Does anyone know a higher up at amazon? I bet with the new baby I spent 5 figures there last year, but there website is really suffering from a MAJOR trust issue and it's setting them up for a huge lawsuit.
How does a company with more than 500,000 employees and a nearly trillion dollar market cap not do some very basic things - like mainly protect the integrity of their reviews?
The reviews can no longer be trusted. I put the baby monitor in with the wash last night so I need to buy a new one. I was going to just re-purchase the one I had last time but the price has double it and it only has like 25 reviews at like a 3.5 rating. When I saw that, I thought, "That's weird. I can't imagine I bought something with that low of a rating and that few ratings. I almost always go for four stars or. I wonder if they wiped out a bunch of fake reviews."
So I go to their website to look for a different product and start by sorting by reviews. The #1 item that is like 1/5th the price of the wirecutter recommended one and has 421 reviews - all of them 5-star. All of the reviews appear to be from yesterday and non of them are from verified purchasers.
1) Why in the world would amazon let any product put up 421 reviews in a single day? Wouldn't an algorithm designed by a 5 year old catch that
2) Why in the world won't amazon let you sort by "verified purchases only?"
3) When amazon eventually uncovers the fraudulent reviews and removes them and lowers the rating for their item, why don't they automatically contact all customers to let them know they may have purchased an item based on fraud?
4) When they do uncover the fake reviews, why don't they ban the seller (the only reason I can think of is a competitor might do it to screw someone over)?
So Amazon execs, if you are reading this, please contact me. I will take a month long sabbatical from LetsRun and come and work for your company and the tell the programmers what they need to do as it's quickly turning into a joke.
Here is the item with the 421 reviews.
https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Security-Surveillance-Detection-Monitor/dp/B07MWTZG56/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=baby+monitor&qid=1552489566&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Here is the one I purchased last May that only has a few reviews.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C73WL89/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
How do I get hired as a consultant at amazon? The review fraud is RAMPANT and setting them up for a class-action lawsuit
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Amazon has done a lot in this area already, including giving preference to verified reviewers and banning the practice of receiving free items in exchange for a review, except through its Vine Voice program.
But really, why would Amazon be incentivized to attempt to fix this any more than it already has? If you don't like what you've received, return it. Amazon has good customer service policies in my experience and it's much cheaper to accept returns from customers than to fix this issue.
You're certainly not going to fix this in a month. Do you think the people posting fake reviews don't understand the system perfectly well and work around it? This isn't a static system; Amazon is constantly tweaking things but is always chasing the edge because there are thousands of Chinese companies trying to game this system. (They're *all* Chinese as far as I can tell. I am a high ranked Amazon reviewer and I get emails almost every day offering me free product -- which I've never accepted -- in exchange for reviews.)
Also - does Amazon claim anywhere that the reviews are credible or are they endorsed in any way? If not, your class action suit has no chance.
Finally - you seem to have used your brain and noticed that many of the reviews were fake on that item. Others can do the same. So who cares? -
From the guy who gives an open forum for fake running advice and hateful rhetoric? Ever consider the man in the mirror?
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I'm skeptical of all reviews in general...people love to complain.
The seller's name is ShamBo? It's a sham, bro. -
So don't shop there. Fight Jeff Bozo
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nope..... wrote:
But really, why would Amazon be incentivized to attempt to fix this any more than it already has? If you don't like what you've received, return it. Amazon has good customer service policies in my experience and it's much cheaper to accept returns from customers than to fix this issue.
Why wold they be incentivized to fix it? A) If people don't trust what they are buying on there, they will shop elsewhere. If I go to a store and everything I but there ends up being a POS, ultimately, I'll probably stop shopping there. B) It's expensive to return stuff C) To avoid a lawsuit.
nope..... wrote:
You're certainly not going to fix this in a month. Do you think the people posting fake reviews don't understand the system perfectly well and work around it? This isn't a static system; Amazon is constantly tweaking things but is always chasing the edge because there are thousands of Chinese companies trying to game this system. (They're *all* Chinese as far as I can tell. I am a high ranked Amazon reviewer and I get emails almost every day offering me free product -- which I've never accepted -- in exchange for reviews.)
How in the world could anyone allow 421 reviews from the same day for an obscure product go up? Yes, I understand the companies are trying to scam the system but that's pretty basic. Getting out all fraud might be hard but allowing 421 non verified purchases to go up in a matter of minutes is pretty basic.
What I don't get is how it's worth it for them to game the system. If I was amazon, I'd ban them immediately from the platform when they do it. So they sold 50 monitors this morning but are banned for life, that's a big disincentive.
nope..... wrote:
Also - does Amazon claim anywhere that the reviews are credible or are they endorsed in any way? If not, your class action suit has no chance.
At a minimum, shouldn't they be notifying customers that they discovered the fraud and wanted to make sure I'm happy still happy with the purchase? I think you underestimate the power of attorneys. -
There are independent review sites that I like to rely on eg CNET, consumers digest etc. Obviously not all products are going to be covered
Ultimately, caveat emptor. -
Here’s what you do:
Schedule a meeting with Jeff Bezos. When you get there, tell him you know he’s cheating on his wife and that you’ll tell her unless he hires you as a consultant. You can do this job from home. There’s no need to go into the office. When he calls security, start hitting yourself in the face and throw yourself into his furniture. -
nope..... wrote:
Amazon has done a lot in this area already, including giving preference to verified reviewers and banning the practice of receiving free items in exchange for a review, except through its Vine Voice program.
But really, why would Amazon be incentivized to attempt to fix this any more than it already has? If you don't like what you've received, return it. Amazon has good customer service policies in my experience and it's much cheaper to accept returns from customers than to fix this issue.
You're certainly not going to fix this in a month. Do you think the people posting fake reviews don't understand the system perfectly well and work around it? This isn't a static system; Amazon is constantly tweaking things but is always chasing the edge because there are thousands of Chinese companies trying to game this system. (They're *all* Chinese as far as I can tell. I am a high ranked Amazon reviewer and I get emails almost every day offering me free product -- which I've never accepted -- in exchange for reviews.)
Also - does Amazon claim anywhere that the reviews are credible or are they endorsed in any way? If not, your class action suit has no chance.
Finally - you seem to have used your brain and noticed that many of the reviews were fake on that item. Others can do the same. So who cares?
I recently purchased new bathroom fixtures for the house. A local firm promised to match any Amazon price. But their return policy sucked. No returns after 30-days. 25% restocking fee for any return. So, I purchased through Amazon. That was a lot more work for me. I ended up having to use six different sellers to get things within the timeframe I needed. I had issues with one seller who billed me and sent the product to the wrong home. Amazon fixed that immediately. They also took back one incorrect product shipped, and sent a proper replacement within two-days at their cost. -
Really...really? wrote:
From the guy who gives an open forum for fake running advice and hateful rhetoric? Ever consider the man in the mirror?
Rhetoric is not the same thing as a review. Rhetoric would be the same as an opinion. -
Email this to [email protected] (not kidding)
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I’m an Amazon Vine reviewer and have been banned and reinstated a few times for giving a negative review of a product. Since joining Vine I went from top 200 review to 15,000 or something in ranking. Vine isn’t “free” - I end up paying taxes on stuff which is essentially a crapshoot of junk.
Amazon leaked our contact information (including phone numbers) so I’m getting 5-6 emails a day from a company that can’t form a coherent sentence using Google Translate English about a product review in which I buy it and they reimburse me. F that.
There is no real quality controls for anything for reviews. Even the top 100 reviewers are full of it. The #1 lady says she reads two books a day but doesn’t and makes up her reviews (she has butchered reviews of multiple friends’ books.)
Everything is a lie on that site. -
he looks at customer emails wrote:
Email this to [email protected] (not kidding)
Be sure to send him a link to this website, so he can view your "work product" here... -
Vote for Warren, then.
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rojo wrote:
Why wold they be incentivized to fix it? A) If people don't trust what they are buying on there, they will shop elsewhere.
No, they won't. Have you seen Amazon's market cap? It literally does not matter one bit if people get crap in cases like this. Most people won't even care and will just put up with it or chalk it up as a lesson learned. Most of it is cheap anyway and people don't expect high quality if they've gotten a "deal."
Review fraud is nothing new, and was actually much worse a few years ago. This clearly doesn't hurt Amazon's bottom line in any reasonable way, or it would be remedied. The company employs plenty of very smart data scientists who obviously have better things to worry about than whether some random Chinese product gets a bunch of fake reviews and generates some returns or some less than happy customers.
I can't speak to your theory on litigation but I expect that Amazon's army of attorneys has already thought through this scenario and that there's verbiage somewhere on the web site freeing the company of any responsibility for what its customers write. -
There are scam sellers on there too, with no way for an average buyer to report them.
Anyway, they have good lawyers helping them navigate these issues. "Trust fund baby running anonymous forums filled with spam" is hardly a great qualification to help a website gain consumer trust... -
Amazon is absolutely ruthless in its money making efficiency. If you work at Amazon and raise your hand at a meeting to suggest something that is a drag on profitability, you will be marked with a scarlet letter. Amazon does not care whether the reviews are accurate or not. If they made an effort to police the reviews, it would cost money. The only way companies like Amazon do anything that has anything to do with integrity is under the boot of a government agency like the FTC.
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You can't even keep your mobile site from being subjected to endless redirects and you and your brother were surprised that there were ads covering up your forum. And you are going to direct the software engineers at amazon on what they need to do?
"What would you say....you do here?"
rojo wrote:
So Amazon execs, if you are reading this, please contact me. I will take a month long sabbatical from LetsRun and come and work for your company and the tell the programmers what they need to do as it's quickly turning into a joke.
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I have people skills wrote:
You can't even keep your mobile site from being subjected to endless redirects and you and your brother were surprised that there were ads covering up your forum. And you are going to direct the software engineers at amazon on what they need to do?
"What would you say....you do here?"
Dude, if I had 500,000 employees, I think I could hire 5-10 of them to do what you want.
So all of the reviews are now gone except for one but I went to Prime Now to buy one instead so I could get it delivered tonight so I can use it tonight. Sure enough there is a problem with that but this time the fraud is with the price.
When I go to Prime Now and type in "baby monitor" into the search box, the 5th item on the right has a list price of $129.99 but that is scratched out and it says it's on sale for $28.40. That's a real deal so I clicked on it to buy it but when I do it's listed for $75.00. This seems like a scam.
I have uploaded a picture of what it looks like when I search. You will see the $28.40 item as the fifth item from the left.
https://ibb.co/VS5Hp9h
But when you click on that picture, it takes you to the following item for $75.00.
https://primenow.amazon.com/dp/B00I3K1D00?qid=1552507113&m=A1VSX2DW2JK3S3&sr=1-5&ref_=pn_sr_sg_5_img_A1VSX2DW2JK3S3 -
Are you that naive that you place trust in ANYTHING online market? Really. The world is flooded with fake info, reviews, profiles, spam bots and all sorts of gaming algorithms that reduce the utility of anything online.
Tech is not helpful any more. Excess tech destroys the user experience, in all ways.. B737 MAX 8, shopping on Amazon, polling, review sites, online "education" and so much more.
I repeat: the high-water mark of net utility was around 2005, before social media became the prime driver of all content and before mobile devices destroyed attention spans and ability to read... websites actually worked, fast, easily, and delivered what you sought, back then.
