Paid fake reviews are taking over Amazon...

[Art&Science]

Doesn't matter what you're looking at... everything is littered with fake paid 5 star reviews.

Getting ridiculous Amazon, enough fake paid reviews. Of course, all of these Amazon paid fake reviews are 5 star... None of these paid fake reviews on Amazon are anything less than 5 stars.

Enough already!

 

[Art&Science]

Example:
https://www.amazon.com/Balichun-Lux...=cal+king+blanket&refinements=p_85:2470955011

 

[Beer4Me]

Use www.fakespot.com

They seem to think less than 20% are fake reviews. I've seen products with more fakery than this one, but yes, you're correct. You have to be careful about those 3rd party products that are fulfilled by Amazon. Most have paid, fake reviews. Of course, Amazon also does their own "Vine" sponsored reviews where they give the product away in return for a positive (supposedly unbiased) review.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Example:
https://www.amazon.com/Balichun-Lux...=cal+king+blanket&refinements=p_85:2470955011

What tags those reviews as fake vs a blanket people really like?

 

[edro]

YouTube/other videos and Amazon customer images and videos help me decide when choosing.
Negative reviews are what really concern me, but I know that some people are just morons, so I read a lot to make a determination.

Same with hotel/cruise reviews.
"0/10!!! My sink had a drip, which ruined my entire vacation!!!"
Some people are just hard to please.

 

[RagingBITCH]

Use www.fakespot.com

They seem to think less than 20% are fake reviews. I've seen products with more fakery than this one, but yes, you're correct. You have to be careful about those 3rd party products that are fulfilled by Amazon. Most have paid, fake reviews. Of course, Amazon also does their own "Vine" sponsored reviews where they give the product away in return for a positive (supposedly unbiased) review.

Stole my thunder...Vine is what is triggering most of these "real" reviews that appear to be fake. We finally caved into them to try out Vine, even though in the category we play in (Men's Pants) we're one of the top vendors they have and aren't hurting for sales/reviews.

 

[vi edit]

They are perfectly unbiased. I mean they have to be, right?

***I was offered cheap hardware by Anand for the fair and honest posting of this post***

 

[zinfamous]

I swear this exact version of "the Amazon thread" was posted ~2 or 3 weeks ago.

 

[DigDog]

I too only read the negatives. Maybe next thing they will have fake negative reviews which actually sneak in some praise "it was too small for me, but the quality is undeniable" kinda stuff.

IMDb is the same btw.

 

[gorcorps]

I swear this exact version of "the Amazon thread" was posted ~2 or 3 weeks ago.

A couple times actually, and it always goes the same way:
- Somebody says they're all bullshit.
- I point out that there's no penalty for posting negative reviews of products, so just because it was bought through one of these programs doesn't mean it's BS.
- Somebody else says "who WOULDN'T be biased by getting things for cheaper"
- Then somebody or I post examples of products that were sold on a discount but still have shitty reviews.
- Then the other people say "yeah well I still don't trust them"

It's a dumb argument and yes, it's getting old. People bitch about the stupidest shit, and most of the time they're ignorant of the system so are getting pissed off about things that they made up in their own head.

 

[luv2liv]

sort by "verified purchaser" should solve the problem.

 

[gorcorps]

sort by "verified purchaser" should solve the problem.

Anybody who bought it from Amazon will be a verified purchaser. That will get rid of any potential reviews that are totally fabricated, but still leaves the ones where a purchase was made but at a discount (which people still have issue with)

 

[rumpleforeskin]

I swear this exact version of "the Amazon thread" was posted ~2 or 3 weeks ago.

That thread was a fake, this one is the real deal 5* would read again.

 

[Ken g6]

Funny thing, I got a letter in the mail yesterday asking me to review a product. They said they'd give me free stuff if I did. But I really don't trust whoever sent the letter.

Not sure if it qualifies, though, since they didn't really ask for a positive review.

 

[dullard]

that were sold on a discount but still have shitty reviews.

The real question is, do those "reviewers" get more cheap/free stuff to review from the same companies after a negative review or two? If the answer is no, then there is your bias.

If a school keeps kicking out all students with low grades and is left with only good students, does that suddenly make the school a good school for educating students? Not necessarily. But the stats look good. Same thing with paid / semi-paid reviews. As soon as reviews are not random or are not actual user reviews who would buy the items, you can make any steaming pile look pristine.

 

[gorcorps]

Funny thing, I got a letter in the mail yesterday asking me to review a product. They said they'd give me free stuff if I did. But I really don't trust whoever sent the letter.

Not sure if it qualifies, though, since they didn't really ask for a positive review.

According to a lot of ATers here, it doesn't matter if they asked for a positive review or not. Merely by offering a discount, your opinion has been swayed so much that your review can't possibly be trustworthy or honest. Nevermind that nobody really knows how much that product was discounted... or that stores regularly put things on clearance (oh but that's different)... no, if you got that item for anything less than full price and then said so in your review, you're an untrustworthy shill.

 

[dullard]

According to a lot of ATers here, it doesn't matter if they asked for a positive review or not. Merely by offering a discount, your opinion has been swayed so much that your review can't possibly be trustworthy or honest. Nevermind that nobody really knows how much that product was discounted... or that stores regularly put things on clearance (oh but that's different)... no, if you got that item for anything less than full price and then said so in your review, you're an untrustworthy shill.

You don't understand. By selectively continuing to give discounts to reviewers who are positive and discontinuing discounts to reviewers who post a couple negative reviews, now the reviews are biased.

It isn't that the reviewers themselves are dishonest or untrustworthy. It is the process of only feeding discounts to the continually positive reviewers that is the problem.

Even it a bad review gets through now and then, that biased process has just shotgunned a lot of good reviews to mask over the average result of the few bad ones.

 

[gorcorps]

The real question is, do those "reviewers" get more cheap/free stuff to review from the same companies after a negative review or two? If the answer is no, then there is your bias.

If a school keeps kicking out all bad students and is left with only good students, does that suddenly make the school a good school for educating student? Not necessarily. But the stats look good. Same thing. As soon as reviews are not random and are not actual reviews, you can make any steaming pile look pristine.

The ones I know of don't, that's what I've said time and time again. The site I used in the past only knew whether you left a review or not, and graded you based on word count (IE: you should provide a good explanation of why you liked or hated the product). They didn't keep track of good vs. bad, only reviews left and how in depth they were.

It doesn't matter how many times I say it though. People have this idea in their mind that all of these sites are paying for positive reviews. They don't. A lot of them are tiny little startups that just want somebody to try their product to possibly jump start their business, and they haven't been able to appear on Shark Tank yet. All they want is feedback good or bad on if their product is better than the competition. Critical feedback helps them make changes to get more sales on a revised product.

 

[Art&Science]

http://fakespot.com/product/beckham...piece-bed-sheet-set-deep-pocket-cal-king-navy

This one is really bad.

LMAO at trying to defend this bullshit. Don't be STUPID. This is not nVidia giving a video card (which is expects returned) to AnandTech for review... it's GIVING PRODUCT with no exceptions of it being returned but WITH the expectation of a good review. Don't be a fucking moron.

 

[yuchai]

http://fakespot.com/product/beckham...piece-bed-sheet-set-deep-pocket-cal-king-navy

This one is really bad.

LMAO at trying to defend this bullshit. Don't be STUPID. This is not nVidia giving a video card (which is expects returned) to AnandTech for review... it's GIVING PRODUCT with no exceptions of it being returned but WITH the expectation of a good review. Don't be a fucking moron.

Do you really think that 75% of the 3,300 reviews that the listing has are fake, i.e. they have given out at least 2,500 free samples? Just because there's a website that has some sort of algorithm in evaluating the reviews doesn't mean that their conclusions are always accurate.

I'm not a fan of the free product for a review situation myself, but in this case, the product in question is likely a pretty good one. Just looking at some individual reviews you see that there are some valid crticisms of the product but generally people have been pleased with it. Hint: go with newer reviews instead of the "most helpful" ones based on Amazon.

Edit: Let's even take the worst possible situation and assume that all questionable reviews (75% of total) were 5 star. The remaining reviews gaves the following distribution - 3% in 5 star, 14% in 4 star, 3% in 3 star, 2% in 2 star, and 3% 1 star. That's still an average of 3.5 stars, which isn't bad

 

[gorcorps]

http://fakespot.com/product/beckham...piece-bed-sheet-set-deep-pocket-cal-king-navy

This one is really bad.

LMAO at trying to defend this bullshit. Don't be STUPID. This is not nVidia giving a video card (which is expects returned) to AnandTech for review... it's GIVING PRODUCT with no exceptions of it being returned but WITH the expectation of a good review. Don't be a fucking moron.

Say you got a gift card to a restaurant. You go there with the hopes of having a nice meal, however what you get is absolutely terrible. It's cold, it's not cooked properly and overall just a god awful meal.

Now the manager comes up and asks how your meal is.

Are you telling me that since you didn't have to pay out of your own pocket that you're going to tell the manager "it was fantastic and I can't wait to come back!" If you do, you're either a pussy or a liar (or a lying pussy). The exact same thing applies here. There is NOTHING stopping you from giving a product a shitty review other than your own fingers, regardless of if you paid full price or not.

 

[FeuerFrei]

It's super-suspicious when enthusiastic reviews start flowing in every day or two, accumulating to more reviews in the last couple months than the last couple years.

Any self-serving attempt to influence a reviewer smells fishy. Amazon needs to crack down on this favors-in-echange-for-reviews racket. Lets not lower our standards on corruption to Brazil or Russia levels.

 

[madoka]

Amazon's rating system itself is messed up.

For example, this product:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...d-3035-4a40-b691-0eefb1a18396&pf_rd_i=desktop

I mean, how do you get 56% 1 star reviews and still get 3.9 stars overall?!?!!?!

 

[jlee]

You don't understand. By selectively continuing to give discounts to reviewers who are positive and discontinuing discounts to reviewers who post a couple negative reviews, now the reviews are biased.

It isn't that the reviewers themselves are dishonest or untrustworthy. It is the process of only feeding discounts to the continually positive reviewers that is the problem.

Even it a bad review gets through now and then, that biased process has just shotgunned a lot of good reviews to mask over the average result of the few bad ones.

http://elliottback.com/wp/does-amazon-vine-bias-reviews/

We see a significant skew. Overall, we see that the Amazon Vine reviews average a 4.31, while the non-Vine reviews average 4.26. Standard deviations are 0.99 for Vine, compared to 1.22 for non-Vine. So the overall averages are not affected by the bias present in Amazon vine reviews. Rather, it is the distribution itself that is affected. Vine reviewers give out fewer 5s than regular reviewers, while giving more 4s, and fewer 1s. In some sense, we can say that the Vine program functions as a range compression in the review-space.

Given these facts, does the Amazon Vine program bias reviews? No. In fact, it can be thought of as a statistical reviews moderator. While the Vine reviews are differently distributed (compressed), they still hover about the same averages. And it’s the averages that inform the next consumer on the shopping site.

Fewer 1 star reviews could be explained by the presumed intelligence of a compensated reviewer - you are not likely to find Vine reviews like this:

And this gem, for warning triangles:

 

[gorcorps]

Amazon's rating system itself is messed up.

For example, this product:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...d-3035-4a40-b691-0eefb1a18396&pf_rd_i=desktop

I mean, how do you get 56% 1 star reviews and still get 3.9 stars overall?!?!!?!

That's a good question