When Amazon Customers Leave Negative Reviews, Some Sellers Hunt Them Down (wsj.com) 130
Ever wonder how cheap, no-name products on Amazon can amass hundreds, sometimes thousands, of nearly perfect star ratings, with just a handful of negative reviews? From a report: Here's one way: Some sellers are reaching out to unhappy buyers to revise or delete their negative reviews, in exchange for refunds or gift cards. With fewer disgruntled shoppers, the overall average star rating rises. Sellers who ship products via Amazon aren't supposed to reach out to customers outside of Amazon's official channel -- in fact, it's a violation of the terms they agree to on the retail platform. In March, New Yorker Katherine Scott picked out an oil spray bottle for cooking, based on nearly 1,000 glowing Amazon reviews of the product, which had a 4.5-star rating average. When the $10 sprayer arrived, she found the item didn't work as advertised: Instead of a mist, it produced a stream of oil, she said. She left a negative review.
A week later, Ms. Scott received an email from someone claiming to be from the customer-service team of the oil sprayer's brand, Auxtun -- correspondence which I have reviewed. "We are willing to refund in full," the representative wrote. "We hope you can reconsider deleting comments at your convenience okay?" The message concluded, "When we do not receive a response, we will assume that you did not see it, and will continue to send emails." The seller shouldn't have had her email address. Sellers who fulfill orders themselves do receive customer names and mailing addresses. But for orders that Amazon itself fulfills, customer data is supposed to be shielded from sellers and brands.
Sellers are permitted to communicate with buyers through Amazon's built-in messaging platform, which hides the customer's email address. Amazon's terms of service also prohibit sellers from requesting that a customer remove a negative review or post a positive one. "We do not share customer email addresses with third-party sellers," an Amazon spokesman told me. Meanwhile, brands, which can be distinct from sellers, may reach out to unsatisfied customers through Amazon's messaging service, but they also aren't allowed to ask customers to remove negative reviews.
Ms. Scott asked for a refund but didn't want to delete her review. Another representative reached out the next day and declined to issue her refund. "A bad review is a fatal blow to us," read the email. "Could you help me delete the review? If you can, I want to refund $20 to you to express my gratitude." (This was twice what Ms. Scott paid.) A few hours later, she received another plea from the same email address. "It was so creepy. They emailed me directly about it over and over," Ms. Scott said. Ms. Scott contacted Amazon twice about the matter. I reviewed Amazon's chat transcripts and emails.
A week later, Ms. Scott received an email from someone claiming to be from the customer-service team of the oil sprayer's brand, Auxtun -- correspondence which I have reviewed. "We are willing to refund in full," the representative wrote. "We hope you can reconsider deleting comments at your convenience okay?" The message concluded, "When we do not receive a response, we will assume that you did not see it, and will continue to send emails." The seller shouldn't have had her email address. Sellers who fulfill orders themselves do receive customer names and mailing addresses. But for orders that Amazon itself fulfills, customer data is supposed to be shielded from sellers and brands.
Sellers are permitted to communicate with buyers through Amazon's built-in messaging platform, which hides the customer's email address. Amazon's terms of service also prohibit sellers from requesting that a customer remove a negative review or post a positive one. "We do not share customer email addresses with third-party sellers," an Amazon spokesman told me. Meanwhile, brands, which can be distinct from sellers, may reach out to unsatisfied customers through Amazon's messaging service, but they also aren't allowed to ask customers to remove negative reviews.
Ms. Scott asked for a refund but didn't want to delete her review. Another representative reached out the next day and declined to issue her refund. "A bad review is a fatal blow to us," read the email. "Could you help me delete the review? If you can, I want to refund $20 to you to express my gratitude." (This was twice what Ms. Scott paid.) A few hours later, she received another plea from the same email address. "It was so creepy. They emailed me directly about it over and over," Ms. Scott said. Ms. Scott contacted Amazon twice about the matter. I reviewed Amazon's chat transcripts and emails.
So why not post negative reviews on everything? (Score:4, Funny)
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You absolutely should do this if you have time. You could probably get 5-10% of sellers to give you some free stuff the first time you do it.
I've only ever been offered discount codes for my negative reviews. It's not enough to motivate me to make a career out of it. (guess I'll stick to writing mean things on Slashdot)
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obvious.
someone in amazon has monetized bad reviews.
at amazons expense.
bezos is not going to like not getting a piece of the action
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Amazon is a mafia, and just like in Vegas the house always wins.
Re:So why not post negative reviews on everything? (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how it works.
For products that originate from China, this is the start of a counterfeit operation.
It goes something like this:
1. Find a sucker "seller" by getting your name on a drop shipping list.
2. Put up the good products (often a knock off already using stolen molds or something) first, get glowing reviews (that's the phase the buying in the story got caught in)
3. Swap out the good products for cheaper made products, from cheaper sources in China, hope nobody notices until they're all shipped
4. Don't ship anything, run off with the money. No refunds or exchanges possible.
5. Rename and repeat.
The person getting penalized here is the person acting as the storefront who bought the drop shipper list in the first place.
Now don't get me wrong, there are going to be legitimate products out there, but generally if you can find it on AliExpress, you can find it on Amazon under a unwitting patsy. It's the same product. By not buying it directly from china yourself, you're giving someone else money and the bad press if the product is garbage.
So if you want to be a drop shipper selling stuff on amazon, you drop ship stuff TO amazon, and the American/Australian/European is the one that puts up the listings gets in trouble for it.
That is why they are so desparate to keep high ratings on amazon, because they are literately in competition with the 1000 other drop shippers on amazon and ebay, and it only takes ONE bad review to sink their search ranking.
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There's a great book on the subject (point 3 especially) called Poorly Made in China: https://www.goodreads.com/book... [goodreads.com]
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4.6 rating on Amazon, in case anyone is curious :)...
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Since when does Amazon sells books?!?
Re: So why not post negative reviews on everything (Score:4, Interesting)
Setup shop selling some knockoff electronics item.
Get list of hacked accounts and log into the account and buy your product using your own CC so you are not defrauding the customer.
Mail a bag of seeds or something else cheap like socks to minimize your up front costs. Buyer now a verified purchaser of reviewed item.
Post glowing review of your electronic widget using hacked account.
Cover tracks by setting account back to the notification settings prior to misdeeds.
this only works on accounts with minor activity. A busy account is going to notice their email notification and sms notifications didmt work when making a purchase if the purchase was done in the middle of this mock review.
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Inserts (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Inserts (Score:4, Interesting)
User submitted reviews are almost worthless. Some are honest. Some are written by morons. and others are shills doing it for free stuff.
Professional reviews are worse in a way. They'll take money and carefully conceal their bias because they're well-practices professionals. It's the main reason I canceled all of my gaming magazine subscriptions many years ago (early 2000's). You couldn't trust any of them to give fair coverage on a game, it was like paying $8/mo for a bundle of advertisement.
Re:Inserts (Score:5, Informative)
So what do you propose then?
I don't review products in a positive way until I've actually had some experience with them. I review products in a negative way when they fail to perform as they should. Sometimes this means by the time I feel comfortable posting a truly positive review, the product may not even be available anymore.
I had a similar experience to the woman featured in the summary, I ordered some outdoor anchors that one sets into earth to hold down playground equipment, and the first one broke about halfway into the ground, snapping off at a point that the manufacturer should have identified as a weak spot. I posted pictures of the break and described the circumstances under which the product failed, and included how this design may be fine in other climates but with the hard clay soils where I live it simply isn't up to the job.
Within a short time I got an e-mail from the seller with both a sob-story how they're a small business and this review is damaging to them and an offer for refund and new/improved product. Even if it's true that they have a new/improved product, I'm not their QA department, I'm not going to retract my review. Besides, if their product is redesigned then they need to list it fresh again anyway because it's no longer the same product as the one that I bought and had break.
Frankly we need more reivews, with actual substance behind them. Pictures, description of what led up to the conclusion, etc. No more of these "works great A++++" crap.
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Frankly we need more reivews, with actual substance behind them.
Quantity AND quality eh? I don't think you can have both. The system is already too easy to game.
So what do you propose then?
I propose not having reviews at all.
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Who reviews then? Remember, most products are merely average, and should be getting a 3 stars. But if there's a really great product or a really terrible product then there should be some way to figure this out.
Of course, for pencils you don't need a review, a pencil is a pencil. Except... if you're a professional artist you need a better than average pencil and needs the very rare 5 star that sticks out from the hordes of 3 stars intended for school use.
How does this work outside of the online world? W
Re:Inserts (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't have a high quality online seller versus a low quality online seller.
We have a bunch of high-quality online sellers. They're just all product-area-specific. For example:
And so on. Basically, the high-quality online sellers are the companies that used to be mail-order catalog companies.
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Remember, most products are merely average, and should be getting a 3 stars.
An average product at a good price and there has been no problems with customer service: 5 stars.
An exceptional product but the price is quite high: 3-4 stars.
I don't think there is really much consensus on how to systematically review products among laypeople. I believe 5 and 1 star reviews are given way out of proportion to 3 star reviews, which sort of flies in the face of your suggestion that this is the average. It's all so unreliable, at least if someone is angry enough I can read their trials and tri
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Often those are the only reasonable ratings one can give. The widget you ordered either works or it doesn't. Widget A may work for 5 years while widget B only works for 3 years, but you don't know that at the tie you're writing the review.
Re: Inserts (Score:5, Insightful)
I read each and every negative review in order to weed out morons and people with ridiculous expectations. Giving something one star on a regular Blu-ray player because it wouldnâ(TM)t play your 4K disc is an unreasonable expectation in my opinion. You would be surprised how many negative reviews are also by idiots. However, I am more likely myself to post a negative review on something that failed for me than I am a positive review. If it performs exactly as expected I cant spend all day writing reviews. If I buy a USB cable to charge my phone and the damn thing stops working two months later, you bet your ass that Im gonna go post a negative review.
In addition to that Im also paying attention to the dates of the review. One problem I have found is that the reviews are tied to the product identification and not the seller. So there could have been a rash of negative reviews for a specific window of time. This is why I always include the seller name in my review so people have that as a reference if they need it. Seller Bob could be a great guy selling a legitimate product. Seller Joe could be selling a counterfeit knock off under the same product ID and when seller Bobs inventory drops to zero seller Joe will become the next fulfillment even though its the same product within the Amazon portal.
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One possible solution it to given you short window to revise your review, before it is submitted, but once submitted prevent deletion.
Another approach is before deletion is to get the user to fill out a check-list of items to check why there are deleting. Also if a given product has too many deletions, then it should trigger an alert in Amazon operations. BTW the check-list wouldn't stop you from deleting an item, but rather help indicate something is going amiss. So if "I am deleting this review because:"
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It's somewhat of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The professional reviewer doesn't act like they know who the customer is. Is it the magazine subscriber or the advertiser. In this modern online world where people don't normally pay for subscriptions, the answer is easier. The reviews are written for the advertiser, that consumers get to read them doesn't mean they're the customer. Much of what used to be has been flipped on its head, non-paying readers are turned into a product that are s
Re: Inserts (Score:2)
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Re: Inserts (Score:2)
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Not just online sellers. If you buy a car you will be pressured to answer yes to the upcoming customer satisfaction questions in the following week.
When all reviews are at 5 stars, regardless of quality, then the reviews become meaningless. 4 stars for some stupid reason seems to be a mark of death, when it is supposed to mean that it's above average.
I think the reviews are being taken too seriously: by the companies, by the buyers, and by prospective customers. So many good reviews are clearly fake, so
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There's a vendor at Amazon from whom I buy bluetooth earpieces from time to time.
Every unit comes with a card that offers you another unit as long as you write them a great review. You can only do this once per purchase; no recursion allowed.
The products are excellent and cheap. And I've gone back months later and bought the same part again after I've lost the original.
I'm not sure why they feel the need to bribe me for a good review but I'm certainly happy to take the free product for a review I would ha
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Rating: 1 star.
Review: I keep losing the damn things!
I don't see a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I once got a, I think it was a charger, of such crappy construction, that i wanted to send it back for a refund. I wrote to them and they said they don't offer refunds. Fine, leave a 1 star review. I get another email: we are giving you a refund. Please take the review down. I edited it to a 3 star review. Complaining publicly works and the Internet has made it easier than ever to do.
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I wouldn't have changed the score. Offering a refund is the right thing to do but if it came down to that it means that the product was useless. And if the review was for the retailer and not the specific product, the fact that you had to take the time to complain publicly means the company was happy to take your money for nothing in return but trouble and headache.
I mean, it's not like you're going to get compensated for your time having been wasted. You shouldn't have to jump through hoops for the company
Re: I don't see a problem (Score:3)
To be clear, i edited the score, but included in the text of my review that the product was crap, and though i had to jump through hoops, i did get a refund. But you're right, for people who don't read the reviews and just look at the aggregate score, i didn't help things. BTW, I'm fighting with a hotel now for a refund of a deposit for a trip cancelled by COVID - 1 star reviews galore.
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It doesn't matter if they "offer refunds" or not if you used a credit card, it is almost guaranteed to offer some protection. Call the number on the back or use their website to submit a dispute.
Re: I don't see a problem (Score:2)
In the case of the hotel, I tried that. I disputed with Discover and Discover asked if I had booked the hotel, which I had. Then it wasn't a fraudulent charge, whuch is all Discover cares about. If I have a problem beyond that, Discover recommends I take them to court or file a complaint with my state attorney general against the hotel. Other cards would possibly treat me better.
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I think that's exactly it.
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People wield those one star reviews like lethal weapons. How dare they refuse to serve me when I place my order 2 minutes after the deadline, I will give them one star to show that I will not be played with like one of their sheep customers!!
Restaurants that are starting to reopen are finding that the covid lockdown has changed a lot of customers. Those who were nice are now very nice and grateful and accomodating. Those who were prone to giving little complaints are now going full blown Karen mode and f
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We could get into an argument about whether the stars should reflect just product quality, or the whole experience including the return policy... but this is an unsolvable problem with reviews. Some hate the product, some are complaining about the packaging, or
Re:I don't see a problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Many years ago I had a car with a really unusual radio mounting. I searched for a radio mount kit specifically for that model of car. What I received was a cheap generic mount kit, so I put a comment in describing the kit that I received and noting that it did not apply to my car.
They attacked me, threatened to sue me and hounded my via email for months, even though I reported them to Amazon and had made only honest statements regarding the product that I received
imo the system is so gamed it is broken and most reviews just seem to be puffery, most likely posted by the seller
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I once got a, I think it was a charger, of such crappy construction, that i wanted to send it back for a refund. I wrote to them and they said they don't offer refunds. Fine, leave a 1 star review. I get another email: we are giving you a refund. Please take the review down. I edited it to a 3 star review. Complaining publicly works and the Internet has made it easier than ever to do.
I only buy from something Amazon ships except in rare instances where it is a legitimate company's store front on Amazon. Never had an issue with getting a refund, often they say don't bother returning the item so I toss it. I have gotten the $XX for a good review emails or card in the box. If it really is worth 5 stars I do, otherwise I leave an honest review.
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Yes (Score:2)
I've had this experience multiple times. I tell them to go fuck themselves. Nicely, of course.
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Why nicely?
Re:Yes (Score:4, Interesting)
To increase the average amount of niceness in the world instead of lowering it.
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It doesn't cost extra. Also to provide contrast: If I'm not nice to you, you know you've earned the wrath.
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More likely, someone that you are not nice to is going to think you are just being an asshole than it is likely they will believe that they had done anything to merit such treatment which can easily undermine any point you might have otherwise been trying to make.
The best thing to do is just be honest, whether what you are saying is good or bad, and always be polite. As you say, it doesn't cost anything extra.
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I'm too honest for that. If you piss me off, I let you know.
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That's perfectly fine. My point is only that you don't have to be mean about it.
Take the high road, as they say.
If someone is being an asshole with you, tell them quite plainly that they are acting like an asshole, and ideally tell them exactly what they did that makes you conclude such. You don't have to be mean about it, just matter-of-fact.
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I've had this experience multiple times. I tell them to go fuck themselves. Nicely, of course.
"Kindly go fuck yourself...."
Delete, Refund, Repost (Score:5, Insightful)
So isn't the obvious thing for the consumer to do is to delete the review, get the money, and then repost the review, with an update to explain how the company bribes people to take down bad reviews?
Re:Delete, Refund, Repost (Score:5, Insightful)
So isn't the obvious thing for the consumer to do is to delete the review, get the money, and then repost the review, with an update to explain how the company bribes people to take down bad reviews?
Absolutely! Or, if you're just contrary like me, you immediately go add "Vendor tried to bribe me to take down this review" to the review and skip the kickbacks. Don't get me wrong, I like money, but at the point where I know a vendor is skeevy, I'm not sure I want to engage with further skeevy behavior with them. Maybe it will work out, or maybe they'll figure out a way to screw me further.
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The vendor should have a mechanism to address customer complaints, such as, said nicely, go watch our YouTube video on how to use the product, mor9n.
Giving a refund is another way to do this, and yes, companies rely on laziness and timidity for a certain fracti9n to never request refunds.
Re:Delete, Refund, Repost (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is for many companies that you need a perfect 5 star review or your sales will plummet. It's ratings inflation. 4 star average isn't good enough anymore. So if the wrong color arrived and the user decides to post a 1 star review over a simple mistake (often the customers) it can seriously damage the seller. This is especially true outside of Amazon where you have a local restaurant trying to get back on their feet after the long covid shutdown, or a mom and pop store just hoping that Amazone won't destroy them utterly.
Granted, there are so many lies out there on Amazon that it's good to hold the seller accountable ("universal product is universal, results may vary!"). But at the same time the rating inflation is killing the middle of the road products. If a product is half the cost of the leading product, why hold it to the same standard? A problem here is that the vast majority of reviews are either 5 stars or 1 star, which means there's no useful way to use those ratings to decide what's a quality product versus a product that does the job but without the added lemon scent.
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Anyone falling for an average 5-star rating needs to caveat emptor more.
XKCD had a good comic that expressed completely how I felt about ratings. Essentially, my review of the reviews came up with:
5-star? Avoid due to too many shills.
4-star? Avoid due to too many negatives.
4.5-star? The sweet spot. Probably enough varied, legitimate reviews to guide a purchase.
Basically, like most/all rating systems, everything gets crowded up into the top 20% range or so. It doesn't really matter the units: decimals, lette
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i.e. This isn't just a problem of unethical behavior by some company. It's also a problem of unethical behavior by some customers (changing their rev
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Can confirm - happened to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
Another major seller, one you have heard of, offered me free stuff if I would review their wares with my "honest" opinion. I got some cool stuff out of the deal. In my case, I liked the company and products, so would have given positive feedback regardless, but I didn't feel comfortable leaving negative feedback.
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Somervillain confessed:
Another major seller, one you have heard of, offered me free stuff if I would review their wares with my "honest" opinion. I got some cool stuff out of the deal. In my case, I liked the company and products, so would have given positive feedback regardless, but I didn't feel comfortable leaving negative feedback.
I'm happy to receive free stuff to review - and my reviews are always honest. However, if a particular product is crap, but most of that vendor's products I've used are okay, I'll generally skip posting a negative review. Instead, I write to the seller/vendor to explain that I'm not going to review the item, because I can only say bad things about it. I always tell them what specific things about it I dislike - and why I dislike them.
OTOH, if everything they send me is garbage, I will
In my case, it says I like free stuff. :) (Score:2)
So getting it free made you feel like you had to either praise the product or be silent? Okay, not I can understand why a lot of TOS forbid asking for an honest review. Until now I didn't understand that. I wouldn't have any problem taking stuff and then leaving an honest review, for good or ill. I wonder what that says about me.
I value free stuff more than my Amazon username integrity. :) I got $300 worth of stuff from the company, so yes, I wrote glowing positive 5 star reviews with lots of details and photos and my reviews were pretty well written, IMHO. I wanted to persuade folks to see the item in the positive ways I saw it and wrote accordingly.
In my case, it wasn't lying. I really liked the company and their stuff. But....I fully see why this is not good, as most will write the same review for junk in exchange for fr
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It appears that you prefer integrity over greed.
Good luck.
Another big problem (Score:2)
How are sellers getting buyers' email addresses?
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How are sellers getting buyers' email addresses?
This!
Serious confused by that. In my business, we don't deal with Amazon like this, but we do deal with ebay. Recently (read within the past year or two) ebay changed their policy to make it so the seller can't have the direct emails of customers. In doing this, they obfuscated all the email addresses that are provided to us (for our standard invoice tracking as such) by giving us things such as, "filter error: looks like ascii art@members.ebay.com". I'm surprised that Amazon does not do something simil
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I'm not sure. I get e-mailed by sellers all the time, though usually not for this specific reason. Often it is, however, to encourage me to either leave a good review, or contact them first and give them a chance to make things right, which I think is fair, and which I'm willing to do.
I still won't post a review I don't think is truthful, but, if I think the seller made an effort to redress any grievances, I can be persuaded not to leave a review at all.
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FTA: "One company, called Matic Chain, offers an email extraction service for Amazon sellers. A company representative told me over email that it uses Google and social media to match buyers' names with contact information. When I asked if the company knew this was a violation of Amazon policy, the rep didn't respond.
Another business, called ZonBoost, says it provides email addresses from reviews for up to $60 a piece. ZonBoost didn't respond to requests for comment."
Scumbags. And another reason not to be o
New Business Plan: (Score:3)
2. Post a negative review
3. Accept a refund and hold out for additional gift cards to remove negative reviews
6. Profit!
Been there (Score:5, Insightful)
I left a negative review for a DOA Softbox LED. Amazon wouldn't take it back, but the seller contacted me after a while and, after some back and forth, sent me both a replacement unit AND $50 in Amazon credit if I amended my review.
If the seller is offering a real remedy for a flawed product, it's hard for me to really say that it's a bad thing. If they're hounding a user without offering a fix, that's a different story.
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Amazon should offer a way for sellers to do this legitimately. If there is an issue and the seller wants to offer a better warranty than Amazon does, let them.
Rather than asking them to delete the review maybe add a note to it allowing the seller to respond and stating that the item was refunded.
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Amazon wouldn't take it back
Why? Genuinely curious. I thought that Amazon were known for a generally open returns policy. I live in a country with a online purchase cooling off period so Amazon is forced to accept returns here, but I thought they do returns generally for any reason.
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Most jurisdictions have a minimum requirement a product needs to meet, seems to be a lot missing from the original claim.
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I genuinely don't know. I tried to submit a claim through the web site and the option to return that product was greyed out. I'd only had it for a week before I needed to use it. Maybe the seller had an unreasonably short return windows set?
The thing was only worth about $100, which is enough to be annoyed about but not really worth my time to follow up on beyond leaving a bad review.
This happened to me for a positive review... (Score:4, Interesting)
This happened to me for a positive review; I gave a positive, glowing review for a stylus I'd bought. Then some carbon blob posted a response attacking me personally, and then pushing their own product. Since I had my own domain/e-mail, and this was back in the day when you had to buy Whois privacy, my phone rang several times for a few days, and it was from the locale of the attacker in another country.
My initial response was to investigate this other stylus, but many comments on other websites were negative--showing it was a scam product, a total 100% weapons-grade POS, etc. So I posted a response with the links. A friend chimed in asking why this person was making a personal attack to push a product.
I notified Amazon, and the wrathful, hateful attack was removed...although it took a few weeks. This was for me a new guerrilla marketing technique, ad hominem personal attacks, and it wasn't even a negative review.
A positive review for a product prompted some carbon blob to go into attack mode. I guess I was supposed to delete my positive review. What was ironic is this person started of with "Everyone is entitled to their opinion..." and this from a non-American explaining my constitutional rights.
It took much self-control for the opening sentence for me not to respond with the vulgar joke of the commonality of hemorrhoids and opinions.
But attacked for posting a positive review? Sheesh.
JoshK.
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This happened to me for a positive review; I gave a positive, glowing review for a stylus I'd bought. Then some carbon blob posted a response attacking me personally, and then pushing their own product.
So some other seller started attacking you on another seller's product for which you left a positive review? That's fucking bonkers.
ebay is/was the same way (Score:4, Informative)
It's also the reason I won't use "Angies List". The business who pay to get on the list can have feedback removed. It's a joke.
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I didn't know that about Angie's.
As one of the resources that I use, I always hit up the local BBB site when looking for services. While they may not show "resolved" complaints, they do show a tally, and, of course, some factuals about the business. I'll also take a look at Yelp, which has, of course, most/all the same issues about ratings that are discussed in TFA.
Who needs reviews on Amazon anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Gray market junk is choking out the remaining "real" stuff. Sometimes it is fine when you just need an essentially one time use widget, but it has gotten harder and harder to get anything decent. Even when they have the "real" thing you are after the search results are so badly spammed with promoted off-brand junk it is tough to find them.
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Another problem is that when you add a product to your storefront, you effectively give any Amazon seller the right to use your product information (including images) to sell the same product.
So, for example, an excellent American-made garden tool: Grampa's Weeder. The company that has made it for decades in Oregon, set up an Amazon storefront and added their product. My wife bought one and loved it. Then lost it a couple of years later. After a fruitless search of the shed and garage, she buys another.
This happened to me - Amazon didn't care (Score:5, Informative)
In early 2020 I left a three-star review for some wireless headphones. The seller deluged me with escalating bribes to delete or revise it. When I declined all, they took to forging my email address in requests to Amazon to "help me delete the review". Amazon's replies (form responses with directions as to how to edit or delete a review) went to me, of course, which is how I knew about it. This persisted over six months! I reported each attempt to Amazon - they didn't care.
I can't read the paywalled article, but I know this happens a lot.
I don't trust a 5 star product. (Score:5, Interesting)
When deciding on getting a product, I actually look for 4 star reviews not 5 star reviews, Also the number of reviews matter too, then I look at the poor reviews and I see what they are about. For good products, I find most of the poor reviews are for things like damaged due to shipping, they were trying to use the product in a way that it wasn't intended for (The Netgear personal router, while it says it supports up to 255 connections, it is really slow in my office of 200 people) , general tolls who just hate the company and find the normal tired rant (Netgear makes crappy products, Linksys is so much better) , or comparing it against a product that is much more expensive. (This Netgear router doesn't support such features that I can find in my offices Cisco).
Then I may get some useful 2-3 star reviews, where it actually explains its tradeoffs where I can determine if such tradeoffs effect me. the 4 Star are mostly just from lazy reviews who didn't have an issue, but also has no real love for it either, and 5 star I never trust, as it is probably from the company boosting their reviews.
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wearing my Statistics professor hat for a change . . .
To be useful, the stars would need to be "normed" to be useful.
Someone who posts roughy equal quantities of each number would be left "as is".
But 5 stars from the guy who only ever puts 5 stars would carry either a number closer to 3, or simply carry a fraction of the weight of the "serious" reviewer.
It won't work simply to give everyone's reviews an average weight of 3 (although it would be simple to implement), s this doesn't account for the folks that
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A "reputation" variable?
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reputation could come by sufficient correlation to other reviews, or by ratings from other users.
There's a bit of this already in the count of how many user's found it helpful. A further step would be such a vote from a higher rated member carried more weight, as well.
Another example is slashdot's boost to start at score 2 after a sufficient number of moderations.
Its true (Score:2)
I only look at the 1-2 star reviews (Score:3)
When I bought from Amazon I found that the 1-2 star reviews really told the story. As other people have noted, most of the time there was a shipping issue but if the product was flawed, then it comes out pretty loud and clear on the negative reviews. I'm very suspicious of the 5 star reviews on Amazon being legitimate (regardless of what Amazon says about the reviewer).
I put "When" in bold because I'm on hiatus from buying from Amazon until they improve their treatment of employees and immediate suppliers.
Re:I only look at the 1-2 star reviews (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed.
Approximately nobody reviews a product that they don't have a complaint about unless that person just has way too much free time or is getting something in exchange for it, so you can safely assume that all five-star reviews are meaningless. Four-star reviews are sometimes valid, but mostly people who have too much free time or who have been asked to review it. Three-star-and-below reviews are usually legitimate gripes.
But by themselves, although they might tell you what is wrong, they don't tell you how likely it is that you'll be impacted. If the problem is some glaringly bad misfeature, you can judge that on your own, but for inconsistent malfunctions or outright product failures, you can't.
What's missing is the denominator.
The total number of 5-star reviews can easily be affected by bribery ($5 off your next purchase if you write a 5-star review) or outright review buying, so if you're comparing one product against another product, comparing the number of bad reviews to the number of good reviews can paint a highly misleading picture.
And the total number of 1-star reviews is largely meaningless by itself when comparing one product to another product. After all, you have no idea whether those 50 one-star reviews are 5% of the people who bought the product or .01%, because you have no idea what percentage of buyers reviewed the product.
What we really need to know is the total number of instances of a given product that have been sold on Amazon. With that data, we would know what percentage of buyers were pissed off enough at the product to write a one-star review. And that, unlike any other approach, is actually a pretty good metric for how good or bad the product is.
Gotta know the denominator. (Score:2)
Excellent point!
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A "total products" tally would be useful, and not that hard. Won't be done...for business reasons.
Also useful would be the percentage of shills, paid by competitors, that leave a 1-star rating. Won't be done...for business reasons.
Re: I only look at the 1-2 star reviews (Score:3)
Fundamentally broken... (Score:2)
Reviews on Amazon have been fundamentally broken for years now.
There was a time when you could kind of rely on 3-star reviews, but so often, reviews get mixed up with the wrong product.
E.g. it could be a router from LinkSys or something, but the review posted is for an entirely different model - happens all the time.
The only way to ensure you are getting a decent product on Amazon, is to do research beforehand completely away from Amazon itself.
If you can find no other reviews or info for a product, just do
Simple: don't leave reviews. (Score:2)
I NEVER leave reviews, positive or negative, unless there's something exceptional to mention.
Being expected to leave a review for every purchase I make is total bullshit. I am not responsible for pumping up your seller rating.
If something went seriously wrong and I want to warn others away, I'll leave a review. If the product is exceptional and deserves to be promoted, I may leave a review.
So here's what I do to deal with this. (Score:2)
First off, ignore the top tier of positive reviews. These are almost all fake.
Then look at the proportions. If you're looking up something like for example, "gas generators" on Amazon and the proportion of negative to positive on ALL of them are similar, the reviews are almost certainly faked.
An easy way to do this is over over the "Global ratings" stars on each product and mentally draw a curve on the endpoints. If the same curve occurs on a particular product type, then all reviews on all of them have bee
It's not just Amazon (Score:3)
Car dealers have been doing this for a while.
When I bought a new Santa Fe, I was pretty upset with some old-fashioned shitty sales shenanigans by the sales team* and with their "customer service survey" that comes from Hyundai after the purchase, I explained quite clearly why I gave them a 2 star review. Car fine, what I expected. Sales approach completely shitty and I'd never buy from them again.
*an attempted bait-and-switch on extended warranty coverage, flat out lies in regard the free-service program coverage, etc
I must have gotten at least 3 calls from the sales person and one from his manager, asking, then begging, then bargaining, (and the last) being a bit of a cunt about the review. First the sales person 'promised to look into it' and nothing happened. Then I was supposed to sympathize with him as his compensation was partly based on those results; then they offered me floor mats (it didn't help that I *heard* someone behind the call say loudly "offer him some floor mats or something to settle down").
The last call the manager was asking why I was being difficult and that these were policies and people were just doing their jobs blah blah fuck him..
None of which really even faintly gave me the thought that I should actually amend that review anywhere but down.
Sellers reaching out... (Score:2)
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It happened to me. I bought an accessory for my mobile, and it turned out to be junk. I left a review that described the problems I had with it. Amazon refunded my money quickly and said I did not need to return the item. Then, a few days later I got an email (via Amazon) telling me to take down my review. Nothing else, just telling me to take down the review.
I've seen this mentioned a couple other times in this topic. Up to now, it appears that Amazon considers this to be the more profitable path. At what point will they start losing money? What would it take?
I imagine if fraud gets bounced back to them--too many people leaving bad reviews just to get a refund or replacement item--they might change. OTOH, perhaps Amazon simply handles it internally: get too many bouncebacks and you're no longer a supplier. I don't know what financial hit Amazon takes in either
How you can tell (Score:2)
If I see something with say 120 five star reviews, 30 four star reviews, 20 three star reviews, 20 two star reviews, and 20 one star reviews, that seems more natural.
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All reviews are fake. Period. If you believe differently, you are mentally ill.
I've left (positive) reviews for products I've bought and have been satisfied with. And I'm not mentally ill, thank you.
One thing I do is always leave them after some time that I've used the product so I can leave actual (real-world experience with the product) feedback.
Another thing I do is look up people's profiles that have left feedback, and make sure they're not a review factory. One thing I wish Amazon would do is tell you when the reviewer bought the product, to see if they immediately left feedback
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I believe all comments are fake.
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When Amazon customers leave negative reviews, some sellers hunt them down [foxbusiness.com] appears to be the same article
The "Wall Street Journal" attribution might be considered a clue....