have no incentive to change because the vast majority of customers are not so discerning.
[+] [-] thisisit|8 years ago|reply
Once upon a time, I bought two boxes of Ener-G. It was only later I found out I have paid 100% markup on those boxes. I felt stupid that I hadn't verified the prices on the manufacturer's site.
[+] [-] bootlooped|8 years ago|reply
Was this from a 3rd party seller? I have seen a lot of 3rd party sellers have listings for pretty outrageous prices. I think they're either trying to catch people who don't shop around / don't know what the product is worth, or they are just not managing their pricing well. On a lot of popular products you can see an example of the latter where Amazon themselves will be selling a product for a given price, and then if you look at other offers you'll see the same thing being sold by other sellers for double or triple Amazon's price.
[+] [-] kinkrtyavimoodh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
During Christmas shopping, I’ve seen more than a few folks buying stuff at Toys R Us to sell on Amazon.
[+] [-] fencepost|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astura|8 years ago|reply
December is also a great time for coupons and sales from traditional retailers (you can still order online) so you're doubly getting hosed.
[+] [-] slackingoff2017|8 years ago|reply
They need to get a handle on their supply chain and stop outsourcing so much of their product listings to shady third party sellers. Shady third party sellers go hand-in-hand with fake reviews. Most reputable brands don't want to get their hands dirty with that stuff. It's guys making margin on reselling that have all the skin in the game and most of the incentive to manipulate the system.
I've never gotten a fake from any brick and mortar or online merchant that sells direct. Only places I've gotten fakes and been duped by rampant fake reviews are eBay and Amazon. Once a competitor gets their shit together (I'm betting on Walmart) and has an equally convenient online store, Amazon will be the Myspace of online sales.
People have loyatly to brands but not the company that sells them. If something better comes along I'll switch immediately just like I did years ago with ebay
[+] [-] jccooper|8 years ago|reply
Amazon and Yelp and the like may be better or worse at stemming the tide of fakery, but asking them to be better isn't going to fundamentally help. The whole idea is broken.
[+] [-] xellisx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perseusprime11|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ad_hominem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sputknick|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KeepTalking|8 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.com/Bose-QuietComfort-headphones-Bluetoot...
Infact one of the reviewers did a detail comparison between the fake product and the real QC-35.
[+] [-] ausjke|8 years ago|reply
Maybe Amazon can have some AI algorithm, that is for any newly arrived products with non-sales yet, monitoring the activities on them closely,the fake purchase and review must have some common pattern(same address, same ID, same IP,etc).
But then, why does Amazon want to do that? it will decrease its own profit.
So yes, customers will be the one got screwed up no matter what.
[+] [-] gesman|8 years ago|reply
It's not in the interests of Amazon to be on a crusade against fake reviews. Mass fake reviews are the driving force of revenues.
AMZN will always maintain the balance between public outcry and absolute minimal effort to show that they're doing something against spammers.
From my side I maintain the right to buy the product and then write "not as described" as a reason for free return for full refund with free pickup.
Quite often vendor/seller will give you refund without requiring you to return merchandise.
I don't feel like I been abused too much by fake reviews as long as I can "abuse back" with my free return.
[+] [-] JohnTHaller|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] propman|8 years ago|reply
I thought Millennials had become desensitized to all 5 star over the top, big flashy sounding reviews so a service that carefully curates reviews for top items seemed like a decent idea. Sprinkle a few 1 star reviews for the wrong item sent or a fault of Amazon, a few 4 stars raving about the product but complaining about some minor aspect irrelevant to the average buyer to make it sound authentic. Many people compare a few products and when they make a purchase, they do so feeling really proud of themselves that they picked the perfect product for the best price. The "it's too good to be true" doesn't really seem to work anymore. This honestly seems to be the case for every Amazon product these days. We'll probabzky get desensitized to this soon too and something else will come up.
That said, fake products are ridiculous and there are a few sites I've bookmarked that do a pretty decent job of spotting a fake product and I do admit it's becoming harder to differentiate lately but the too good to be true adage still stands.
[+] [-] awinder|8 years ago|reply
I just checked them on fakespot and they were both rated at 98% fake reviews. This is pretty confidence shattering for me; how do I pay $80 a year for prime if amazon is in cahoots with such obvious scams...