Amazon Puts New Limit On Customer Reviews: No More Than 5 a Week Except For Verified Purchases (geekwire.com) 95
Amazon says it will start capping the number of product reviews any customer can submit in a given week, limiting each person to five/week except for products that have been verified by the company as purchased by the reviewer. From a GeekWire report: Books, music and video are exempt from the limit, but the new cap applies to the rest of Amazon's vast online selection of products. It's the latest move by the e-commerce giant to police its online reviews, a critical resource used by many online shoppers to assess products before buying. The news comes during the peak holiday shopping season, the most important time of year for Amazon, as the company tries to get more people comfortable with doing more of their shopping online. An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the changes in a message to GeekWire, and they're spelled out in Amazon's updated Community Guidelines.
A pity, but not a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
Re:A pity, but not a surprise (Score:5, Informative)
You can still make up to five comedy reviews a week. Not all is lost.
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You can still make up to five comedy reviews a week. Not all is lost.
You should get additional review points for brilliant reviews. It adds to the sites bottom line after all.
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You can still make up to five comedy reviews a week. Not all is lost.
Not only that, you can just make endless emails and post 5 per.
All this does is swap one type of spam for another, and now, Amazon gets to enjoy that extra helping as well when 1 million new accounts suddlenly show up and they have to figure out what is and is not legit.
Totally smart way to resolve this instead of just making it 100% you can only review shit you buy.
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Re:A pity, but not a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Haven't you ever heard the saying "A happy customer will tell no one but an unhappy customer will tell everyone." ?
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Re: A pity, but not a surprise (Score:2, Informative)
Sometimes people do things they enjoy without being paid. In the old days, we called those things "hobbies." Back then, people were also interested in helping others rather than simply finding an "angle" they could use to get rich.
You might find references to this behavior in a history book somewhere.
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I see it as you're helping out Amazon for free. It used to be that retailers had product knowledge, and helped their customers choose products. Now, people such as yourself do it for Amazon for free, and Amazon reaps all of the rewards. You don't feel cheated, in that you give away your time for free, and Amazon makes money off of it?
You are assuming that he only leaves good reviews. His review might cause someone not to buy it.
Sometimes, someone puts a lot of research before purchasing it. They may feel like posting their research may save someone else some time if they have similar needs.
It seems like in your world, we would only have reviews from paid review sites and the companies, themselves. Customer reviews tend to be more honest.
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I see you understand very little of society and the principles of caring and sharing. You give nothing away for free, you are simply repaying those who have repayed others, when a task is freely shared. Your write reviews for 'free' to pay for reviews you read for 'free' and that likely saved you quite a sum of money in buying some shitty product that got the bad review it deserved. See, that's how it works, you are simply sharing, get it, sharing in the task of eliminating bad products from the market, a v
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It only makes sense that you should only be allowed to review something you've actually bought through the site, but man will I miss the comedy reviews. The reviews for the Trump Christmas tree ornament hat are GOLD, as were the reviews for uranium in a can and all the others.
You can still write 5 reviews per week for items that you haven't bought. That should be plenty for legitimate purposes.
The real issue with Amazon is that the actual seller's feedback score is not clearly shown on the product page. If you want feedback for the actual seller, it is buried at least 1 click away. Other websites with 'marketplaces' make this a lot more transparent on the product page. Putting their feedback score front and center would fix several issues. Not every problem, but Amazon's
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The real issue with Amazon is that the actual seller's feedback score is not clearly shown on the product page. If you want feedback for the actual seller, it is buried at least 1 click away. Other websites with 'marketplaces' make this a lot more transparent on the product page. Putting their feedback score front and center would fix several issues.
The problem that I've found on amazon is that it's hard to separate the reviews of the product from the reviews of the shipper. Many times a product will be rated poorly but then looking at the reviews the problem is really that people are getting knockoffs or dealing with a crap company. It might make a little bit of sense for a company to be docked for selling crappy products but docking the product because the shipper just happens to suck doesn't usually make sense. You would think it would be to amaz
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They're capping each person to five reviews a week where they're not verified purchasers, not banning them. Why do you think the comedy reviews will disappear? I doubt it will affect those at all, since serious serial reviewers are probably not the people leaving those comedy reviews.
Re:A pity, but not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
TBH, I would much prefer that *only* verified buyers review an item.
Yeah, I admit that the joke reviews are often seriously great comedy, but honestly - verified buyers only means that potential buyers will know one way or the other if the thing is worthwhile. This is especially true when it comes to anything political, or anything sold by Twitter's Target Of The Week - hordes of frothing people with a keyboard and a bad case of butthurt (or worse, SJW fever) flood the item with bad reviews, even though they've never paid money for the thing.
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I'd like to see results separated from verified buyers and everything else. If the results are too far apart, then that would seem to indicate someone may be pulling a scam.
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Then how would you recommend that people who purchase a product through a channel other than Amazon verify the purchase to Amazon? Photo of a receipt from Target, Toys R Us, etc.?
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Then how would you recommend that people who purchase a product through a channel other than Amazon verify the purchase to Amazon? Photo of a receipt from Target, Toys R Us, etc.?
Why does Amazon need their input? Seriously. Is Amazon hosting a "review blogging community" or is it a merchant who wants reviews from customers who have bought stuff directly from it?
Just posing the question.
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The product is equally shite or equally good no matter where you bought it from.
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I would much prefer that *only* verified buyers review an item.
I think a threshold should probably be used. If there are less than 100 verified buyers then include them all and flag it so you can tell. If there are more than 100 verified buyers then either completely remove the non-verified buyers or bury them away some where. A non-verified review may be somewhat useful for a product with only a couple reviews but once you have a large quantity of verified reviews there is no reason to let them continue to taint the reviews as they could be freebies, spam, etc...
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TBH, I would much prefer that *only* verified buyers review an item.
A few years back, I would have probably had a different opinion, but now I think I agree with you. Amazon used to benefit from the idea that anybody could write a review -- I think it helped to establish them as THE bookseller back in the day when they mostly dealt with books. Back in the 1990s, it was a central location to write and find reviews of a huge variety of books, which didn't really exist elsewhere at that time (at least on that scale).
But now Amazon has a huge customer base, reviews can be f
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Every once in a while I run across something I bought years ago from elsewhere and bang out a quick review. Usually I'm looking for something related like a part or extension and the original pops up.
My motivation for doing so is that I actually like the thing, found that it's lasted for a while, and fee
Re:A pity, but not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't get why Amazon or any shopping site would allow non-buyers to review stuff, or even conversely (aside from sociopathic trolls) why people would review products they didn't get from there. If I bought something from Bed, Bath & Beyond and didn't like it, I'd sort it out w/ them, and maybe post something on the product's website, but I wouldn't post that on Amazon. Unless I bought the product in question from there.
If it's a real scam, take them to court or the BBB, but other than that, it's not my job to put companies out of business and even more people out of work
Re: A pity, but not a surprise (Score:2)
Item I am selling gets negative reviews.
Remove listing.
Relist item with slightly different description.
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There are 2 ways of dealing w/ negative reviews, depending on who you are
- If you are the manufacturer, the negative feedback helps you revisit the product and see how to make it more palatable to the public. I dunno about others, but when I post a review, I do my best to describe what exactly is wrong, and avoid things like 'this product sucks'. Hopefully, that helps them fix their problems in future iterations
- If you are a reseller, I do the same thing, and then you have the option of either letting t
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1 star... (Score:1)
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I rate the above comment 1 star... Only because there is no 0 star rating. The aforementioned comment was not worth reading at any price.
You forgot the "I received the above comment in exchange for my fair and unbiased review of the comment" part...
A++++ Decision (Score:1)
Would make decision again, speedy and swift review, exactly as expected...
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Trump, Bezos and Amazon (Score:2)
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It's because they are an online-only (well, mostly now) retailer that they are able to decrease their overall footprint and compete with the big boys. A better comparison (ignoring bankrupcies) would be Radio Shack is to Targe
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[*----] /. I tried reinstalling the drivers and all that. Am returning it, I have no fa/ in the supplier any more.
Bought a new keyboard. When I type "/" (as in S/ Lord, p/ helmet) it replaces it w/
Not good enough... (Score:2)
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Maybe that kills off the lowest, of low-hanging fruit, but some companies will still find a way to exploit it. Here's an example from just this ye [bloomberg.com]
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they already do this. you get free thing in return for writing an amazon review of it.
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It should be that the user HAS to have purchased the item. Why would you do it any other way?
I would be happy if I could just filter reviews based on a "verified purchaser" tag. They already mark the verified purchaser reviews with that exact text, so make it a sub-option on the review display options...
Re:Not good enough... (Score:4, Informative)
It should be that the user HAS to have purchased the item. Why would you do it any other way?
I would be happy if I could just filter reviews based on a "verified purchaser" tag. They already mark the verified purchaser reviews with that exact text, so make it a sub-option on the review display options...
You can already do that. From "see all customer reviews", select the sort/filter for "Verified Purchase Only" (rather than all reviewers).
What is missing is the ability to sort my searches by "average customer review", but only consider the reviews from verified purchases.
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Because sometimes there are very useful reviews by people who chose a different product (or chose to not buy a product at all) after discovering serious flaws in the product while looking at it in a brick-and-mortar store.
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Why? Because the Amazon reviews being honest and helpful is far more important than whether you actually buy the product from Amazon or not.
In my case, sometimes I buy an item at Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc., that's total garbage - and I want to get the word out there to warn others away if it's available on Amazon. I've done this to a couple of products that really pissed me off when they cut quality corners or were openly deceptive in their ads, and those reviews were the most highly appreciated/helpful/value
Purchased != verifiably purchased (Score:2)
As far as I'm aware, Amazon can't verify off-Amazon purchases. The five weekly reviews for non-verified purchases appear to be a concession to allow reviews of products sold through Amazon that were obtained through a channel other than Amazon.
Sort out their own behaviour first (Score:2)
"..... as the company tries to get more people comfortable with doing more of their shopping online ...."
Amazon is on my personal "back of the queue list" and I'll not willingly use them in future having been badly let down.
Word of warning to others to stop being burnt.
DO NOT buy through Amazon Marketplace.
If your item develops a fault and the trader refuses to answer you're completely out of luck.
Amazon (despite taking payment and giving an order number) claim that it's nothing to do with them and won't h
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Amazon has nothing to do with what you're describing. It's your responsibility to know the terms of the warranty. You could have contacted the manufacturer prior to purchasing the item. Instead, you went with the lowest cost. If Amazon were to police that, those lowest costs would go up and you wouldn't be buying from Amazon at that point anyway.
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The item was advertised and sold as a UK spec phone. The manufacturer then claimed that this was not the case. This is a clear case of misrepresentation by Amazon (who presented the item, showed the description on their site, took payment and acted as middleman).
I am just as annoyed by Huawei as Amazon. Neither has covered themselves in glory and they both stand in stark contrast to other suppliers.
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Amazon didn't misrepresent anything. They offer an ecommerce platform to other companies. If the seller misrepresented something, your issue is with them. You could also blame your browser or your ISP, they were also involved with delivering the page to your device. It wouldn't be possible for Amazon to check every item from every seller to the extent necessary to accomplish what you're looking for. As for taking payment, again, that's just a service they provide.
I got caught in the warranty trap once
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" It wouldn't be possible for Amazon to check every item from every seller. "
Why not? I don't suppose Amazon offer trading spots rent free - some form of vendor checks would be reasonable and covered by the fees charged.
What value is Amazon adding?
Might just as well allow sale of perpetual motion machines and then say "not us - we're just passing trades through - don't expect us to check whether they're real or not".
If I wanted a low price but with the risk of dealing with a shifty and unreliable supplier
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Amazon isn't the equivalent of "consumer reports". They offer retailers a sales platform and they offer consumers a varied market. That's it. You can check the seller reviews or Google, or if it's an expensive item and you want to make sure the warranty claims are valid, you can contact the manufacturer. Amazon couldn't possibly check every item for sale at every retailer. That's like saying a shopping mall should ensure that every item in every store is marked correctly every day. You'd need an absur
Re:Sort out their own behaviour first (Score:4, Informative)
Strange. Maybe Amazon's UK service quality differs from the US? Amazon service just recently gave me a credit for a purchase through a third-party seller. I was only reporting a seller that seemed to be charging an excessive amount of shipping (about $20), nearly as much as the product, which I hadn't notice at the time I purchased it (yeah, it was more or less my fault, but still). They said they'd look into the matter and then offered me a credit without me even asking for it.
Anytime I've contacted Amazon support, my issue has *always* been quickly resolved and completely, with outstanding service. Maybe it helps that I've been a customer for a very long time, probably over fifteen years or so. That's one of the reason I continue to buy from them almost exclusively - the other is they've got a good security track record.
I've also had support from 3rd party sellers... hrm, maybe two times? One time a replacement unit was sent, and another time, I shipped the product back because it was defective, and I got a refund because they couldn't get a replacement.
Maybe I've just been lucky?
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I've had excellent service from Amazon in the US too. I've never had a problem with Amazon, infact, they've exceeded what I would have hoped for on a couple of occasions.
I've been slightly disappointed with other sellers on Amazon, but never treated completely unfairly.
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I've also had support from 3rd party sellers... hrm, maybe two times? One time a replacement unit was sent, and another time, I shipped the product back because it was defective, and I got a refund because they couldn't get a replacement.
3rd party sellers are really hit or miss with Amazon, even if they have generally positive "reviews." Two out of three times I've had problems, I have had to involve Amazon as an intermediary to resolve the dispute -- one was a case where someone sent me the wrong book but refused to believe they did so, and another was a seller who said a product would be delivered around Christmas but it took until early February to get it shipped (after a number of misleading status emails from them). The latter ultima
Overall Result (Score:5, Insightful)
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Furthermore, how much time and effort will people put into reviewing the reviewers? At a certain point it eats up more time than its worth for most people. If I'm buying a $10 cable or something similarly priced, it's not worth spending a few hours to research it in the same way I'd be more careful as
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You can still click on the reviewer's name and get details about how many OTHER reviews they have written, and the dates of those reviews. This allows shoppers to DISREGARD reviews written by newly created accounts. This will still empower shoppers.
Did you just suggest that a consumer would actually go through what they would define as a mindnumbing tedious process consisting of a few more clicks in order to empower themselves?
Your assumption is almost as strong as the ain't-nobody-got-time-for-that stench coming from millions of mindless lemmings who perpetuated this mess.
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That only realistically works for a few reviews. If a dedicated shitposter has 20 sockpuppet accounts they can still do a ton of damage to a product's rating and most customers aren't going to go to the trouble of checking more than a couple of those accounts and blocking them - if they even bother. Most people will see 35 reviews, and 20 of them are 1 star. NEXT PRODUCT, this one sucks!
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At some point, the review system notices that these accounts review 5 items/month, but never actually buy anything... Then the next generation of fake account owners has to ensure that each fake account occasionally buys something, but then they have to get it shipped to the fake address since having fake accounts tied to their home/business address might raise flags
I had never realized that (Score:4, Interesting)
Still doesn't make sense (Score:1)
I've always been confused why people rate things they didn't buy off the site. At that point, it's just middle school gossip.
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Writing a bad review on Amazon gets more exposure and may influence others to not purchase a crappy product.
Who decides? (Score:1)
Who decides whether or not a review is fake? It is well known that the Main Stream Reviewers are all a bunch of biased SJWs, and important information such as T-shirts being manufactured in Hillary Clinton's secret forced-labor camps in Benghazi for abducted conservative youth are being suppressed!
Also, they are coming for your guns.
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Should have gone verified purchase only (Score:3)
I don't see a point at this stage of the game to people being allowed to post reviews without having a papertrail in Amazon that they bought it to AMZN.
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Obviously unverified reviews are unnecessary for items like iPhones that sell in the millions. But so many products with smaller sales numbers have few reviews already. If you drop all reviews except verified purchases, far more items will become reviewless.
So there's a point, even if you don't like it.