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Comment by DarkTree | Hacker News Reader

Just 5 years ago, as a freshman in college, I was alternating between Amazon and eBay to find the cheapest price for textbooks. This was the first time I ordered anything off of Amazon, and it was their bread and butter; a book. Fast-forward to present day and I order almost everything off of Amazon, even if I can get it at a store nearby. Why? Because products reviews have grown to be essential in my psychology for buying, and it's very easy to wait just two days for the product to arrive at your doorstep. And I haven't used eBay in years.

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Online reviews were a revelation for me, but they're increasingly being gamed on Amazon (fake reviews, people getting free products in exchange for positive reviews, etc.). I've bought some really mediocre products lately that had amazing reviews.

I've also noticed the quality control has gone down the tubes, with 3rd party sellers shipping counterfeit goods. Amazon doesn't seem to be interested in regulating this.

If there was a company with Amazon's shipping speed but without all the shady 3rd party sellers, I don't think I'd use Amazon again.

You can use a tool like http://fakespot.com/ to try and get a different view of the Amazon reviews.

But I often also find myself searching a community like reddit for product suggestions through google. query: "product name" reddit, and I may add in tags like BIFL (buy it for life) or frugal to try and trigger different results, so I can see what people who are less likely to be shilling have to say.

For example, while fan searching today, I learned more from https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/3ad5rl/bifl_r... than I ever could have from Amazon reviews, and it even made me realize I already have a fan that circulates, I'm just using it wrong.

Generally speaking I only read 3 star reviews.

5 star and 1 star reviews are usually garbage - either fluffed fake reviews, or reviews outraged about something unrelated with the quality of the product itself.

I find 1 star reviews quite useful. If all the reviews are shipping complaints, the lemon rate of the product is probably low.

There's a lot of gaming on those low star ratings by competitors. The trustability of reviews on Amazon has sunk so low over the years that for many products, reading many (tens or several tens of) reviews across star ratings is what may help have some idea about the product's quality and the seller.

The problem with this is the expectation of a 5 star review for adequate performance. A lot of reviewers view 3 stars as "I didn't like it, but at least customer service didn't screw me and it didn't burn my house." I'm aware that this is terrible because it leaves no room for superior delivery, but it's just the way of things.

> I've bought some really mediocre products lately that had amazing reviews.

And that's where their amazing (by the standards of other etailers) return policy comes into play.

> 3rd party sellers shipping counterfeit goods. Amazon doesn't seem to be interested in regulating this.

Same here. I stopped buying commodity electronics items (cables, power supplies, headphones, etc.) on Amazon, because of all the fake products that claim to be 100% original.

Even the Amazon basics brand does not live up to its standards. I recently bought an Amazon basics USB/Lightning cable, "Apple certified". The lightning plug was so lose, it fell right out of the iPhone.

It's not just electronics, Amazon is full of fake everything and because they allow commingling of inventory a fake can be sold and shipped by Amazon.

This was an eye-opener when I first heard about it. I cannot fathom the thought process that allowed them to do this. It's such a black mark on the brand. FWIW I order a LOT from Amazon.

There is always YouTube for reviews. It's a good place to check if the Amazon reviews seem sketchy. I understand not everything will be on YouTube but you would be surprised at the amount of items that are there.

In my experience YouTubers who review things are running little lifestyle businesses, getting free products (or possibly kickbacks) in exchange for positive PR.

I would consider a YouTube channel that primarily reviews things less trustworthy than a rando on the internet, not more.

Even if the YouTuber is totally trustworthy, "professional" reviewers are only going to give short term impressions, how its features and cost stack up in the market, etc. which I can research for myself. What I want to know about is long term experience, failure modes, etc.

Pretty much only Consumer Reports is in that business, and only for big ticket items like cars.

The point of Amazon reviews is to quickly evaluate an item. Watching a youtube review is a much larger time commitment

I wonder. I'd argue that watching an unboxing gives me a much quicker idea of what's really going on than trying to tease out what's the truth from the reviews. ("20 positive reviews. How many are fakes? Let me read the 3 stars, maybe they're better. I'll read the 1 stars and try to assign weight).

Maybe I'm just picky but I find reading/judging Amazon reviews a pain in the ass.

I don't think I can tell much of anything from an unboxing video. I have no idea why they are so popular.

If you leave a bad review some sellers offer a refund if you delete the bad review and you can keep the product. That's how you get good product reviews for bad products.

Tackling quality control and superfluous/irrelevant/out-dated reviews are hard problems to tackle. That last if is a big if.

Jet.com?

I'll take another look at them now that they've dropped the membership fee.

Incidentally, I'm working on a project to spin off the reviews piece of Amazon and making it first class, with an emphasis on community and trustability. I feel like this is a very important part of the ecommerce ecosystem and I'm not really sure why it hasn't been done already (very well anyway, see Epinions).

I'd like to see something "social", where you "follow" other reviewers (who reviewed something you bought and you trust their review) and build up a reviewer network and then factor in some sort of "trust" percentage (how much you trust the reivewer).

Trusting reviewers gets really complicated quickly, as someone I trust to evaluate what makes a good blender might really hate that genre of books I enjoy.

Indeed. It would be a slow process, but over time, as you buy items, you select reviewers to follow who share your likes for the various items.

And it being a "social" thing, there's nothing stopping you from reaching out and having a conversation with reviewers.

Having a system with trusted reviewers is even easier to game as well.

No doubt. I mean trust is an aspect of any con, right?

Still, I would at least like to see something like what I mentioned tried.

That's an interesting idea, almost in a meritocracy kind of sense, or in other words, reviewing the reviewer. Perhaps previous trust "points" can be used a weighted boost, kind of like PageRank, but for reviewers.

Yes. But for the reviewers _you_ follow, _you_ rank them based on how much you trust their reviews. Your trust rank is factored into the reviewers who are followed by the reviewers you follow, so as you go down the line the trust gets lower and lower.

its not easy to do well. fraud, spam, hate speech, etc.

I would go as far as to say it's impossible to do well.

All communities have to tackle these problems in various forms, although I believe it is possible to fix in a way good enough to be more valuable than without it.

I have some ideas on ways to tackle the fraud problem, such as with a trust-based ranking system, rewarding balanced feedback, purchase verification, looking for heuristics of fake reviews, and avoiding potential conflicts of interest.

It's not the primary concern of Amazon to make sure their reviews are authentic, where as it would be with a service dedicated to that very concern. In fact, positive reviews help drive more sales, so there's an inherent conflict of interest that I feel justifies the need to separate reviews from the place selling the things being reviewed.

easier to do when not anonymous?

Bazaarvoice?

I read the reviews for anything I buy. The average rating is pretty much useless though.

Agreed. The critical ones are the useful ones.

I do the same, but as time goes by I'm inherently less and less trustful of all of it. The incentive to manipulate ratings and reviews is just too great for sellers to ignore, and it's not as though Amazon can reliably measure review honesty.

Use fakespot.com and use filtered by "Verified Purchase".

What does verified purchase matter when so many sellers pay people to review? Yes they really bought it, but for pennies on the dollar.

Yeah I've started going for products that only have "hundreds" of reviews, and over several years, those are usually hard to game :)

You are just upping the stake. Some people DO pay for hundreds of reviews. It just cost more to do.

I always find it more interesting to look at the distribution of ratings that they have. It's usually overwhelmingly good, overwhelmingly bad, or polarising, with lots of good and lots of bad.

That to me is a pretty good quick-window into the level of quality of the product.

I find that eBay's bread and butter is really small fry to small fry - or at best, dealers in collectibles to collectors.

Clothing and shoes still are a better experience for me on eBay than amazon although Amazon is catching up.

Similarly, I've switched almost completely from selling an occasional book or used item on eBay to Amazon because I can generally get a better price when I sell things on Amazon, and it's much easier to list things in that the description and reviews are already available for most of the things I have to sell.

When I changed cities a few years ago, I decided to sell the majority of my books so as not to have to ship them, and I made enough from those sales to cover about a quarter of my shipping fees for the rest of my stuff.

You can see when a company has built a stellar product when they can sustain return customers even without discounts and payback offers. See Amazon's rivals, in India atleast, Flipkart and snapdeal are biting the dust, and Amazon doesn't even give any special offers to the customer. They have perfected the thing they must do well to succeed in their business: fast delivery and returns. Amazon is the flagship bearer in e-commerce and is doing a good job advancing state of the art in this segment of human endeavour.

Absolutely! I find myself looking at items in-store to get an idea of what's available, then going home and comparing reviews & prices on amazon where there is more variety.

This is particularly true with what I've been buying lately--tools. The local home depot will just deal in a couple of brands for most tools, while amazon is virtually guaranteed to have dozens in all variety of size, power, options, price, and quality.

The price is usually better, as well, and then I don't have to load it into my vehicle, either. Poor UPS guy, though.

I find eBay a better source for tools, but both it and Amazon are head-and-shoulders better than Lowes and Home Depot if you don't need that tool right this minute. And if you do need it today and it can be used, Craigslist.

In my area (poor, very rural), craigslist is too slow for that.

I've been searching for a drill press for months, and I actually just hit one today. Assuming it's not sold out from under me by tomorrow, I'll have a new one in the evening.

The last one I saw was sold within two hours of listing, and that was over a month ago.

I do that too, and with the Amazon App you can even scan the barcode of the product you are looking in the market to compare prices and look at reviews right there. Don't even have to go home for that.

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