Interesting Article on Amazon Reviews

[Ben]

Even though it's The Verge, it's pretty interesting, and even sorta gun related!

One of the many reasons I don't trust Amazon reviews anymore. Even though they were once my "goto reviews", even for stuff I was researching that I'd be buying elsewhere.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement

[BlueStarLizzard]

Interesting.

And now I hope my issue when I ordered the seal and peal for my didn't land the seller in Amazon Jail. 

[T.O.M.]

Interesting.  If I'm researching anything for a possible purchase on any site, be it C-Net for electronics, gun reviews, or Amazon reviews (which I still use), I ignore any ranking without some text. I then read the text to see why the item is getting a good review, or why not.  I can then sort through for useful information, and ignore negative comments that mean nothing to me and my needs.

Using reviews as weapons...nothing new, just a side effect of the Interweb age.  A lot of lawyers doing divorce work have gotten jammed up leaving negative reviews on a competitors site.  A car salesman friend says that happens in the dealership world a lot, too. 

[Ben]

Interesting.  If I'm researching anything for a possible purchase on any site, be it C-Net for electronics, gun reviews, or Amazon reviews (which I still use), I ignore any ranking without some text. I then read the text to see why the item is getting a good review, or why not.  I can then sort through for useful information, and ignore negative comments that mean nothing to me and my needs.

Using reviews as weapons...nothing new, just a side effect of the Interweb age.  A lot of lawyers doing divorce work have gotten jammed up leaving negative reviews on a competitors site.  A car salesman friend says that happens in the dealership world a lot, too. 

On Amazon, I have found of late that I can get better information from the less than five star reviews. Sure, some of the "disgruntled" reviews are just as bad as the paid, "greatest thing since sliced bread" reviews. However, I find in the current Amazon environment, I can parse more useful information from critical reviews, and they actually might convince me to buy vs chasing me off.

[Hawkmoon]

Amazon reviews have become useless. I've lost count of the number of times I've started reading through reviews, only to find that at least half of them address either a different model than the one I'm looking at, or a completely different product. But it never occurred to me that some of those reviews might have been plants.

[Fly320s]

Amazon reviews have become useless. I've lost count of the number of times I've started reading through reviews, only to find that at least half of them address either a different model than the one I'm looking at, or a completely different product. But it never occurred to me that some of those reviews might have been plants.

Sort them to show only "verified purchase."

[AZRedhawk44]

You have to actually read the reviews to get any good info out of them... a lot of them are obviously paid shills and a lot of them are the noisy 1% that get bad product.  But I've found over the last couple years, the opposite of the brick and mortar fear has come to influence my shopping habits.  Remember back in the early 2000's when main street was afraid that they were going to be the show room, only to have people actually buy things on the internet?  I've been using review systems online to sort potential purchases, then going in to brick and mortar to make my actual purchase.  I got screwed over by some optics I bought off Amazon... some Mead binoculars turned out to be lemons and they're normally pretty decent optics.  For a lot of things that I'm likely to be picky over, I prefer to sort through inventory and choose the exact product I want to buy rather than the next one off the Amazon robot that is stocked with that particular item.  Guns, binoculars, clothing.  Things that can have a lot of variation off the assembly line.

[Ben]

Sort them to show only "verified purchase."

Though it's what I do, not even those sometimes.  I forgot what it was - some cheaper item - where I read the verified purchases and a bunch were in crappy English praising the product. I suspect some of these Chinese companies get a few dozen of their employees to buy a few dozen of their product as regular customers, then fake the verified reviews. If it weren't for the crappy English that gives it away, it would probably be a couple thousand dollars well (if sleazily) spent.

[Hawkmoon]

Sort them to show only "verified purchase."

How do you do that?

[freakazoid]

Interesting.  If I'm researching anything for a possible purchase on any site, be it C-Net for electronics, gun reviews, or Amazon reviews (which I still use), I ignore any ranking without some text. I then read the text to see why the item is getting a good review, or why not.  I can then sort through for useful information, and ignore negative comments that mean nothing to me and my needs.

Using reviews as weapons...nothing new, just a side effect of the Interweb age.  A lot of lawyers doing divorce work have gotten jammed up leaving negative reviews on a competitors site.  A car salesman friend says that happens in the dealership world a lot, too. 

I always make sure to read multiple reviews from the top and bottom. Some of the people are just dumb when you read their review.

[Fly320s]

How do you do that?

I thought you could sort the reviews that way, but it looks like you can't.  They don't have much in the way of sorting options.

[Ben]

I thought you could sort the reviews that way, but it looks like you can't.  They don't have much in the way of sorting options.

You can't do it from the main product screen, but if you scroll to the bottom of the reviews shown there and click on "show all XXX reviews", it takes you to the reviews page where you have all sorts of sorting options.

[RoadKingLarry]

I always make sure to read multiple reviews from the top and bottom. Some of the people are just dumb when you read their review.

I see a lot of 1 star reviews that that lead me to believe that the reviewer could screw up a dog turd.
I've also seen low reviews on stuff that I've bought and used with no problems that make me think the reviewer doesn't quite rate as sentient.

[Sawdust]

I always like the 5-star reviews that say "Haven't used it yet"!

[K Frame]

Some people are more than willing to give a product a 1 star review for reasons that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the product itself. It's ridiculous.

[Hawkmoon]

I always like the 5-star reviews that say "Haven't used it yet"!

"But it looks great!"

[lee n. field]

Some people are more than willing to give a product a 1 star review for reasons that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the product itself. It's ridiculous.

"package was damaged"

[K Frame]

"package was damaged"

Or something along the lines of "The delivery driver left it in a weird place and I didn't see it for 3 days."

People are SO *expletive deleted*ing STUPID.

[brimic]

The 2 and 4 star reviews are the most useful to me.

I've had vendors offer me my money back and ask me to give them a good review... one of the times it was an obvious fraud knockoff of a magpul phone case from china- well obvious when I received it

[Brad Johnson]

Both Amazon and YouTube are facing a content-creator situation which is due in majority to their automated systems' Orwellian clampdown on content for the strangest of infractions. Then they add insult to injury with their pathological aversion to actual human contact and strict adherence to the least helpful means of provider support.

Amazon can get away with it to a degree because the core of their business is self-contained. Third-party offerings are just icing on the cake. YouTube, on the other hand, relies almost solely on external content for their offerings. From what I can tell, YouTube's last Content Creator Conference got plenty uncomfortable for the YouTube brass who dared actually show up.

Brad

[fifth_column]

I think product reviews are problematic in general since most reviews are posted shortly after receiving the product.  Occasionally I'll see a review by someone that's been using the product for a length of time, but most are essentially a review of shipping speed and packaging.

[MechAg94]

I see that on the primary arms site also.  Half the reviews are people happy they received the part quickly and at a good price. 

[MechAg94]

Reading the aritcle, it kind of sounds like Amazon is getting too big and it heading down the road to self destruction (might take a while). 

The secrecy just sounds nuts to me.  It seems to me they could easily have their own consultants resolve most of these disputes, maybe even charge for the service.  And I think they could track a lot of the competitor attacks if they wanted. 

[Ben]

Reading the aritcle, it kind of sounds like Amazon is getting too big and it heading down the road to self destruction (might take a while). 
 

I'm concerned about ALL the companies in the FAANG stocks. They've all grown a big too big for their britches, and I see something major down the road. I won't at all be surprised to see Twitter and Facebook pretty much disappear. Amazon will survive, but they're going to need to start thinking about adapting, much as brick and mortar had to do because of Amazon.

I read an interesting article today about a lot of the millennials starting to shed Amazon as "uncool", much as they're ditching Facebook. There is apparently a "local mom and pop brick and mortar" shopping trend among millennials, which really isn't a bad thing, IMO. There is something Dystopian about a future where all purchases are done online (or whatever "online" becomes in 100 years).

[Scout26]

Remember when E-Bay was the root of all evil and going to destroy the brick-n-mortar, mom and pop stores ??

Or when Wal-mart was going to take over the world ??

Then along came Amazon...

And yes, as the onion layers of Facebook and the Zuck selling and reselling all your info to anyone and everyone keep getting revealed, FB continues to shed users...

And Netflix has now stepped on it's crank...  https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2018/12/20/busted-netflixs-viral-tweet-on-the-nyt-facebook-article-was-a-total-lie/